Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Imagine being a resident on the Greek island of Lesbos. 20,000 Syrian refugees land up on your island and now 1 in 5 people on the island is a refugee. You feel so threatened that you even stopping sending your kids to school. Or imagine being in Hungary: immigrants chant Islamic slogans and shout “f*** you” slogans at the police. Or maybe you are worrying about the security threats: two refugees were arrested in an unspecified European country on suspicion of being ISIS members . But hey, let’s focus only on the immigrants and refugees’ perspective; not the impact and dangers they pose to the people whose countries they land up in. At least, that’s the stance of liberals world over. When a stretched Czech police force started writing numbers on the arms of immigrants after detaining them, the Nazi comparisons started. The same comparison was done when Hungary was glad to see the backs of immigrants leaving in trains, this time the comparison was to the Nazi cattle cars. Do...

After a long time (too long actually), I was reading some of Vir Sanghvi’s blogs. It got me thinking (the man does argue and articulate well, whether or not you agree with him). This blog is triggered by some of his recent blogs. When Modi won by a landslide, many weren’t sure why he had won. Was it a vote for Hindutva? Or was it a vote for a strong, decisive leader (one, who as Sanghvi put it , “who did not take orders from party high commands and whose word was final”) who had, equally importantly, demonstrated that he could deliver on promises of progress? In recent time, many Indians are getting wary of the Hindutva brigade running amock now that “their man” is the PM. The major trigger for that were the religious conversions that started in Agra. Sanghvi raises some very interesting questions for the liberals on that topic: 1)       Yes, forced conversions are bad. But does anyone really believe that Hindu conversions are being done the way the...

After Islamic extremists opened fire inside Charlie Hebdo’s offices, editors worldwide had to decide whether or not to publish the offending cartoons. Some did, most didn’t. Big surprise. Christopher Massie cites the reason Slate’s editor-in-chief Julia Turner gave as to why she did publish them: “What kind of magazine is Charlie Hebdo? What kind of work does it publish? What are the controversies it’s been embroiled in in the past? To help our readers begin to understand the answers to these questions and grasp what happened this morning in Paris, we wanted to show them the work.” But hey, let not something as inconvenient as the facts or the truth get in the way of the offense takers and the never-give-offense-to-Muslims brigade who call themselves secular and liberal (Ironical, they call themselves liberal but don't want freedom of speech and expression!). Unless, of course, it ridicules or mocks Christians (in India, replace that with Hindus). Like Time ’s “giving i...