Jack Straw is the canary in the coal mine that indicates the hand of the Sino-Wahabi lobby in the BBC documentary. Painting India in the worst of hues has long been an obsession of this lobby.
NEW DELHI: The BBC’s choice of Jack Straw to put on steroids its vituperation against India in the documentary, “India: The Modi Question”, was not accidental. Straw is a Fellow of the 48 Club, a UK-based group that has never camouflaged its affinity towards the Chinese Communist Party. A scan of the videos available on social media during just the 21st century will reveal the consistent manner in which the sometime Home and later Foreign Secretary of the UK has backed those in the Atlantic Alliance who seek to ignore the expansionary activities of the PRC, especially under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, and focus his ire on countries such as India that are the target of the Sino-Wahabi lobby. Records of Straw’s speeches in gatherings of those in the UK who have long sought to force India to concede to the takeover of Kashmir by Pakistan are plentiful. To explain such a bias away by pointing out that more than a third of the voters in his constituency were Muslims is to be unfair to the members of that faith. Only a small minority of Muslims support the hardline views of those individuals who were known backers of Jack Straw while he was in active politics in the UK. Given the comradely and collaborative relationship between the Chinese and Pakistani diplomatic missions in world capitals, it comes as no surprise that more than two decades ago, it was Foreign Secretary Straw who interceded with the Bush administration in Washington “to give diplomacy a chance”, rather than seek to pressure China to immediately release the sophisticated spy plane. Straw’s diplomacy gave the Communist Chinese enough time to ferret out most of the secrets hidden in the manufacture of the aircraft, thereby initiating the process of producing similar aircraft in the PRC that could be used by the PLA against Japan and the US in particular. That the then UK Prime Minister was almost as big an enthusiast of the “Communist China is a natural partner of the western alliance” was helpful to Straw in his efforts at softening the stand of not just his own government but the US government on China. It was during that period that the takeover through salami slicing of the South China Sea was initiated by the PLA. By 2023, more than 81% of the South China Sea has come within range of PLA and PLA Navy artillery, not to mention missile systems and troops stationed in multiple points in the captured waterway. It was during Straw’s period in office that the air and sea space of Taiwan began to be encroached, again a process that by now has reached what may be termed a pre-invasion level by the PLA.
Given his cosy relationship with the Sino-Wahabi lobby, it is no surprise that the UK politician has a dystopian view of India, a country that has remained a democracy since it secured independence from the British in 1947. Of course, among the contributions of the Labour Party to global geopolitics was the partition of India on religious lines. It is remarkable that Straw has not yet begun a campaign to ensure in the UK practices such as multiple wives for a male individual, a practice outlawed in major powers such as Egypt or Turkey, despite the latter being a country that has drifted very far from its Kemalist and Sufi roots over the past two decades. The BBC did not want surprises in its effort at ensuring a monochromatically dark picture of a country that it claimed was enmeshed in coils of hatred and conflict, and knew that in Straw, they had found the ideal interviewee. A question arises why there has not been a documentary produced in India about the way in which the British colonial power sought to divide Hindus and Muslims after the 1857 revolt against their excesses. Such a documentary would have served to make people understand the motivation and the context for a production that was masterminded by individuals who appear to harbour a hatred of India for remaining a democracy in which the Muslim community is growing in an atmosphere almost entirely free of violence.
That there have been some excesses in India against innocent people is a given, something that has unfortunately been the case even after Independence 75 years ago, although much less now than in the past. If the BBC wanted to document violence against individuals based on their faith, they would only have had to go to corners of India where the Hindu population was sought to be eliminated, such as in Kashmir during 1990-93. Clearly, only faked rather than real genocides in India draw the attention of the BBC. It is true that as in other parts of the world, religious hatred is still present in bits of India, as it is in many parts of the world, including in the UK. What is a reflection of the partiality of the BBC is that only scenes of violence directed at a section of society by another was shown, that too since Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister. Both Hindus as well as Muslims have been the victims of communal violence. Records show that communal killings have gone down since 2014, but the BBC is silent about excesses in the pre-Modi period, given its intention of seeking to create hatred against the Prime Minister of India in its audiences.
Ignored are facts such as that all welfare schemes of the government led by Modi applies to every citizen, or that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has no application whatsoever to citizens of India who are Muslim. The CAA has been falsely presented as a disenfranchisement of Indian Muslims. In a similar manner, the removal of Article 370 has been portrayed as anti-Muslim because it removed a vestige of the Two-Nation theory that had been present in a part of India. In fact, the Two-Nation theory and its fallout has hurt the Muslim community in the subcontinent the most. If Jack Straw believes that only people of a particular faith resident in the city should be allowed to settle in Blackburn, a policy that would be on the lines of Article 370, he has yet to make such advocacy public. If the BBC regards a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in India as an attack on Muslims, it is a surprise why the channel does not press for legislation in the UK to give similar freedoms in matters of marriage to men of a particular faith in the UK. The fact is that the UCC, something that the British sensibly follow, would be welcomed by an overwhelming majority of India’s Muslims, especially among Muslim women, who are among the most progressive in the world.
Jack Straw is the canary in the coal mine that indicates the hand of the Sino-Wahabi lobby in the BBC documentary. Painting India in the worst of hues has long been an obsession of this lobby, and hence such outpourings as a two-part series that makes no pretence of being anything other than an effort at maligning a country and its elected Head of Government. The good news is that even in the UK, while there is indeed much talk about the BBC, that is less about the documentary than the allegation about the Chairman of the BBC facilitating a loan of almost a million UK pounds to Boris Johnson, who as Prime Minister appointed him to the post. India, as it actually is rather than what the Sino-Wahabi lobby paints the country to be, has been sufficient to ensure that the buzz about the BBC documentary has already died down, much to the consternation of such influences.The BBC’s choice of Jack Straw to put on steroids its vituperation against India in the documentary, “India: The Modi Question”, was not accidental. Straw is a Fellow of the 48 Club, a UK-based group that has never camouflaged its affinity towards the Chinese Communist Party. A scan of the videos available on social media during just the 21st century will reveal the consistent manner in which the sometime Home and later Foreign Secretary of the UK has backed those in the Atlantic Alliance who seek to ignore the expansionary activities of the PRC, especially under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, and focus his ire on countries such as India that are the target of the Sino-Wahabi lobby. Records of Straw’s speeches in gatherings of those in the UK who have long sought to force India to concede to the takeover of Kashmir by Pakistan are plentiful. To explain such a bias away by pointing out that more than a third of the voters in his constituency were Muslims is to be unfair to the members of that faith. Only a small minority of Muslims support the hardline views of those individuals who were known backers of Jack Straw while he was in active politics in the UK. Given the comradely and collaborative relationship between the Chinese and Pakistani diplomatic missions in world capitals, it comes as no surprise that more than two decades ago, it was Foreign Secretary Straw who interceded with the Bush administration in Washington “to give diplomacy a chance”, rather than seek to pressure China to immediately release the sophisticated spy plane. Straw’s diplomacy gave the Communist Chinese enough time to ferret out most of the secrets hidden in the manufacture of the aircraft, thereby initiating the process of producing similar aircraft in the PRC that could be used by the PLA against Japan and the US in particular. That the then UK Prime Minister was almost as big an enthusiast of the “Communist China is a natural partner of the western alliance” was helpful to Straw in his efforts at softening the stand of not just his own government but the US government on China. It was during that period that the takeover through salami slicing of the South China Sea was initiated by the PLA. By 2023, more than 81% of the South China Sea has come within range of PLA and PLA Navy artillery, not to mention missile systems and troops stationed in multiple points in the captured waterway. It was during Straw’s period in office that the air and sea space of Taiwan began to be encroached, again a process that by now has reached what may be termed a pre-invasion level by the PLA.
Given his cosy relationship with the Sino-Wahabi lobby, it is no surprise that the UK politician has a dystopian view of India, a country that has remained a democracy since it secured independence from the British in 1947. Of course, among the contributions of the Labour Party to global geopolitics was the partition of India on religious lines. It is remarkable that Straw has not yet begun a campaign to ensure in the UK practices such as multiple wives for a male individual, a practice outlawed in major powers such as Egypt or Turkey, despite the latter being a country that has drifted very far from its Kemalist and Sufi roots over the past two decades. The BBC did not want surprises in its effort at ensuring a monochromatically dark picture of a country that it claimed was enmeshed in coils of hatred and conflict, and knew that in Straw, they had found the ideal interviewee. A question arises why there has not been a documentary produced in India about the way in which the British colonial power sought to divide Hindus and Muslims after the 1857 revolt against their excesses. Such a documentary would have served to make people understand the motivation and the context for a production that was masterminded by individuals who appear to harbour a hatred of India for remaining a democracy in which the Muslim community is growing in an atmosphere almost entirely free of violence.
That there have been some excesses in India against innocent people is a given, something that has unfortunately been the case even after Independence 75 years ago, although much less now than in the past. If the BBC wanted to document violence against individuals based on their faith, they would only have had to go to corners of India where the Hindu population was sought to be eliminated, such as in Kashmir during 1990-93. Clearly, only faked rather than real genocides in India draw the attention of the BBC. It is true that as in other parts of the world, religious hatred is still present in bits of India, as it is in many parts of the world, including in the UK. What is a reflection of the partiality of the BBC is that only scenes of violence directed at a section of society by another was shown, that too since Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister. Both Hindus as well as Muslims have been the victims of communal violence. Records show that communal killings have gone down since 2014, but the BBC is silent about excesses in the pre-Modi period, given its intention of seeking to create hatred against the Prime Minister of India in its audiences.
Ignored are facts such as that all welfare schemes of the government led by Modi applies to every citizen, or that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has no application whatsoever to citizens of India who are Muslim. The CAA has been falsely presented as a disenfranchisement of Indian Muslims. In a similar manner, the removal of Article 370 has been portrayed as anti-Muslim because it removed a vestige of the Two-Nation theory that had been present in a part of India. In fact, the Two-Nation theory and its fallout has hurt the Muslim community in the subcontinent the most. If Jack Straw believes that only people of a particular faith resident in the city should be allowed to settle in Blackburn, a policy that would be on the lines of Article 370, he has yet to make such advocacy public. If the BBC regards a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in India as an attack on Muslims, it is a surprise why the channel does not press for legislation in the UK to give similar freedoms in matters of marriage to men of a particular faith in the UK. The fact is that the UCC, something that the British sensibly follow, would be welcomed by an overwhelming majority of India’s Muslims, especially among Muslim women, who are among the most progressive in the world.
Jack Straw is the canary in the coal mine that indicates the hand of the Sino-Wahabi lobby in the BBC documentary. Painting India in the worst of hues has long been an obsession of this lobby, and hence such outpourings as a two-part series that makes no pretence of being anything other than an effort at maligning a country and its elected Head of Government. The good news is that even in the UK, while there is indeed much talk about the BBC, that is less about the documentary than the allegation about the Chairman of the BBC facilitating a loan of almost a million UK pounds to Boris Johnson, who as Prime Minister appointed him to the post. India, as it actually is rather than what the Sino-Wahabi lobby paints the country to be, has been sufficient to ensure that the buzz about the BBC documentary has already died down, much to the consternation of such influences.