Ever since Article 370 of the Constitution has been revoked, which gave the state of Jammu and Kashmir a special status; the liberals all over the world seem to have taken personal offence. While one in such a situation may be considered empathetic or even considerate, the problem lies in the fact that these liberals are blissfully unaware of the ground realities on the valley, and as has become their penchant, are just ne edlessly harping about like a blithering idiot.
One of the names, which feature on this list is that of the comedian, Hasan Minhaj. The one who rose to fame with the Daily Show under Jon Stewart’s mentorship, he has been very active with his rants against India on his new show, the Patriot Act. Previously, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, he had ranted against PM Modi, the BJP and the RSS and even going as far as to state the atrocities committed in India are similar to that of an Arab prince. He spoke about how citizens are lynched over their choice of meat and that the BJP government is responsible for the growing communal hatred in the country.
It is pertinent to note that his 29 minute blither was nothing more than a rhetorical attack with no substance to offer to back his claims.
Now, he has done it again. On the occasion of the Indian Independence Day, Hasan Minhaj decided to speak on the Kashmir issue in an effort to enlighten his viewers on the lack of “communication facilities” and the fact that they aren’t “independent”, since the revocation of Article 370.
Minhaj’s ignorance of the ground realities however, is what makes his statements nonsensical. First of all, in what clearly demonstrates his lack of knowledge on the issue, Minhaj refered to Article 370 as ‘section 370’and then goes on to rant about the ‘Indian atrocities’ and ‘independence and autonomy’ with regard to Kashmir.
https://twitter.com/hasanminhaj/status/1162070236155318274
However, his rhetoric finds no mention of what is Article 370, how it was separating the Jammu and Kashmir citizens from the Indian citizens and what atrocities the people in Jammu and Kashmir, those who weren’t given the status of a citizen were suffering. Hasan Minhaj also didn’t feel the need to explain that the communication barriers were put up in the state on a temporary basis for a smooth abrogation of the article. Moreover, his rhetoric definitely didn’t examine the militancy situation in the state due to which these measures were being taken.
Strangely enough, Minhaj’s concern for Jammu and Kashmir did not extent to the Ladakh region or its people, who are rejoicing on being granted the status of a separate union territory and even when as far as to call this Independence Day, their first.
Thus, all his absurd rhetoric had was an attempt to voice the liberals of the world, who without knowing any ground level facts are desperately trying to sympathize with the Jammu and Kashmir situation. As a result, what the viewers witnessed from Minhaj’s act was a rant riddled with factual inaccuracies.
However, Hasan Minhaj is not alone in this. The global liberal brigade, with whom Minhaj identifies with, have all taken up the Kashmir issue as their next crusade without an iota of knowledge about it. Jammu and Kashmir is being treated as their next agenda on their war against global conservatism. The liberal media platforms globally have been drawing parallels between the Kashmir issue and others such as the Palestine issue in a highly degrading manner, and these parallels convey how oblivious they are to the real situation.
Bloomberg recently published an article, comparing the removal of Article 370, paving way for development and integration to that of Beijing urging Han Chinese to migrate to Tibet and Xinjiang. The other suggestion was that Kashmir may soon be more like the West Bank, “with armed settlers living in highly protected colonies amid a larger, disenfranchised population subject to arbitrary justice”.
972Mag and lobelog both published an article titled, “What’s Happening In Kashmir Looks A Lot Like Israel’s Rule Over Palestine”. As way of explanation, the platforms published, “Over the past decades, the country’s growing ties with Israel have created a situation in which the oppression of Kashmir is linked to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
Even the likes of Washington Post and BBC have been interfering in the issue. BBC further wrote, “The reaction among the Buddhists who dominate Leh, the eastern Ladakh district, as well as among Jammu Hindus has been subdued owing to the loss of their rights given by Article 35A.” This statement itself conveys how little BBC actually knows the ground situation in Ladakh. Moreover, they compared the situation to that of Serbia’s Milosevic regime by stating, “What the BJP government has done is akin to what Serbia’s Milosevic regime did in 1989 by unilaterally revoking Kosovo’s autonomy and imposing a police state on Kosovo’s Albanian majority.” BBC also stated that BJP’s “approach is akin to China’s policy towards the Uighurs of Xinjiang.”
All these statements just indicate how blissfully oblivious the liberal platforms are towards the Kashmir issue and how they just want to utter absolute gibberish to make themselves relevant.
This misguided and ignorant activism is demonstrative of their current irrelevant state. Conservatism has taken over the world and that is being reflected in the global electoral trends. Since the past 60 years, the liberals had dominated over electorate and academia, which is being increasingly changed due to this nonsensical attitude. The more the liberals are being rendered irrelevant, the more their incessant, meaningless rants continue.
Nestled in their safety zone, in order to write or preach about certain issues, what is foremost important is to garner the ground level information on the scenario, from a holistic perspective. Instead, what the liberals are now immersed in doing is picking up tidbits of information from one another and linking them to completely different phenomena so as to appear wise. The same attitude towards Jammu and Kashmir is demonstrative of the directionless, incoherent herd the global liberal brigade has come to symbolize in an era where they have lost electoral battle and in the ideology sphere being trumped by the conservative movement across the globe.