Lies, damn lies, friends & Trumpolit(r)ics

No marks for this. Guess what is common between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi, apart from their claims that they are mutual friends. In fact, the duo has reinvented the definition of friendship. They walked hand-in-hand at Narendra Modi stadium in Ahmedabad during Trump’s previous season. Modi declared ‘Ab Ki Baar, Trump Sarkaar’ when the businessman-President sought re-election (and lost to Biden). Nobody talks of the diplomatic embarrassment that must have been caused to India as no less than the country’s Prime Minister landed in the US and campaigned for the opposition candidate. It has not come as a surprise because NaMo has this habit of denouncing his opponents from a foreign soil.

Cut to Trump's 2nd and current term. Right from his campaign days, he has been threatening action against high tariff nations such as China and India and making the US free of illegal immigrants. And when he became the 47th President of the USA, his first step was to send back 104 illegal Indian immigrants – chained and handcuffed, as if they are dreaded criminals or the most wanted terrorists. Shameful. By Monday evening, the fourth batch of people who managed to enter the US through the Dunky route arrived in Amritsar taking the number to 300 plus.

In the face of a massive criticism of human rights violations against the deportees, all that we heard was the statement from External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar that India is engaged with the US on this issue.

We wrote in our previous columns that we did not have the spine to stand up to the Trump administration and tell them to be fair with our unfortunate victims of global human trafficking wheeler-dealers.

Modi merely said this issue has to be addressed, making one wonder as to what the government was doing over the past 11 years as human trafficking is a continuous process. Nobody dared respond when Congress (I) vice president Rahul Gandhi raised it during the Lok Sabha election campaign. Even now we do not see anyone in the government or any of the criminal investigating agencies doing anything to check this racket which cannot flourish without any official connivance.

Remember, Trump is yet to act against Chinese immigrants.

Modi gets a sort of ‘return gift’ as he comes back from his US trip and meeting his ‘friend’ at the White House: Trump administration cancels USAID funds coming into India (along with other countries). First, we were told that we received 21 million dollars for improving our voter turnout. This ignites a massive attack on the Congress from the BJP, its social media network and the Godi media with all of them in a toolkit orchestrated language deriding Rahul Gandhi for taking foreign money to topple Modi government.

Shocking is the fact that even the Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar got himself entangled in this unsavoury controversy and called for exposing those people who benefited from the USAID to doctor and manipulate our democratic process. Senior BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, who is also a senior Supreme Court advocate, blasts Rahul Gandhi and his family by relating them to George Soros and displays a filthy word for them.

All these guns fall silent after an Indian Express investigative report debunks all these insinuations when it reports that the so-called $21mn went to Bangladesh and not India.

Then comes Trump’s allegation that the United States gave the money to his ‘friend’ Modi for increasing the voter turnout. He goes on repeating this four times in as many days. He asks why the hell does India need that kind of money? As if he is oblivious of the Trump(et) noise, Modi goes on to attack his opponents who destabilise Hinduism and the national government with the help of a foreign hand!

Of course, India is not new to these kinds of expressions from Modi. The nation has heard much worse things such as Mutton-Machli-Muslim-Mangalsutra-Bhains jibes during the recent Lok Sabha as well as Legislative Assembly elections. Isn’t it a serious crime if someone is trying to destabilise the nation? What are the government’s investigative and the intelligence agencies doing? Can they not catch the culprit (if there is one, that is)? For agencies which track the movements of Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan or Dubai, this task is nothing. Yet, all that team MoSha, their fringe elements and the Godi media do is to keep misleading the people with lies, damn lies and polit(r)icks. And they have company in the US.

Team Modi also criticised the previous governments for taking USAID but by Sunday it was clear from the Finance Ministry that even this government took the $750 million for seven of its projects. This prompted Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh to post on X platform: “None other than the Union Finance Ministry has thoroughly exposed the lies of the PM and his jhoot brigade, including his dapper External Affairs Minister. As stated in the Finance Ministry's annual report for 2023-24, USAID is currently implementing seven projects in collaboration with the Government of India, with a combined budget of approximately $750 million. Not a single of these projects has to do with voter turnout. ALL of them are with and through the Union Government.”

Meanwhile, Washington Post said none of the claims of Trump administration on funding Hamas for condoms, India for elections, while The New York Times said: “Top officials in the Trump administration and allies in Congress, eager to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, have accused the agency of misusing taxpayer’s money. But many of their claims were misleading or lacked context.”

CNN, on its part, listed 13 misleading statements by Trump within the first month as the 47th President.

The US media has the spine to call spade a spade and Trump a liar, unlike the major media in the world's largest democracy. Our spine melted away in 2014.

But the independent media, or whatever little remains of it, will continue to raise questions, however uncomfortable they might be for the powers that be.

It’s time one took Trump(et) tunes with, not a pinch but tonnes of salt. Baba, Oh Baba: Religion is a private affair. National leaders should never make a public show of it by aligning with any particular religious leader and using that platform to deride the opponents. Those occupying constitutional positions should be doubly careful since they are looked upon as role models by many. The entire BJP leadership literally fell for Baba Ramdev who in turn campaigned for the Lotus party. We all know what is happening with Ramdev as he continuously faces action for misleading advertising of his products. Now we get to the spectacle of Modi praising Bageshwar Dham Baba Dhirendra Krishna Shastri as his younger brother when the PM performed the ground breaking ceremony for the Bageshwar Dham Medical and Science Research Institute in Garha village, Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Modi also appreciated Dhirendra Shastri, for raising awareness about the mantra of unity in the country for a long time. Ironically, it was the same Bageshwar Dham Baba who stated that those who died in the stampede attained salvation (moksha). He said on camera: “Jo Ganga kinare marega to woh marega nahin, moksha payega...woh mare nahin hain’’ Shouldn’t our leaders be a bit careful before endorsing religious gurus?

(The columnist is a Mumbai-based author and independent media veteran, running websites and a YouTube channel known for his thought-provoking messaging.)