Pankaj Mishras illiterate and poorly written anti Trump/Modi screed for the NYT

One of things I really really hate is when the lies , whether of omission or commission, hysterics ,nonsense and ignorance of leftist secular writers forces me to defend Hindutvadis and the American Right. I prefer not to defend politicians and political ideologies in general unless the alternative is truly horrible , which it is with Democrats who are this point are led by their mentally ill rabid base.


Anyhow this Pankaj Mishra talks a lot of nonsense trying to fool goras who dont know any better about India. Leftist whites really dont know anything about the world in general apart from tweeting how much they love chicken tikka masala and naan. They believe their bottomless jaded appetites makes them compassionate and cosmopolitan.


I wont like the NYT article as I dont prefer to link pay sites. Much less garbage like the NYT.


Anyhow lets continue with this abortion of a column..





“I love Hindu,” Donald Trump proclaimed during his presidential campaign in 2016. That adoration of India’s majority population, and America’s richest and most obviously pro-Trump minority, may have just gotten deeper.


Trump is an amusing guy and mis speaks sometimes . Relax. Most Indian Americans are not really pro Trump. They didnt vote majority Republican at all. Only 16% voted for him. Yes later a higher percentage had a high approval of him but its more like 35% and approval numbers dont easily translate to votes. Already a fact fail. And we are not even 4 lines in.


On his first visit to India next week, Mr. Trump claims, he has been promised a welcoming crowd of “10 million” by the country’s Hindu-supremacist prime minister, Narendra Modi. (Never mind that the total population of the city where Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump plan to hold a joint rally is a little over eight million.)


I dont know much about the logistics of the rally . Isnt it possible that many came from out of the city or even state to visit Trump? Even so is some hyperbole the greatest crime there is?

Last September at a rock-concert-like rally at a Houston football stadium, Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump walked hand-in-hand, the two stocky strongmen looking like brothers-in-arms. Certainly, nowhere in the world can Mr. Trump encounter a profounder fraternal spirit than among India’s present rulers. India under them fulfills, to a startling degree, the American president’s irascible fantasy of what the United States should be: a country cravenly surrendering its traditions of law and decency before a perpetually inflamed and ham-handed autocrat.


Name any autocratic tendencies of Trump. If anything to the surprise of many of his detractors he is very wary of the limitations of his office . This can be seen in his response to the COVID 19 situation where he allowed states to make their own decisions whether about lockdowns or lifting them as befits a federal system.

Mr. Trump has controversially pardoned some white-collar criminals, including Michael Milken, and might extend clemency to Roger Stone. He can only envy the culture of impunity in India. Charges of murder and kidnapping have long pursued Amit Shah, Mr. Modi’s closest confidant and India’s home minister, but the judge in his case mysteriously died soon after Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014 and the next judge swiftly acquitted Mr. Shah.


"Mysteriously died" . Is this guy a journalist or a gossip columnist and pulp writer. Why should anyone take such an individual seriously?

Roger Stone's crime ,if it is even a crime, does not deserve such a serious punishment. Regarding Michael Milken, even wikipedia actually seems sympathetic to this situation. His alleged crimes at the most seemed to be created novel financial instruments and some money managers not disclosing opportunities to clients so they could benefit. This wasnt really proved beyond a reasonable doubt. And the losses accrued to private investors was $318,000 . Then as now peanuts in the financial world. All the while Obama and Bush let those who created the financial crisis skate even as they collected 100s of millions in golden parachutes.

Mr. Trump has been forced to bypass Congress to push his measures against immigrants and Muslims. Denouncing Muslim immigrants as “termites,” Mr. Shah has pushed comprehensive laws against Muslim immigrants through the Indian Parliament and, with equal chutzpah, broken up the only Muslim-majority state in India.

Why are Muslims "immigrating" to India? Most of these were actually targetting illegal Bangladeshi Muslims. Another thoroughly revolting lie by omission.  Either way India has the right to restrict immigration by religion too if neccesary. Of course the government handled this in the most clumsy and ham handed way which led to unnecesary chaos and destruction.
A president can restrict immigration by executive order- i.e the so called Muslim ban. There was no need to consult Congress. Just as Obama implemented DACA without Congress.


Much outrage in America has correctly focused on the Trump administration’s cruel separation of children from their parents at detention centers. It has been barely noticed in India that Mr. Modi’s government has illegally detained numerous children in the valley of Kashmir, now in the midst of an endless crackdown.


What exactly is the government supposed to do when these illegals bring their children along for this hazardous journey? When you commit a crime it is not expected the child share a jail cell with you. Many of the Kashmiri children take a page from the palestinian handbook and pelt security forces with rocks. Many are armed with more substantial weapons. Yes the Indian army can be draconian in their approach but they often have good reason to apprehend underage Kashmiris.


Mr. Trump can expect some pushback from even his regular muse, Fox News.

Only one or two hosts on Fox News are pro Trump. Fox News is friendly only to neo con Republicans generally. This is why I cant take these people seriously . They dont do any thinking or basic research and simply throw out these "facts" out of their ass.

Mr. Modi can rely on uninterrupted sycophancy from almost all of India’s major television channels and newspapers;


LOL what??


“Modi toadies” (Salman Rushdie’s term)


What was your position on Salman Rushdie circa 1988?


broadcast uncritically, among other things, the falsehood that Indian fighter jets bombed and killed major terrorists in Pakistan.


Have your proven it to be a falsehood? Sure you can question the government claims. But how can you say with certainty that is false?
Whereas Mr. Trump can claim few real fans in Hollywood, Bollywood’s stars jostle to fit their extra-wide grins into Mr. Modi’s selfies.


hahaha! Bollywood stars are generally servile to anyone in authority unlike those in Hollywood . So it doesnt really mean anything.

India today with its groveling political and cultural elite is Mr. Trump’s deepest fantasy, flawlessly realized. A democracy once identified with great names such as Mohandas Gandhi has degenerated into Trumpland — an inferno of systemic brutishness, imbecility and mendacity.


There is no systemic brutishness in the Trump government. As for imbecility- he speaks simply plainly and often coarsely. But smooth talking Obama bombed a shit ton more Muslim children than Trump. These goddamn pundits I tell you, they dont care about action, its word and theories that matters most to them.

Trump is not so much a liar but somewhat who likes hyperbole and grandiose statements to exagerrate a certain truth. This can come across as lying to those uninitiated in this Queens speak. But the media takes this to absurd levels ,so much so that you actually wonder if the writer who takes Trump to task for his "lies" is autistic. For example Trump when inviting some football team , set up a food spread for them, composed mostly of fast food where the hamburgers of which there must been about 50 or 60 were stacked in towers. Trump said that these were a a mile high. And this was actually fact checked. When you have to fact check what is obviously an exagerration you have lost all sense of proportion. That is not to say Trump is always truthful. He is rather egoistic and this compels him to say some whoppers . But calling him mendacious in this context is a bridge too far.




To understand how this catastrophe occurred, one would have to examine how the broader culture of insatiable greed and competitive vanity that Trump embodies took hold in India.


Yes here come the most bizarre claims.

President Trump and Trumpism are manifestly a culmination of some of the worst tendencies in American society and culture in the 1980s and ’90s — the feverish worship of power, success and fame.


These actually culminated in the Obama hysteria than anything Trump has done. The late 60s and 70s didnt see much admiration of power, success and fame as people of Mishra's ideology were ruling the roost and almost wrecked the most powerful country in the world within a decade.


It is not often recognized that Mr. Modi and Hindu supremacism are the upshot in the same era of a ruthless pursuit of wealth and power — and a widespread rejection of values long central to Indian society.


LOL , you think pursuit of wealth and power are alien to Indian values? Obviously he has never spent any time among an Indian hen party or a corporate environment.

The leaders of India’s anti-imperialist struggle, most prominently Gandhi, had a famously low opinion of the profit-seekers and private-wealth creators who had come to dominate and degrade much of the world’s population.


So did Nehru and look what it did to the Indian economy. It made it the beggar of the world. "Hindu rate of growth", look it up Mr Mishra.


Accordingly, the proclaimed, if not always observed, ethos of postcolonial India was of self-restraint, frugality and collective welfare.


Who proclaimed this and how? How does collective welfare work in a country of ,then and now, 400 million and a billion people. It doesnt. Self restraint in what context? Food, drink, sex, self adornment? Who are you to wag your finger at people and dictate their lifestyle?


One sign of this high-mindedness was that popular cinema as well as political speeches and programs on state television attended closely to the fate of the rural poor — a majority of India’s population — and the tiny minority of the rich tactfully kept their lifestyles out of sight.


You must be joking .The movies of the 50s and 60s were concerned very much with those of the upper classes. The rural poor were also interested in these movies than yet another patronizing movie about a poor farmer. As I said Mishra, you can lie to goras because you are writing for that wretched rag The New York Times but your bullshit wont fly back home and you know it.


After visiting the United States in the 1960s, the Indian novelist R.K. Narayan wrote in highly idealized but not wholly inaccurate terms of the fundamentally opposed Indian and American conceptions of the good life: contentment in “austerity” versus “limitless pursuit of prosperity.”


This is one of the problems I had with RK Narayan. He idolized the stagnation and listlessness of the middle class at the time. If nothing else due to limited opportunity. I am sure it was a charming time to be alive as he captured it so evocatively . If I were alive at that time and place I probably would have been content but I see a contradiction here- if we were content would we have every thing that Mishra wants- better infrastructure, universal healthcare, welfare system etc. Who exactly would be paying for all this? And who would pay for a military which needs to be well equipped to deal with determined foes? Not an easily contented people for sure. Contentment is the privilege of nations of Europe ,Canada and Japan who already have a benefactor hovering over them. Or countries which have nothing to offer predators. India did not have those luxuries.

By the 1990s, however, ideas and worldviews from elsewhere, especially the get-rich-quick mentality personified by Michael Milken and Donald Trump, were radically altering the private and public cultures of India. I remember that the most popular way then to describe differences between successful America and striving India was to lament that Indians lack a “killer instinct” as well as a “strong leader.”


Hahaha. High finance is not a get rich quick scheme . Ok it can be if you have the right clientele and a lot of capital to start with but that is true of many industries and yet its not guaranteed. Milken did not have these advantages .It requires a lot of trial and error before you actually strike gold. And even then the odds are against you. Trump made his fortune in real estate. Try telling a developer his life calling is a get rich quick scheme and he will die laughing. I dont think this guy Mishra ever held down a proper job or knows anything about the economy in particular.


India also appeared to many to have become a “soft state,” crippled by the philosophical baggage of its founders, unable to keep minorities in their place and to embrace the bonanza of the free market, and incapable, too, of the amoral hardheadedness needed to realize its destiny as a great power — one that is as feared and respected as the United States.


Blacks in America and Muslims in India have very different histories. One were slaves and the others were masters. And unlike whites in U.S, many Muslims still harbor fantasies of being masters. It is completely dishonest and disingenous to ignore this to make your cheap propaganda points. But nothing about you surprises me right now.
Traveling across India for a book on small towns, three years after India’s economic liberalization started in 1991, I was astonished by how quickly self-perceptions were changing among many middle-class and upper-caste Indians.


You were writing since then are you are still this ignorant??


Most Indians were still struggling then, as they are now, for basic goods such as food, clean drinking water, toilets, jobs and livable homes.


This is a lie. Yes many rich and middle class people became richer but the liberalizations lifted a lot of people out of poverty as well. India became as aspirational society rather than a crab mentality which is what Pankaj Mishra may consider more wholesome.


In Hyderabad in the 1980s there were gangs of youths wandering aimlessly on the roads catcalling and harassing women and being a nuisance in general. In the late 1990s these types had all but disappeared as they had something to do. But no , according to Mishra they were no longer content! What a paradise it was for them to do nothing and make crude comments about under age girls. This is the real India we should admire!

But the largely upper-caste beneficiaries of liberalization proclaimed their distance from such “losers”;


The old rich always hates the novueau riche. And "losers" were just financially inferior though not poor. This is a class issue common to a lot of countries.

their New India was premised on the assumption that super-achieving and high-consuming Hindus under a strong leader will forge a country that knows how to defends its borders, to vanquish internal and external enemies, and to liquidate termites.


What exactly is wrong with this? It is normal for any countrys populace to desire this. Only idiot leftists wish the worst for their countries. These days they dont even hide it.


Notions of broader uplift and protecting the poor were being stigmatized as the hopeless obsessions of deluded lefties. A quasi-Trumpian worldview was emerging, in which society appeared a mere sum of self-aggrandizing individuals locked in fiercely zero-sum competition with one another, with winners as well as losers racked by fear, distrust and envy.


Hahaha. Economics fail. If free market teaches anything , it is that zero sum thinking is not encouraged. Wealth can be created as well as inherited. It is better for Indians to have more individuality than thinking of themselves only in terms of caste, religion or region eh? Arent you contradicting yourself dumbass? Goddamn did you source Fiverr to get a pimply 14 year old to write this drivel?

Regarding fear ,distrust and envy- has this guy actually lived during the 1980s? Distrust and envy occur most when resources are scarce. I remember the amount of dirty looks our neighbors gave us when they saw our color TV and VCR in our living room as they went from their entrace to the elevator. Your nonsense is non stop, Mishra.

The Hindu supremacists had already unleashed a stunningly successful politics of hatred. In 1992, after having promised to wage a peaceful campaign, they demolished a 16th-century mosque and then, after decades of marginality in Indian politics, rapidly rose to power in Delhi by the end of the decade on the back of anti-Muslim violence.


Ok, stop. An honest and humane person can have opposing view of this event. None of which you provide. What were the events and reasons that precipitated that event. You seem to just glide over them. Anti Muslim violence had little to do with BJPs rise to power.Perhaps it had more to do people taking a break from dynastic politics and parties a break dontcha think?

Their arriviste politics was matched, and boosted, by the social and cultural ambition of many rising Indians. It would be decades before a Trump Tower was built in Mumbai, but in India’s small towns, recently moneyed but culturally insecure Indians were already raising megalomaniacal monuments to themselves. Today, India’s richest person, who owns much of the fanatically pro-Modi media and monopolizes the country’s internet services, lives in a 27-story home in Mumbai — a more eloquent symbol, in a city of slums, of Trumpian excess than any Trump tower in America.


He may own a lot of pro Modi media but most of media is not pro Modi. You think you are real smooth trying to get away with that one dont you Mishra you pathetic worm? I dont care for Ambani's garish monstrosity but really thats not something most people bother themselves with.


If ostentatious architecture was one sign of India’s Trumpification, Bollywood was another. For decades, its films were known for their often sanctimonious insistence on ethical conduct. But by the late 1990s, some of Bollywood’s most successful films were showcasing gaudy, Trump-style consumerism, leavened by a hypermasculine Hinduism, in which women always knew their place. The new privately owned media further opened up possibilities of a principle-free existence by lavishly detailing the lifestyles of the rich, famous and obviously corrupt.


Goddamn the lies and obfuscation in these statements are out of this world. "Sanctimonious insistence on ethical conduct?" hahaha you mean when rape scenes were portrayed in a lurid manner because the censor board bizarrely decreed those ok but not characters having consensual sex? Or when honor killing and even rape was justified ,implicitly or explicityly , because the girl had been behaved in a seemingly disgraceful manner? Or the hero hounding and often beating his wife as if it she was an errant goat? Oh that ethical conduct!

The 1990s actually showed women working ,running business and yes often behaving immorally by having affairs etc. But they were shown as human beings capable of agency , not toys of the patriarchy. It is bizarre that you are defending those regressive movies but deriding the later ones BECAUSE TRUMP! Mishra you have really lost your marbles.

I have my problems with the direction the film industry has taken with regard to its target demographics. It has all but forgotten the middle class and dwell on silly spoilt protaganists whose life struggles involves whether to wear their ruby shoes or golden riding boots as they prepare for a $50 mocha at their favored ski chalet. This is as much a consequence of prosperity as with the coarse optimization of revenue by targeting expensive ticket buyers at multiplexes than those less well of at the old fashioned 70 mm cinemas. I wish there was more representation for them. But the nepotism and monotony that characterizes Bollywood wont let that happen. While he does criticize Bollywood content for ignoring marginalized communities (which I can agree with him), he spents much of his time grovelling over the celebrities. A quick google search reveals "Hooray For Bollywood" in 2004 where he grovels over the celebrity status and lifestyles. Again its for NYT( makes a living pulling wools over the eyes of whites I see) so no link.






The eventual beneficiary of this revolution, as much moral and cultural as political, were Hindu supremacists. They conducted nuclear tests in 1998


Not the smartest thing to do in my opinion but an intelligent argument can be made for and against this action. You Mishra provide neither.
and then threatened Pakistan with all-out war in December 2001, after a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament that some have suggested could have been a false-flag operation by India’s security agencies.


OK then. You have shamelessly ventured into false flag territory . While in a craven and disgusting manner glossed over Kargil, Taliban hijacking and a whole host of other aggression by Pakistan which led to this culmination in December 2001. Mishra if you consider youself a journalist ,put up or shut up. And dont hide behind the revolting and snivelly "some have suggested" . Be a man state things openly- what do YOU say?
The following year, Mr. Modi set a new benchmark for the killer instinct by presiding over, as chief minister of the state of Gujarat, a pogrom that killed hundreds of Muslims and rendered homeless countless more.


So they just randomly started killing Muslims for no reason whatsoever ? (doing a Ctrl F for Godhra yielded no result). Now it is possible Godhra train incident was a result of bad ventilation and lack of safety practices . It is also possible Modi was kept in the dark regarding the scope of the atrocities by people he trusted. However in order to make such sweeping judgements you better qualify that this is your opinion based on the events ( which you did not provide fully) or just be quiet. Your shamelessness knows no bounds Mishra. Goddamn you have fewer morals than $5 Cambodian hooker.


Condemnations, including from the United States, which denied him a visa, were soon followed by full-throated endorsements by India’s biggest businessmen of Mr. Modi as a leader who gets things done — for the biggest businessmen, at least.


Yes that proved to sadly untrue. Economically he is a disaster. The big businessmen will manage to thrive in any climate. Thats why they are who they are.

It is clearer today that India’s quest for the killer instinct has climaxed with actual killers in high office. It is also plain that a structurally flawed and now swiftly failing economy cannot create the millions of jobs needed annually for India’s overwhelmingly youthful population and can only further concentrate financial and cultural capital on top of a 27-story private residence in Mumbai.


Ok , this is the only thing in the entire semi literate ramble I somewhat I agree with so far. But the causes are Modis loopy ideas about the economy which are mercantilist and patronizing and have a lot more in common with Indira Gandhi than Mishras cares to tell us.

Presiding over a grotesquely unequal and unjust society, Mr. Modi and his toadies work harder to channel India’s enormous reserves of anger and frustration against the weak and their “liberal” and “leftist” defenders. In the process, they betray themselves as Mr. Trump’s true soul mates.


I am somewhat sympathetic to this view too. Not all detractors of Modi are leftists. Liberals and leftists are not synonymous. Many liberals are suspicious of any government authority and wish more freedom for all. Leftists agitate against any government but their own and when do claw their ways to power they never let go as much as they can help it.

Much guff will be broadcast in the coming days about the “shared values” of the world’s largest democracies. But the most significant values that India and the United States share today are those of Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi — charlatans who succeed, initially, but then, failing abjectly at everything, retreat into resentful lies and bellicose bluster. The New India, much more than the United States, is now Mr. Trump’s spiritual home, and the president would, for once, attest to a genuine emotion when, imagining himself cheered by 10 million Hindus, he tells himself that he really loves Hindu.


Oops you lost me again. Modi's India is not to Trumps taste because Trump is a guy who actually values liberty and prefers not to dish out violence in a casual manner. Hence his reluctance not only to start new wars but also not to call in the National Guard to riot stricken states and let the governors and mayors deal with the situation as they see fit.


The real crime with this terribly written and very poorly thought out and researched article is that it is not befitting a man who has been writing I assume for more than 3 decades. If I submitted something like this to my freshman year English or Political Science teacher I would be lucky to get away with a C-. But Pankaj Mishra actually deserves an F , to which I would also add a U.