[iambenm]

India is pretty serious about being able to monitor all communications after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008. The terrorists used satellite phones to coordinate the attack. As a result, they banned most satellite communication devices.

I learned about this earlier this year because I had a connecting flight through India on the way to go trekking in the Himalayas. I had planned to take a Garmin inReach with me, but luckily a day or two before my flight out I came across horror stories of people getting pulled out of security and taken to JAIL in India for having these things in their checked bags when TRANSITING India. Security there when transiting from Switzerland to Nepal was no joke - every single electronic item including anything with wires had to come out of bags including electric toothbrush.

In light of that, banning point to point communication seems on brand for India. Note that Apple gets a pass for its satellite capable phones by geofencing India and disabling the feature.

[logicchains]

The Indian government is pretty serious about cracking down violently on peaceful protesters: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...

[bryanrasmussen]

One of the formative narratives of Indian independence is that peaceful protest works in getting rid of bad governments.

on edit: changed myths to narratives to avoid confusion

[paxys]

It’s funny because the Indian independence movement was a failure. Indians protested non-violently and sometimes violently for over a hundred years, and British control (first through the East India company and then directly by the crown) kept increasing with every passing year, eventually encompassing the entire subcontinent.

India eventually gained independence because colonialism in general was not politically and economically viable in a post WW2 world, and so Britain just got up and left (as they did from dozens of other colonies in the post war years).

Had the independence movement not existed and Gandhi himself not existed the end result would have been exactly the same.

[anon291]

People greatly misunderstand the Indian independence movement. The early Indian activists merely wanted India to have a devolved legislature like present-day Scotland and Wales, or like Canada and Australia used to have. It was relatively late that anyone really wanted independence. I think many of them still wanted to be a constituent state of the UK.

People always forget that Gandhi's first actions as a 'nationalist' were attempting to raise an army to fight on behalf of Britain. The idea that the Indian nationalists wanted to be a new nation from the get go is a modern day invention.

[paxys]

Call it freedom or independence or autonomy or dominion or whatever else you want, it doesn’t change the underlying point. Indians wanted it, and Britain denied it. In fact they denied it quite emphatically and violently. Eventually the outcome was decided by geopolitical realities, not a bunch of people shouting slogans.

[anon291]

Britain did not deny it and was actively working towards allowing self-rule in India the entire time. You seem to be saying that Britain denied India independence while at the same time saying Britain allowed an independent India. The two views are fundamentally at odds.

[bryanrasmussen]

arguably the American colonies wanted the same thing. What is it with these colonizers that they don't want that!?

[anon291]

It is simply not true to the same degree. The American colonies believed the King of England had violated their rights as Englishmen, Indian independence activists simply wanted Indians to have the same rights as other citizens of the UK and subjects of the British crown. The Indian independence movement started as a mirror of the Irish self-rule movement.

[bryanrasmussen]

I think the political non-viability was at least partly due to the combination of non-violence and the potential threat of violence, as I am of the opinion that the first never works without a threat of the second.

[shevy-java]

So far the Modi clique is still in power though.

[2Gkashmiri]

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/anantnag-terror-atta...

BBC says 3000 but yeah.

https://www.outlookindia.com/national/2-terrorists-family-ho...

So the houses of 2 accused were razed because.....

[adityaathalye]

The terrorists were only able to do so because mass-media news was live broadcasting everything on the air, and the terrorists holed up with hostages in the hotel were able to follow the blow-by-blow live.

(edit: i.e. SatCom alone can't do much, if there is no verifiable on-ground intel. And in 2008, our mass-media supplied it in liberal quantities, through multiple camera angles and replays and blow-by-blow commentaries.)

cf. Westpoint's Urban Warfare Project Case Study #16: Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-project-case-study-1...

> Maintaining communications with their handlers in Pakistan was critical for several reasons. First, the handlers were monitoring live Indian news broadcasts and social media feeds, so they could provide real-time instructions throughout the operation and thus afford the attackers the ability to react to developments outside their targets.

> The communication also provided the attackers psychological support.

> The handlers were able to encourage the young, inexperienced militants to maintain their resolve and continue killing civilians and security forces by reinforcing their religious and financial motivations.

> During the operation, the handlers actively coached some of the attackers to continue shooting civilians and to hold positions against Indian security force responders.

[marcta]

A similar thing happened in the Falkland's War: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/bbcs-treason-battle...

[adityaathalye]

That's wild. TIL; thanks for sharing. That appears to be an epic failure of all kinds of intelligence on both sides of the war.

And, it's a miracle the gaffe was not explained away as a "strategic master stroke" psyop engineered by the British to fool the other side and lull them into complacency.

> Side 1: Henlo world, look our people are here, about to surprise-attack Side 2, at this surprise location, at this time.

> Side 2: Lol. Not falling for that.

> Narrator: This is all totally absurd, and totally real of course.

> Side 1: Goes ahead with globally broadcasted secret plan anyway.

> Side 2: FML.

> Side 1: After the dust settles. "Psych! Master-Stroke!".

Also, pray tell why is everything (supposedly) "done" by those in positions of power framed as "strategic master stroke"s these days? I suppose only hyperbole makes sense, in a zeitgeist where "leadership" behaviour is jerk, knee-jerk, reactionary-by-default... epileptic.

[thewhitetulip]

I was in school back then, lived in a town near Mumbai and watched it on TV

The media was so stupid that it literally showed commando positions. Literal position second by second.

The govt then later banned this information, staggering it to one hour after the fact

[adityaathalye]

You would have also observed how every single politician wanting to become PM had showed up around the Taj while the act was in progress to leech off the media feeding frenzy.

To broadcast that they are there to "stand in person with the heroes", literally making it all about themselves. How they showed up. But unfortunately they could only come the day after, because the then home minister beseeched them to not come on site. But now they are there, surrounded by their Z-plus security, in an ongoing urban conflict zone.

What kind of a state leader shows up in another state, compounding the security nightmare with their own entourage at the site of an ongoing security debacle and literal national emergency,with people being murdered as they spoke?

[m463]

Japan has no trash cans. (reaction to the japanese subway attacks)

Returning to the US from japan you notice. Japanese bathrooms don't have trash cans, so no paper towels. In the US, the bathrooms have trash cans overflowing with paper towel waste and it is quite a difference.

[bhelkey]

One thing I noticed is that I tended to accumulate a lot of trash in Japan. Connivence stores were plentiful and the food was tasty, but it was all wrapped in plastic.

Where does all the trash go? More often than not, I ended up carrying trash in a backpack to throw away at my hotel.

[graton]

I would eat the food at the store and then throw the trash away in the store's trash cans.

For things I didn't eat at the store I carried a small plastic bag to store my trash and when I got to my lodging I would throw it away. Also once you go inside the gates of a subway/train station there often seemed to be trash cans available.

[wlonkly]

It's been a while since I visited Japan, but one thing I remember is that people tend to not "walk and eat" there. So you buy your konbini sandwich and sit on the benches in front of the konbini to eat it and throw the packaging out there, or bring it home with you.

[m463]

I did that at first, and ended up carrying around coffee cups and other nonsense.

Gradually I learned to deposit things where I bought them, sometimes politely asking the people behind the counter who would take it from me.

[mef]

Working as intended

[coolandsmartrr]

To add some context, the removal of trash cans accelerated prior to the hosting of the Tokyo Olympics. The municipal government was concerned about trash possibly overflowing from the can, thereby ruining the appearance of the streets.

Meanwhile, Japanese subway stations still have trash cans, which are only blocked when foreign dignitaries visit the country. It doesn't seem authorities are reacting to the subway attacks from 30 years ago.

[jeremyjh]

I would never do this as a visitor to another country - but if this happened where I lived I would advocate mass littering until it was repealed. Just drop the trash where the canvases to be. If you could get even a single percent population doing this in a large city it would snowball and it would be over in 30 days tops.

[fc417fc802]

I would happily do that ~anywhere. The social contract is that I carry my trash around with me on the basis that there will be a can somewhere nearby.

In a nearby municipality there is a particular spot that sees a lot of dog traffic yet has no can. Some civilly disobedient good samaritan keeps leaving an empty bucket and the city periodically gets around to removing it long after it fills up. Seems to work well enough despite being entirely illegal.

[bitmasher9]

The social contract changes when you change location. It’s unreasonable to be accepted as a guest in country and not expect to have to modify your behavior to accommodate local norms.

[fc417fc802]

I agree with you in principle but given this specific example I'm failing to come up with any counter examples. Community provided trash cans seem to go hand in hand with a cultural aversion to littering and both seem to be a direct consequence of population density rather than anything to do with a particular culture.

[KennyBlanken]

Meanwhile Boston spent millions on "bomb proof" trashcans that turned out to just be regular trashcans with an absurd mark-up.

Security Theater keeps on keepin' on.

[qingcharles]

Britain had no rubbish bins on train stations for a long time due to similar issues (IRA attacks).

[gib444]

They're still quite rare and only the type with a clear bag hanging on a metal ring in the main areas.

The busiest stations have wandering staff picking up rubbish off seats and the floor etc.

Many of us Brits in station coffee shops still do the performance of looking for a bin because we're too embarrassed and too well-mannered to leave it anywhere else. It's endearing and funny at the same time (though of course it's also often due to forgetting there are no bins!)

[hyperbolablabla]

Hmm, Osaka has plenty of trash cans... Did you mean Tokyo?

[m463]

hmm.. I didn't compare. but yes for certain tokyo.

[ajsnigrutin]

That just means that terrorism works.

What's next? A bomb under a bench? No more benches!

[m463]

You will just have to buy your bench from a coffee shop after you get through airport security.

[inigyou]

They are self-DoSing. Whatever you want to get banned, just make sure you some terrorists use it, and it will get banned. Want to ban, say, hijabs, or long pants? Have some terrorists wear them to cover their identities.

[neonstatic]

> I had a connecting flight through India

I make additional effort to never experience that again. Connecting flight through Mumbai. An absolutely awful experience.

[ranger_danger]

So what happens if you have a flight that gets diverted to India and they search your bags and find a satellite phone?

[iamnothere]

Believe it or not, straight to jail.

[hdgvhicv]

Do you have a reputable link?

[bad_username]

There you go : https://youtu.be/eiyfwZVAzGw

[mothballed]

I'm aware of stories of people who've had their flights unexpectedly grounded in New York (, New York) so they just abandoned their checked pistol and refused to collect it. I'd imagine something similar. If you never take possession, it becomes harder to charge and convict someone for possession.

[ranger_danger]

But wouldn't they know whose bag it was anyway? And there's cameras everywhere so it wouldn't help if you e.g. removed the bag tags or discarded the contents somewhere else in the airport.

[inigyou]

Same thing that happens whenever your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms, or Indonesia and you have legal weed, or to Australia and you have a pineapple.

Which is that it depends on the mood of the person in charge. Either you get to keep it, or it's confiscated and destroyed, or you go to jail, or you go to a firing squad.

We can guess which is more likely in each country. Indonesia almost always executes people found with drugs. Australia would probably just destroy your pineapple. India, being authoritarian but not completely insane, my guess is they'd take it and fine you.

[ranger_danger]

That sounds absolutely terrifying and makes me not want to travel anywhere ever again.

[inigyou]

Welcome to the world. If someone wants to shoot you, they can just do that. If that someone is a government, they won't suffer any consequences. There have been flights deliberately diverted by the country they were traveling over because they didn't like one of the people onboard, and that person was arrested by that country upon landing. I think the USA does this most frequently but it's also happened in CIS countries and Asian countries.

[manytimesaway]

>your flight gets diverted to South Korea and you have condoms

..what? Condoms are not outlawed there, are they?

[flerchin]

AFAICT South Korea does not outlaw condoms. Grandparent may be thinking of North Korea. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

[inigyou]

I was probably thinking of Romania a century ago. But you can imagine for every normal thing there is probably a country where it is banned. And South Korea is a country where some things are banned that you wouldn't expect.

[mdgld]

Such as?

[ondra]

No, it seems that they are banned in North Korea.

[izacus]

The poster you're answering to just described what happens.

[Barbing]

Not for diversions necessarily. Diversion versus expected connection should at least help one’s lawyers… hopefully.

[izacus]

When you're standing at the customs office entering a country, your lawyers are far far FAR away and the people talking to you won't care about them even a little bit.

Whatever will happen with you lawyering and fighting the border officers, will happen after you've been detained.

[mdgld]

If you’re flying private customs is a joke. And/or your fixer just calls the local governor/embassy/etc.

[delecti]

Lawyers can get you out of jail, but you need to be pretty rich for your lawyers to prevent going to jail in the first place.

[Barbing]

Beat rap not ride right!

[anon291]

I disagree with the Modi and Hindutva project almost entirely, not only politically, but on a personal level coming from a minority community (Christian) in India. However, India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way. India rarely agresses Pakistan and Pakistani terror groups do operate with seeming impunity in India (Pakistan doesn't even maintain a 'no-first-use' nuclear option, and is currently run by a military dictatorship... they're f'ing nuts). While all these actions are obviously crazy and in my opinion overbearing, people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is, especially of the South Asian variety. I'm not sure many Americans would react differently to the extremism of South Asian Islam to be honest.

To put it in perspective, many Indians (of all religions) died and fought in a bloody war to secure Bangladesh's (then East Pakistan's) freedom from what was a genocidal regime in West Pakistan. Decades later, the typical Bangladeshi muslim still hates Indians because any non-muslim Indian they consider 'Hindu', thus polytheist, and thus worthy of death. One thousand five hundred Indian soldiers died only for their neighbor to hate them in return for the 'crime' of not being born part of their religion. While Hindu nationalists are fucking insane, I honestly think many have been driven to it by the insanity of South Asian Islam.

Meanwhile, America has a relatively peaceful and cooperative neighbor (Mexico), which only has a crime problem on the border, and the average American seems ready to give up almost every civic right to deal with that. There are barely any terror attacks of note coming from these Mexican gangs, and congress has already ceded many constitutional rights (such as the right against unreasonable search and seizure) near the border zones. Anyway, imagine Mexicans hated everyone in America for the crime of being 'gringos' (even the non-whites) and that's basically what India has with all their neighbors.

If people in the west want India to liberalize, which we really should want to do, Western nations need to work on dismantling Pakistan and limiting Islamic extremism in the region.

[epestr]

Largely uncited and generalised exposition of Bangladeshi's misses other factors which could be involved in their decision towards distrust of India.

India's initial decisions need not be merely humanitarian but also political.

https://scroll.in/article/1081784/why-are-bangladeshis-turni.... This article explains that it's due to an increasingly unequal interactions as sowing distrust.

Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.

[anon291]

> Largely uncited and generalised exposition of Bangladeshi's misses other factors which could be involved in their decision towards distrust of India.

It's reasonable to distrust a neighboring country with distinct interest, even if they went to war for you, sure. You don't owe them anything.

Similarly, it's actually also normal for India to have concerns about illegal migration, similar to Europe, America, Australia, and Canada.

But the propaganda coming out of Bangladesh is purely religious in form, and it's pretty clear that that is the main reason why they dislike India. Pakistan literally slaughtered them and they're all bhai-bhai with them now.

The article cites the CAA as a reason for Bangladeshi distrust, except the data show that India is acting as a humanitarian in this disaster. Non-muslims are physically persecuted in both Bangladesh and Pakistan. Pakistan particularly is an apartheid state where non-Muslims have fewer political rights. Bangladesh is slightly better but violence against non-Muslims is rampant. People like to paint India as having high rates of religious violence, which is true, compared to America, but not true compared to Pakistan or Bangladesh. Pakistan regularly executes Christians for blasphemy. India doesn't. Non-Muslim refugees should qualify for extra protection from secular nations given the on-the-ground realities of South Asia. Literally the cited reason for the creation of Pakistan is that South Asian muslims constitute a distinct nation from every other religion in the subcontinent. Neither the Jews nor the Parsis nor the Christians ever made such an argument.

Well regardless, countries cannot get angry over other countries making immigration policy (and yes, this also applies to Indian migrants to America, blah blah blah)

> Explaining the Hindutva moment as a genuine counter reaction to anti-Hindu sentiment rather than a politically motivated movement seems to be misguided, even if not actively propogating the propaganda.

If you read about the history of Savarkar, then I think this is exactly what you see. He was kind of meh about everything until he witnessed anti-Hindu extremism from Muslims, and then went off his rocker. Before that, he was a relatively benign nationalist and humanitarian. Well anyway, more to the point of it really being just the Muslims, Savarkar was defended by an Indian Christian barrister.

Are you an American or South Asian, out of curiosity? I feel like Americans don't really have the ability translate South Asian politics. Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.

[hamper653]

> a relatively benign nationalist

Are you a European, out of curiosity? I feel like South Asians don’t really have the ability to translate European history. Not that I’m some expert, but we can report good on-the-ground experiences about "relatively benign nationalism" and where it leads.

[anon291]

Indian christian. European history and South Asian history are really quite different and don't map at all

[mdgld]

> Neither the Jews nor the Parsis nor the Christians ever made such an argument.

The argument that Jews need their own state specifically in the area between Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria is integral to Israel’s politics and history.

[anon291]

This has nothing to do with India. This is an argument the British and some European states made. India iirc recognizes both Palestine and Israel and most Indians are skeptical of Zionism, including the Christians. Once again American politics don't map cleanly here.

[anon291]

Since some people misunderstood what I am saying: when I saw 'the jews' I am referring to Indian Jews who were mostly indifferent to the whole Zionism movement. Of course many did exercise the right to return, but mostly for economic reasons during Indias license raj. For the most part, Jews lived happily in India without any issues.

[epestr]

You are collapsing different propositions into one:

There is anti-Hindu persecution in Bangladesh and Pakistan. Therefore Bangladeshi distrust of India is mainly religious. Therefore Hindutva is essentially a defensive reaction rather than a political movement.

I accept the first proposition. The others do not follow from it.

Bangladesh has entirely intelligible state-to-state grievances with India, unresolved Teesta water sharing, killings at the border, Indian political rhetoric portraying Bangladeshis as demographic threats, economic asymmetry and India’s perceived support for Sheikh Hasina and none of that makes Islamist propaganda imaginary. It means your claim that religion is the main explanation requires evidence rather than assertion. AP, among others, identifies both Teesta and lethal border enforcement as serious bilateral disputes [0].

India’s enormous contribution in 1971 also does not place Bangladesh under permanent political obligation. Bangladeshis fought the liberation war and India provided strategic assistance. Countries can remain grateful for historical aid while opposing a neighbour’s present policies. And Bangladesh has hardly forgotten Pakistan’s crimes: in 2025 it was still formally demanding an apology and financial settlement from Pakistan over 1971 [1]. That is rather different from your “bhai-bhai now” potrayal.

Similarly, describing the CAA as humanitarian does not answer the objection. A true persecution-based refugee law would ask whether an applicant was persecuted. The CAA instead adds to the broader co-relation over actual criteria they need to look for and preselects six religion [2], excluding groups such as persecuted Ahmadis and non-theists. Making religion the statutory filter is the part being criticised.

The portrayal of Savarkar as a benign humanitarian who simply snapped in response to Muslim extremism is not rationalising the fact after the incident. His 1923 Hindutva formulation made India’s status as both fatherland and holy land a criterion of national belonging, thereby excluding Muslims and Christians from the Hindu nation. That is an articulated political ideology, and not a reflex to witnessing extremism.

> "A HINDU means a person who regards this land of BHARATVARSHA, from the Indus to the Seas as his Father-Land as well as his Holy-Land that is the cradle land of his religion."

> Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and other parts of India as well as the Christians in South India observe our caste rules to such an extent as to marry generally within the pale of their castes alone; yet, it is clear that though their original Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by an alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually understood, because, we Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common.

From: https://archive.org/stream/essentials-of-hindutva-veer-savar...

I'm not sure how Christians persecuted Sarvakar to cause him to not consider them worthy of belonging here. Although their rhetoric has indeed not been anti-Christian later given we are a minority.

> Not that I'm some expert, but I can report personal on-the-ground experiences.

Your claim that Jews “never made such an argument” makes the selectiveness more apparent. Zionism was organised as a Jewish political movement advocating a Jewish homeland and eventually a Jewish state in Palestine [3]. This does not make Zionism, Hindutva and the Muslim League identical movements, but it disproves the universal claim made. Were you to narrow it after the correction to “Jews specifically within India”, that would move the goalposts. Different minorities, occupying different demographic and political positions, unsurprisingly did not all develop identical political movements. Their differing outcomes do not prove that Muslim political mobilisation was uniquely theological while every other form of nationalism was historically intelligible. Hindu nationalism is granted an historical defence that it's adherents were provoked and driven towards it by Muslim extremism. Bangladeshi and Muslim politics, meanwhile, are stripped of political context and reduced to religion. If historical insecurity and persecution are relevant when explaining Hindutva, then border killings, water disputes, political interference and support for an authoritarian government are also relevant when explaining Bangladeshi distrust. You cannot treat context as explanatory when it excuses your side and as irrelevant when it complicates your account of the other.

Likewise, saying that Americans cannot understand Islamist extremism is rhetorical but not grounded. The United States was the target of the September 11 attacks, and the 9/11 Commission documented al-Qaeda’s development, declaration of war against the United States and execution of those attacks [4]. That does not make every American an expert on Islamism, but that is exactly the point: neither nationality nor proximity automatically establishes expertise. Asking where someone comes from rather than answering their evidence is a genetic fallacy, evaluating a claim through its origin instead of its reasoning. The special pleading lies in treating your own South Asian identity as evidence while treating somebody else’s identity as grounds for disqualification.

So asking whether someone is American, South Asian or Indian Christian does not resolve anything. A person outside India can misunderstand India, and a person within India can be misinformed about it. The relevant question is still whether the account is supported by evidence. Personal experience may provide useful evidence, but it cannot substitute for demonstrating causation. “I have been there” is not evidence that every Bangladeshi grievance is secretly religious.

Your appeal to on-the-ground experience is also less helpful than you suggest. The student protests in India provide a fairly direct example. Indian television did not report the same events from a same point, a review found that Republic, News18, ABP and DD News largely changed the protesters’ actual demands with narratives about conspiracies, Pakistan, Nepal and national security, while police violence against protesters nearly disappeared from their coverage [5] while AP seemed to have a much coverage of the police violence, and the HRW [6], [7].

[0]: https://apnews.com/article/india-bangladesh-energy-developme... [1]: https://apnews.com/article/bangladesh-pakistan-relations-has... [2]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2019/12/press-... [3]: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/postwar-re... [4]: https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/ [5]: https://www.newslaundry.com/2026/07/21/nepal-reference-pak-l... [6]: https://apnews.com/article/india-cockroach-protests-memes-sa... [7]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-us...

[anon291]

The UN declaration is retarded because Indian law is not and has never been neutral to religion. If you believe it should be, then you are on the side of the BJP. This is why such things cannot be reduced so simply to American biased left right ideals.

South Asian Muslims often want it both ways. When India got rid of triple talaaq divorce, south Asian Muslims at my American college demanded a protest to criticize Indias supposed religious discrimination. Meanwhile, you act as if Bangladesh has not given India and Indians reasons to dislike it

This is the problem with discourse about India. The expectation is always that India needs to change and it's neighbor's behavior, regardless of how unhinged, is just seen as a simple matter of unchangeable fact.

> Your claim that Jews “never made such an argument” makes the selectiveness more apparen

You took no time to read or understand what I said and instead assumed I was talking about European Jews. I am not

I am talking about Indian Jews. In that sentence about neither Christians nor Jews nor parsis not sikhs nor jains claiming to be separate nations, I was referring to Indian christians, Indian Jews, Indian parsis, Indian sikhs and Indian jains.

None of these religious groups claimed they were not part of the cultural nation of India. No one made arguments like Jinnah who claimed that Indian Muslims and everyone else (who he called Hindus.. he called all non Muslims Hindus) constituted two distinct nations.

Not everything is about Europeans and European Jews. India has its own Jews. While some were sympathetic to Zionism, most were integrated into Indian society writ large and many participated in the independence movement for India.

> saying that Americans cannot understand Islamist extremism

These sorts of things (terror attacks) are of course awful, but in India it's a different story. Firstly there's just more, and more fooled plots. But more than that, it's the aggressive nature of the religion. It's the loud calls to prayer, the public street takeovers, the slaughter of animals in the streets full of blood, etc (much of which is banned in Muslim countries) that annoy the hell out of people.

Up until recently Muslims could claim any piece of private land and then privately judge whether such a claim had legal merit. Landowners were left without any possibility of appeal. Imagine such a thing in america, lol.

American communities that have seen large influxes of Muslims smaller than the population of Muslims in India by a lot have lodged similar complaints. I mean, when the government tries to stop the streets from being filled with lambs blood, Indian Muslims complain that it's discrimination. Americans would quickly become radicalized if that happened in an American city.

Europe is a great example. The Muslim population of Europe is miniscule but Europeans are even more vitriolic against them than Indians. And even European liberal parties have seen the issues. Of course it's only when India takes actions against this that claims of islamophobia arise. When macron bans the burqa, people default to it being for cultural preservation and safety.

[epestr]

PART 2:

> When Macron bans the burqa, people default to it being for cultural preservation and safety.

Macron did not introduce France’s public face-covering ban because the law was enacted in October 2010 [8]. Macron became president in 2017 [9]. It is formally a general prohibition on concealing the face in public, rather than a law that names only Muslim clothing, and the same legislation separately punishes forcing someone to conceal her face [8]. There can obviously be secular grounds for restricting face coverings in particular situations. Identity checks, examinations, courtrooms, secure buildings and circumstances in which someone is being coerced are all reasonable subjects for regulation. If a woman is being forced to wear a burqa or niqab, then punishing the coercer is entirely defensible.

But that does not make every general prohibition unquestionably secular or liberal. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the French law [10], while the UN Human Rights Committee later found that France violated the religious freedom of two women whom it fined for wearing the niqab [11]. The Netherlands has a partial prohibition applying to public transport and government, healthcare and educational premises rather than an unrestricted ban in every public place [12].

European states therefore do not have one obvious consensus under which all burqa restrictions are merely neutral safety measures. Different countries regulate them differently, and major human-rights institutions have disagreed about the limits. You can defend a restriction on secular grounds, especially where identification or coercion is involved, without pretending that every restriction proves Europe has correctly diagnosed the nature of Islam.

> Europe is a great example. The Muslim population of Europe is miniscule but Europeans are even more vitriolic against them than Indians.

The fact that Europeans complain about Muslims does not prove every complaint is true, much less that the cause must be the "aggressive nature" of Islam. That is circular, Muslims are supposedly aggressive because people dislike them, and people’s dislike is then justified because Muslims are supposedly aggressive. Hostility towards a group cannot itself be used as proof that the group deserves hostility. Europe also involves a very different political question. A large part of its debate concerns recent migration, asylum and integration. Indian Muslims are not recently arrived foreigners asking a host population to tolerate them. They are citizens from communities that have lived in the subcontinent for centuries. Millions remained in India after Partition and had to define their citizenship and belonging within the Indian republic [14].

Immigration policy concerns who may enter and settle in a country. Constitutional equality concerns how a country treats citizens who already belong to it. Conflating the two rhetorically turns Indian Muslims into permanent immigrants whose rights depend on whether the majority presently finds their behaviour agreeable.

> When the government tries to stop the streets from being filled with lambs blood, Indian Muslims complain that it’s discrimination.

Slaughtering animals in public streets can be restricted on grounds of sanitation, or obstruction of public space. India’s prevention of cruelty to animals rules state that, within municipal areas, animals generally may not be slaughtered except in recognised or licensed slaughterhouses and set requirements involving veterinary examination, drainage and the collection of blood [15]. Apply those rules. I have no objection to that. But apply them as rules governing slaughter, sanitation and public space, not as evidence that one religion has an inherently aggressive nature.

United States federal law expressly recognises slaughter performed according to Jewish or other religious ritual requirements as a legally humane method [16]. European Union law permits a religious rites exception from prior stunning requirements when the slaughter occurs in a slaughterhouse [17]. The British government publishes instructions for legally conducting halal and kosher slaughter without prior stunning [18].

And is animal sacrifice uniquely Muslim. Goats are sacrificed daily to Kali at Kalighat, and the Indian legal dispute there has included whether the practice should be prohibited, regulated or concealed from public view [19]. I am not arguing that Hinduism is therefore an aggressive religion, that inference would be as irrelevant as the one you are making about Islam. It shows that slaughter can exist within more than one religious tradition and can be regulated through neutral public health law, and maybe animal welfare. Practices change when institutions, and culture change and if public slaughter creates a health problem, regulate public slaughter. There is no need to transform a solvable civic problem into a theory about the unchangable nature of millions.

The same applies to loudspeakers and the occupation of roads. Impose neutral limits on noise, hours, sanitation and obstruction, and apply them to mosques, temples, churches, political rallies, wedding processions and every other group. Article 25 itself subjects religious practice to public order, morality and health and allows the regulation of secular activity associated with religion [1]. What is not neutral is treating a Muslim violation as evidence about Islam’s aggressive essence while treating similar majority practices as ordinary Indian culture. India has no shortage of temple loudspeakers, processions, road occupations, public animal sacrifice or politically protected religious gatherings.

This is the same special pleading that existed in your previous response. Hindutva is granted history, fear, political incentives, trauma and provocation. Muslim conduct is reduced to “the aggressive nature of the religion”. Indian Jews are treated as comparable to a population thousands of times larger when that helps your argument, while their mass migration to Israel is ignored. Your experiences at an American college become evidence about Indian Muslims, while sourced descriptions of Indian politics are dismissed as Western misunderstanding.

And after all of this, you still do not answer the original causal claim. None of the material about triple talaq, Waqf property, burqas, loudspeakers or animal slaughter establishes that Bangladeshi distrust of India is mainly religious. None of it converts Savarkar’s articulated political ideology into a merely defensive reflex. It is a collection of grievances about Muslims being used to avoid defending the propositions that were actually challenged.

[8]: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000022911670 [9]: https://www.elysee.fr/en/emmanuel-macron [10]: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=002-9952 [11]: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2018/10/france-banni... [12]: https://www.government.nl/faq/ban-on-face-coverings/what-doe... [13]: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/11/29/europes-grow... [14]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/muslim-belonging-in-sec... [15]: https://www.dahd.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-05/SLAUGHTE... [16]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/1902 [17]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2009/1099/oj/eng [18]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/halal-and-kosher-slaughter [19]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-and-r...

[epestr]

PART 1:

Most of this does not answer what I wrote. You do not address Teesta, border killings, India’s support for Sheikh Hasina, the CAA’s religious filter, or the fact that Savarkar explicitly excluded both Muslims and Christians from his conception of the Hindu nation. Instead, you move to the UCC, some students at your American college, Waqf property, burqas, loudspeakers and animal slaughter.

> The UN declaration is retarded because Indian law is not and has never been neutral to religion. If you believe it should be, then you are on the side of the BJP.

The fact that Indian personal law has historically not been religion neutral is not an argument against making it more neutral. It also does not follow that anyone who supports religion neutral law must support the BJP. Equality before the law, prohibition of religious discrimination, freedom of religion and the aspiration towards a uniform civil code all exist together in Articles 14, 15, 25 and 44 of the Constitution [1]. The BJP does not own the concept of equal law merely because it invokes it selectively.

I have no issue saying that instantaneous triple talaq should not have legal effect. That is separate from supporting every provision of the BJP’s legislation. The 2019 act does not declare triple talaq void but also it makes pronouncing an already legally ineffective divorce a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison [2]. Someone can support getting rid of triple talaq while questioning why an ineffective utterance requires that particular criminal penalty. Presenting the only options as either supporting the BJP’s complete policy or supporting discrimination against Muslim women is a false dichotomy.

> South Asian Muslims often want it both ways. When India got rid of triple talaq divorce, South Asian Muslims at my American college demanded a protest.

You are at an American college reporting what some South Asian Muslim students supposedly said. I am at an Indian college and do not see Muslims behaving in the way you keep describing. Neither experience proves much. My experience cannot establish that no Indian Muslim behaves this way, and your experience cannot establish that South Asian Muslims generally behave this way. You are repeatedly moving from some people you met, to South Asian Muslims, to Indian Muslims, and then to the inherent character of Islam. One campus anecdote should not carry that much weight.

> You took no time to read or understand what I said and instead assumed I was talking about European Jews. I am not. I am talking about Indian Jews.

Your clarification narrows the claim, but also makes the comparison nearly meaningless. There were only 22,480 Jews in India in 1941 [3]. They were an extremely small and geographically scattered minority. They could not reasonably demand a Jewish territorial state carved out of India in the manner that a community numbering tens of millions and concentrated across entire provinces could. Their failure to demand an Indian partition does not prove that they possessed some fundamentally different religious or moral character. It largely proves that no such political project was demographically possible.

Indian Jews also did exactly the broader thing you were presenting Jews as having rejected. After Israel was established, most Bene Israel emigrated there. The Hebrew University estimates that there are now around 80,000 Bene Israel in Israel and only about 3,000 in India [4]. This was large-scale migration by Indian Jews to a Jewish nation-state.

That does not make Indian Jews disloyal, nor does it make their migration identical to Jinnah demanding that India be divided. It does, however, destroy the idea that Indian Jewish integration proves Jews had no interest in religiously framed national self determination. They could be integrated into India and still migrate to Israel when a Jewish state became available. Both things can be true.

So the comparison fails in both directions. They were far too small to demand a viable Jewish state inside India, but when a Jewish state existed elsewhere, most of the community migrated to it. You cannot use them as a control group proving that Muslims uniquely politicised religion.

You have also basically stopped defending what you initially said about Savarkar. Your original description was that he had been a relatively benign nationalist and humanitarian until Muslim extremism caused him to snap. I then quoted his own definition of Hindutva, under which India must be both a person’s fatherland and holy land, and the passage in which he explicitly explains why Christians and Muslims are not Hindus in the relevant national sense [5].

Muslim violence does not explain his exclusion of Christians. Christians did not collectively persecute Savarkar into declaring them outside his cultural nation. Your answer that later Hindu nationalist rhetoric was not especially anti-Christian because Christians are a small minority does not defend his ideology either. If anything, it concedes that the groups emphasised by the movement depend upon political usefulness and demographic threat rather than some neutral humanitarian reaction.

You initially gave a psychological account of Savarkar as a humanist driven into extremism by what he witnessed. When confronted with what he actually wrote, you did not explain it. You simply moved to other subjects. The quote still stands, this was a worked out political definition of national belonging that explicitly distinguished Hindus from Muslims and Christians.

> Up until recently Muslims could claim any piece of private land and then privately judge whether such a claim had legal merit. Landowners were left without any possibility of appeal. Imagine such a thing in America, lol.

This is not an accurate description of the old Waqf Act. An individual Muslim could not simply point to someone’s house, privately declare it Waqf and award it to himself. Former Section 40 allowed the statutory Waqf Board to collect information about property it had reason to believe was Waqf property and decide the question after an inquiry [6].

There was a valid criticism here, the board was an interested administrative body being allowed to make the initial determination. I do not need to pretend that was a good arrangement. But the act expressly stated that the Board’s decision was final only unless it was revoked or modified by the Waqf tribunal. The tribunal had the powers of a civil court. Although the act excluded an ordinary appeal from the tribunal, Section 83(9) allowed an aggrieved person to ask the High Court to examine the record and confirm, reverse or modify the tribunal’s determination [6].

"No ordinary appeal" and "no legal remedy whatsoever" are not the same statement. Your quote removes the regulatory bodies like the tribunal and High Court revision, and replaces all of them with "Muslims could claim anything and privately judge it themselves". That is far more rhetorically useful, but it is not what the statute said.

America also does have a proecudre in the same broad family, called adverse possession, where a person possessing somebody else’s land can eventually acquire legal title without the original owner’s consent if state-specific conditions are met which has to be hostile, open and continuous for the statutory period [7].

Adverse possession is not identical to the old Waqf process and requires physical possession over a long period and eventual legal proof, it is not a religious board making an initial property classification. But that is precisely why the careful comparison matters. "Imagine a legal mechanism by which somebody can obtain title to another person’s property in America, lol" is not a devastating point you think it is, because America has one, the procedures and justifications are different, which is what should actually be debated.

[1]: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/19150/1/con... [2]: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/11564/1/a20... [3]: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4464913 [4]: https://cris.huji.ac.il/en/publications/the-bene-israel/ [5]: https://archive.org/stream/essentials-of-hindutva-veer-savar... [6]: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/15941/1/the... [7]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adverse_possession

[mdgld]

>people in the West don't understand how awful radical Islam is

Do you remember that time two dozen or so years ago when a couple buildings collapsed in NYC? After some planes rammed into them?

[anon291]

And that is relatively benign compared to the constant barrage of foiled or successful terror attacks that India faces. Also, no one really cared when America went forward with a giant war of aggression against those people America labeled possible perpetrators

[6stringronin]

I find it telling you blame India's lack of modernization on Pakistan. A reflection of the times.

Maybe dismantle the caste system first. You need a civil rights movement.

This is India's biggest hurdle but it seems too ingrained in the society. All peoples should have the same opportunity, but the structure of power in India likes the way things are.

Next work on how you treat women.

[anon291]

Hmm... I said nothing of modernization; I was talking about Indias police state tendencies. These are orthogonal issues. Indians lack of economic development is due to severely lacking general government funded education and over regulation.

As countries such as Norway and China show, you can have development with or without a police state. The issues have nothing to do with each other

[hamper653]

> India is in what basically amounts to a perpetual state of war with Pakistan and has always been this way.

You mean, since India and Pakistan were invented 79 years ago?

[sieve]

I wonder what is it with this denial of the existence of India prior to 1947. If people were specific and said that they were referring to the Republic of India as the successor state to British-controlled India, then it would at least make some sense. Otherwise it sounds completely insane.

If India was invented 79 years ago, then you need to explain the various East India companies established in the 1600s, and all the references to India and the Indians by the Romans and the Greeks and the Persians and the Chinese before the Abrahamization of Europe. Europeans were literally looking for ways to India and ran into the West Indies and North America by accident.

[adityaathalye]

There was no unified political entity prior to 1947---technically, 26 January 1950---because it took that long for Sardal Patel's program of political unification of sovereign princely states to conclude, so that the now-unified political entity would govern itself under common constitutional, and common law, with democratic universal franchise.

The East India Company, and then the British Raj, held power because they were able to broker deals with opposing (and warring) princely states and kingdoms. They used contractual leverage to make those sub-sub-regions keep each other in check.

The British Raj was a kingdom of kingdoms, in addition to being a protectorate. These are literal legal facts [0].

The word Hindu is literally an exonym. A name given to a people by foreigners. Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.

[0] Obligatory Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#British_India_and_...

In its Interpretation Act 1889, the British Parliament adopted the following definitions in Section 18:

    (4.) The expression "British India" shall mean all territories and places within Her Majesty's dominions which are for the time being governed by Her Majesty through the Governor-General of India or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.

    (5.) The expression "India" shall mean British India together with any territories of any native prince or chief under the suzerainty of Her Majesty exercised through the Governor-General of India, or through any governor or other officer subordinates to the Governor-General of India.[1]

Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.

[sieve]

> There was no unified political entity prior to 1947

There have been many (empires, not modern, Westphalian nation-states), but the British managed to create the largest yet. Pakistan was carved out of British India on Muslim and non-Muslim lines.

> Who agreed to the legal terms? The rulers of the sovereign princely states and kingdoms.

Sovereign in name, but vassals nonetheless.

> Our very collective identity was conferred upon us by outsiders.

It is a name, not an identity. This is like saying the Indians conferred upon the Chinese their identity because the word cīna is of Sanskrit origin and the world calls the Chinese ... Chinese ... due to that.

[adityaathalye]

I'm sorry what, Hindu is not an identity?

[anon291]

The idea of a Westphalian nation state is foreign to South Asia until 1947. Before that there was your local patil and whatever clan you belonged to. Even Indian princely states had no clean separation before the British insisted on clean borders.

You're applying modern standards to a time and place where they would have been incomprehensible

[anon291]

Yes. Since these two nations came into being they have been in what is basically a state of war. That is what perpetual means.

[vivzkestrel]

its amazing you are actually getting downvoted for speaking facts

[adityaathalye]

I upvoted that comment because it's obvious tin foil hat "oooh look at the boogeyman" speech. That fact along with its critique contributes to the discourse on HN.

[anon291]

I merely pointed out that India's banning of satellite communications is a mirror to the American response to 9/11 except that India faces more 9/11 like situations on a regular basis. This is hardly some boogeyman. Most countries predictably start clamping down on free speech when they feel threatened. Not sure what conspiracy you're trying to foist on me, but I assure you it's not there. I myself am pretty much a free speech absolutist.

[adityaathalye]

All I see is an anonymous account posting wholly unsubstantiated opinions. Not worth engaging with.

[vivzkestrel]

we have more attacks in 1 year than they have in 10

[anon291]

And like clockwork, a single terror attack in Berlin and you'll find redditors from western countries calling for solutions much worse than anything india has ever proposed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1v6k8vq/several_injur...

[shevy-java]

I don't trust the Modi clique one second.