If you read my whole comment and still want to term a religious riot (one of many thousands in India) a muslim specific genocide I don't think you possess the nuance to reach an agreement with me.

I think Modi should be out and the BJP should be whittled down to only infrastructure interested politicians, because that's the basis on which I vote. However even I know enough about 2002 to know calling it only a Muslim genocide is problematic and dishonest. Have a good day

You are too focused on the semantics. I don't care whether he sold tea or camel piss quite frankly, the point is he doesn't come from the same dynastic background as the Gandhis. They don't even go by "Nehru-Gandhi" to capitalize on the Gandhi name.

> You are just playing semantics at this point. You very well know that this person meant CBI raids and not IT cells.

Maybe putting words in someone's mouth is acceptable in your household but it makes no sense in mine.

If someone says IT cells, I will talk about IT cells. If someone says CBI raids I will talk about CBI raids.

If someone talks about China would you be so dense as to say "you very well know..." and then start talking about Taiwan?

It is only semantics to you because you want to shift goalposts to CBI raids instead of starting a whole new conversation around it which I'd be happy to address.

> Don't worry though, I have listed it out in my reply so that others who do not know about it can educate themselves. 95% of the CBI (central bureau of investigation) has been on the minority opposition during the last years a huge jump from a new even 60% during the previous Congress government time when there was a larger opposition than today.

I will address this later

> There is a strong opposition in India and the BJP has bribed most ministers in many states to switch parties AFTER elections.

This is true but it happens not just with BJP but with other parties. Countless politicians have left Congress to join AAP and NPP, TMC as well because Congress is just this ineffective. Multiple billion dollar scams will do this to you

> The opposition leader even went on a walk from the south to the north of the country and many prominent personalities joined at different stages: but this does not really get a lot of media attention because most of the news channels are bought by the ruling party, Modis BJP.

Actually it gets tons of coverage. Here are the biggest newspapers in the country talking about it.

Hindustan Times

The Print

Indian Express

The Hindu

I could go on but I have a hunch you will claim these are all biased to Modi somehow, either bought by BJP, Adani etc.

The truth is, no one cares about a stupid walk from A to B. They care about how injustices done to them will be resolved, whether economic, religious and creed/caste based. Rahul Gandhi is considered by many to be inept and insanely corrupt. Even if Modi and his ilk can't solve people's issues, they still see it as a better option than Rahul Gandhi.

There is a reason he is referred to as "Pappu" insultingly and also why he was made fun of for his antics during this campaign.

> Then there is the opposition winning many state elections, but there is a long list of states where the BJP bought over ministers and thus switched the government to their party since they now have the majority. For those ministers that cannot be bribed, Modis BJP threatens them like this: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/join-bjp-or-else-cms-bulldozer-is-ready-mp-minister-warns-congress-members/article66412235.ece

> Hitting back, Guna district Congress chief Harishankar Vijaywargiya said the Minister's remarks have sullied the image of the BJP. "He should exercise restraint in his language. The people of Raghogarh will give a befitting reply to him on January 20 in the polls," Mr. Vijaywargiya said.

And people will vote accordingly to who provides them the best benefit. I think this was out of line for the BJP to say and they need to leash these people, so we can agree there.

> These threats are mainly to those who did not already buckle from the pressure of investigations into them. The central bureau of investigations (CBI) that is now controlled by the ruling party even though it is meant to be independent (well known fact) targets the opposition. This is very obvious because 95% of the investigations being conducted are on the opposition: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/ed-cbi-working-behalf-of-bjp-alleges-congress-leader-chidambaram-2294685-2022-11-08 (for a small opposition to have 95% of the cases it is once again quite obvious that the CBI is in the hands of the ruling party when around 50% of the sitting MLAs in the BJP government have at some point in their lives had criminal charges against them, but this is a feature in India at the moment and is a thing across party lines)

So you are relying on the claims of a literal opposition member and some of your own numbers to claim CBI is in the hands of the BJP? Listen buddy nothing in India is clean of political influence but if the CBI is in the hands of the BJP why are these BJP ministers also being investigated by the CBI?

I even picked a typically anti-Modi source:

https://www.thequint.com/news/politics/cbi-ed-investigation-bjp-leaders-under-agencies-scanner

If I was as one sided as you, I would claim that the CBI is investigating more Congressis than BJP ministers because Congress has a much more corrupt history than the BJP (this part is undeniably true, denying this is just stupid) so the CBI is now investigating these scams gone uninvestigated. But you don't see me making a claim like that. Because the truth is I am much more balanced than you and you appear to simply shill pro-Congress material for all your talk of IT cells and CBI raids.

> While investigations into the opposition take place people like who are a perfect representation of Modis India publicly ask Hindus to keep their knives sharp to go against the muslims and have no investigations or cases lodged and walk free on the streets of India https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/bjp-mp-pragya-thakur-calls-hindus-keep-knives-sharp-counter-love-jihad-171321

Pragya Thakur is widely regarded as having terrorist tendancies by many people including the BJP electorate. It is still shameful she has not been let go by the BJP for these remarks though.

> And you have people like this who want to make India like Iran with a religious board keeping check on the population: https://indianexpress.com/article/entertainment/bollywood/dharma-censor-board-introduced-to-check-on-anti-religious-content-8393616/

What does this have to do with government? Last I checked this guy has no significant political power. And why only mention the Hindu aspect of it? When were you going to mention the Muslim aspect too? As I recall, both Hindu and Muslim extremists protested movies like Pathaan.

This is the problem with people like you and you are ironically why the BJP wins. You will only talk about one side of the problem, and the BJP will simply call you unbalanced (which is true) and thus win over the centrists. And then boom, they are now able to follow through with crazier policies they couldn't have proposed without majority support.

> They (BJP, Modis party) continue to do well in elections in many states not because they think Modi was innocent in 2002 but on the contrary because they know he is not and want the same to happen across the country.

This is objectively false and like I said earlier, you are part of the problem by being this one sided. It is seriously toxic.

When were you going to mention that this riot broke out very early into his term?

When were you going to mention his requests to neighboring states for police help getting rejected?

When were you going to mention that many innocent Hindus also died in this conflict? Especially the women and children in the Godhra train burnings which started all of this?

When were you going to mention Modi was not found guilty by the highest court in the country while the opposition part Congress was in power?

I was expecting a much more nuanced argument from you but this is seriously just unhinged. Modi is no saint but jesus you are no better than Bhakts with how pro-Congress and anti-Modi you are.

> There is a strong anti Muslim or antiminority vibe in India. Whatsapp groups of many families of friends, work whatsapp groups (which includes people of all religions) and more are filled with fake anti-muslim anti-minority news. It does not happen in every city, but it happens a lot. If there is a crime commited in India if it is a muslim that did it they make sure it is known that it was a muslim otherwise a man or a women did xxx instead of saying a Hindu man or Hindu woman.

There is no denying an anti-Muslim rise in rhetoric. Some of it used to be valid (wanting uniform civil code for all regardless of religion, religion specific subsidies etc) but now it has gotten much worse and unreasonable.

The issue is that Modi's government (as I linked you Shekhar Gupta's video) has actually provided for many of their voters, so now it is no longer simply just Hindu vs Muslim but also now infrastructure and pro-business policies. Again, to deny this is just stupid because Shekhar Gupta among many journalists is very anti-Modi and he is the one reporting on how Modi's government has made progress in these fields.

It must be nice living in a one dimensional world like yours. Let me know when you develop color technology as right now you live in black and white

What is your point? They haven't suddenly become pro-Modi since Adani bought them.

More importantly if you think Adani cares about Modi beyond his business-friendliness you are delusional. He will use Modi and go find some other candidate when Modi's days are over, it has nothing to do with right or left wing politics, just money.

> This whole about useless opposition is a myth. He and the BJP have systematically destroyed independent media and that has ensured that we will not even know if the opposition is up to any good…

I literally cited 2 clips of one of the most prolific anti-Modi journalists

Not to mention NDTV, the wire, etc are all alive and well. I would've believed your media censorship argument in 2014 but it has been 8+ years and Modi loses state elections regularly

> No opposition wants to stand up because if you do you will have a million cases filed against you and of course incur the wrath of the IT cell

This is straight up just a lie. Especially because every party has an IT cell

At the risk of downvotes I will provide an opposing stance. I shouldn't need to say this but I will in case rabid anti-Modi people accuse me of being a bhakt. I am not a Modi voter but I do have my head out the clouds unlike some people.

Modi's government doesn't stay in power magically. The driving factors are:

1. A useless opposition, an entire political party run by a corrupt family versus a less corrupt tea seller. There is quite clearly a difference here in terms of who people would vote for and it's been bloody obvious since 2014. Especially for Mumbai, Shiv Sena is even more fascist than BJP could dream to be, and NCP is even more corrupt than both combined. They both want to stay in power hence the Shiv Sena NCP alliance last term even though they are political opposites and have conflicts.

2. Development, because despite what you want to believe the Hindu supremacy myth gets old pretty quickly. A lot of people who voted Modi aren't rabid enough to believe in that, and many of those who are have expected less and less from it, especially with Nupur Sharma controversies and how the government decided to go on an apologia tour in the gulf states.

So this means a lot of people who voted for Modi did so again for his 2nd term in 2019 because he delivers on many of his federal promises. When journalists traditionally anti-Modi admit there are some positives to his leadership, that is when you know the Modi situation is a lot more complex than what the original comment and BBC are willing to admit.

https://youtu.be/hwnnn1M-T5U

https://youtu.be/o5P_sYXBEDM

3. the 2002 Gujarat riots are a complex series of issues and I don't believe the BBC provides a nuanced view on it. There is an excellent comment already made by us over at r/indianmoderate that I will edit in here if you care about the nuance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianModerate/comments/10g4j5i/-/j50is1k

So my point is, someone like Modi doesn't stay in power for so long magically. There are many factors responsible for this. Calling a discussion of this the "modi brigade" or "bjp it cell" is just spineless because you just fuel their politics instead of holding a healthy discussion and convincing them why your politician of choice is better.