This is a great piece by Salvatore, who I already follow on Twitter is a great friend of India! And thanks for the kind words, I created this newsletter because I would've liked to read something like this if it had existed. So glad to hear you felt the same way!
Tracking things like this is a great first step, but I think it will take more to convince my Western liberal friends. What are your thoughts on what it might take to do so?
honestly it depends on the nature of the person on the other side. If they are extremely ideological, it's probably hard to reach them. But for those who keep an open mind, I would tell them three things:
1) India is a massive country and that means that conceptually it's hard for westerners to grasp the scale of events taking place. With a country of this size, you'll find all sorts of people doing all sorts of things in very large numbers. If there are a lot of people of one political side, there's also a very large number of people who disagree with them.
2) Actually traveling to India might make them realize how different the ground reality is from what is reported
3) India is substantially an extremely competitive democracy where every inch of political space is fought over. BJP won 7/7 seats in Delhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and got clobbered in the Vidhan Sabha elections which took place less than a year later. There is no autocracy or single party rule here
The guy I have in mind is actually a polisci grad student, he's not super ideological and tries to be fairly moderate. The problem is that the establishment line is too deeply ingrained and it's very easy to dismiss arguments like these by attribution - Salvatore's affiliation with conservative politics, for example. I think it will take someone with solid centre-left credentials to learn and speak about it, a la Matt Yglesias or Glenn Greenwald. Would also be productive to drive the discourse in a more quantitative direction; for example I constantly see claims that religious violence is increasing with the only source being a claim by another liberal individual or organization. Actually looking at statistical trends would allow us to at least know what's actually happening and direct arguments accordingly.
I know the kind of person you're talking about. Someone who wouldn't accept that they have the flu unless the NYT reported it to be the case. I tried to address that in my section on Narrative Articles (how an NYT report on a topic functionally acts like a Fatwa for these people). I honestly think the best solution for this kind of person is to just encourage them to travel to India once. Nothing will change minds like a heavy dose of ground reality. Apart from that, the fact that people like these won't even consider "enemy" sources means that our other options are limited. Because the gods know that the NYT and BBC won't be changing their activist reporting anytime soon
Thanks for your great articles & huge efforts. I know elite white doctors, lawyers in US who believe everything the legacy media write about India. They have traveled to India several times & married to Hindu Indians & have kids but understand zero. They are blinded by Ideology. They believe a Nazi fascist Modi has taken over India. Hindus are persecuting Muzlims/Christians. The crazy part is Indian government does not even record religious hate crimes., there are no statistics on the subject, then on what basis are they talking? They are talking on the basis of articles that cherry picked 5-6 incidents in such a large population of 1.3 billion. Some are mob lynchings for theft not hate really. The least the BJP could have done is start to record religious hate crimes. The numbers would speak for themselves. It would become clear who is persecuting who? Almost weekly if not almost daily a Hindu women is being raped by Islamists & killed in LoveJ/grooming. The best part is since Hindus, Muslims have different names such date can still be collected & published. Why is it not being done? Why is BJP sleeping? T
Thanks again for the kind word! Of course, I have lived in the US for five years myself too, so I know exactly the phenomenon you're describing. My goal with this article is for people like you and me to have a credible response when someone says that there is no bias against India in the institutional western media. I'm going to try and put out the next version of the newsletter soon. Thanks for reading!
I've been waiting for something like this for a while, so thanks for the great work! Curious if you've previously read this article, which I thought did a good job of describing why coverage of India in Western democratic indices is so awful: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/08/indian-democracy-at-75-who-are-the-barbarians-at-the-gate/
This is a great piece by Salvatore, who I already follow on Twitter is a great friend of India! And thanks for the kind words, I created this newsletter because I would've liked to read something like this if it had existed. So glad to hear you felt the same way!
Tracking things like this is a great first step, but I think it will take more to convince my Western liberal friends. What are your thoughts on what it might take to do so?
honestly it depends on the nature of the person on the other side. If they are extremely ideological, it's probably hard to reach them. But for those who keep an open mind, I would tell them three things:
1) India is a massive country and that means that conceptually it's hard for westerners to grasp the scale of events taking place. With a country of this size, you'll find all sorts of people doing all sorts of things in very large numbers. If there are a lot of people of one political side, there's also a very large number of people who disagree with them.
2) Actually traveling to India might make them realize how different the ground reality is from what is reported
3) India is substantially an extremely competitive democracy where every inch of political space is fought over. BJP won 7/7 seats in Delhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and got clobbered in the Vidhan Sabha elections which took place less than a year later. There is no autocracy or single party rule here
The guy I have in mind is actually a polisci grad student, he's not super ideological and tries to be fairly moderate. The problem is that the establishment line is too deeply ingrained and it's very easy to dismiss arguments like these by attribution - Salvatore's affiliation with conservative politics, for example. I think it will take someone with solid centre-left credentials to learn and speak about it, a la Matt Yglesias or Glenn Greenwald. Would also be productive to drive the discourse in a more quantitative direction; for example I constantly see claims that religious violence is increasing with the only source being a claim by another liberal individual or organization. Actually looking at statistical trends would allow us to at least know what's actually happening and direct arguments accordingly.
I know the kind of person you're talking about. Someone who wouldn't accept that they have the flu unless the NYT reported it to be the case. I tried to address that in my section on Narrative Articles (how an NYT report on a topic functionally acts like a Fatwa for these people). I honestly think the best solution for this kind of person is to just encourage them to travel to India once. Nothing will change minds like a heavy dose of ground reality. Apart from that, the fact that people like these won't even consider "enemy" sources means that our other options are limited. Because the gods know that the NYT and BBC won't be changing their activist reporting anytime soon
Institutions are unlikely to change their mind, but one influential individual perhaps... BTW, where are you based?
Thanks for your great articles & huge efforts. I know elite white doctors, lawyers in US who believe everything the legacy media write about India. They have traveled to India several times & married to Hindu Indians & have kids but understand zero. They are blinded by Ideology. They believe a Nazi fascist Modi has taken over India. Hindus are persecuting Muzlims/Christians. The crazy part is Indian government does not even record religious hate crimes., there are no statistics on the subject, then on what basis are they talking? They are talking on the basis of articles that cherry picked 5-6 incidents in such a large population of 1.3 billion. Some are mob lynchings for theft not hate really. The least the BJP could have done is start to record religious hate crimes. The numbers would speak for themselves. It would become clear who is persecuting who? Almost weekly if not almost daily a Hindu women is being raped by Islamists & killed in LoveJ/grooming. The best part is since Hindus, Muslims have different names such date can still be collected & published. Why is it not being done? Why is BJP sleeping? T
Thanks again for the kind word! Of course, I have lived in the US for five years myself too, so I know exactly the phenomenon you're describing. My goal with this article is for people like you and me to have a credible response when someone says that there is no bias against India in the institutional western media. I'm going to try and put out the next version of the newsletter soon. Thanks for reading!