India: Modi, Women, Ambani

By Anceeta Martis - October 14, 2019

I do not know how many of you used to read my blog before but if you did, you might have come across me saying that I "hate all Indian men" and I'll never marry one of them.

Five years have passed since I last wrote that post and I am here to say... NOTHING HAS CHANGED! (Don't you just love consistency?)

I still find them chauvinistic, ignorant and basically unnecessary. But I am happy to report that from cutting all of them out of my life, I have no new hatred for them. Just a lot of "I told you so". I do not listen to news from India and that has made me more serene. After Modi resurfaced, I have come to the conclusion that people in India deserve each other. (I have also come to the conclusion that democracy is a very, very flawed form of government).

Women are still treated as second class citizens. Exhibit A: the failed Indian Me Too Movement. It just did not work in India because people either kept quiet or were against it. Everybody just looks after their personal interests and never the greater good. This shows how far gender equality has come in India.

I just went on to Times of India's homepage and the first thing you see are two semi nude women.

Nowhere on the website do they talk about cases of women who were raped or domestic abuse. Is this because women are safe in India? No. It's because nobody cares about women in India. Discussing these topics does not give you good PR and that's all our government is after. 

Coming to my next point of how tunnel visioned Indians are. Recently, two of the kids of Mukesh Ambani got married. An eye watering display of wealth was to be seen with world leaders and entertainment icons flocked to join in the debasement of society. If Antilla was tacky and gauche, these weddings took it to a whole new level. 

I wonder why there is a need for this pomp and show. Children of those men richer than Ambani have gotten married and nobody heard a peep. Who is this show for? People are suffering, dying, struggling to feed, clothe and protect their families just outside his house and yet, nobody cared. 

"The cost of the Ambani wedding was estimated to be ₹ 700 crore, or the amount of aid that the UAE government supposedly offered Kerala after a severe flood crippled the state earlier this year." - LiveMint

There's so much sectarianism in India, it's pathetic. People now vote for their leaders based on their religion which is the exact opposite of what a secular state should have. Political leaders use religion to get votes and because religion is a language that both the educated and the illiterate speak. The poor might not understand GDP, FDI and tax but they do understand Hinduism. And fortunately for the government, the rich and educated in India are equally, if not more, religious. (The Ambanis are an example.) The economy is in the dumps, morale of the minorities are at an all time low, and aggression towards the Other is the highest it has ever been. When people used religion as an excuse to fight one another about 150 years ago, Indian historians blamed the British. Whom do we blame now?

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