The Struggle for Freedom in India

Make but don’t speak in India

• by Vijay Nagaraj 
• - on 03/28/2016 

In early January, as part of his much hyped ‘Make in India’ agenda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the ‘Start-Up India’ initiative. This ode to venture capitalism is but a complement to the Modi regime’s older and bigger initiative—‘Shut-up India’.

Central to this are attacks on social activists, workers, secular intellectuals, students, minorities and anyone else deemed to be defying, dissenting or claiming freedoms frowned upon by Hindu hyper-nationalists. In Modi’s India a mere rumour that you ate beef could get you killed.

While an assortment of Hindu right-wing storm troopers are flourishing, and at the ready to do the dirty work of the regime, standing by is a repressive and eager-to-please police machinery. Embellishing this is a craven big media, sections of which relentlessly manipulate and replay the you-are-either-with–Modi-or-against-India message.

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