Islamophobic Remarks :
He is the author of the study Indian Democracy at 75: Who Are the Barbarians at the Gate?, which may reveal weaknesses in assessments of Indian democracy made by outsiders.
After the research article was published, Hindu nationalist media and Hindu supremacists praised Babones for safeguarding India from the “Seculars” and the “Islamists”
He received an invitation to the media company’s yearly gathering, India Today Conclave 2022, for a session titled “Demonizing a Democracy?”
The Hindu far-right furiously shared his conference remarks on social media as supporting testimony from a “independent” foreign speaker. The Hindu rightwing has welcomed Babones as a “informed independent voice” from outside of India who will “legitimize” their conspiracies (with some additional conspiracies he offers regarding the “West” and the “Islamists”).
Babones said that “India’s intellectual class is anti-India” and that there is a class that is “anti-Modi and anti-BJP” while repeating the talking points of the Hindu far-right at the conclave. He also stated that India is not fascist, despite what the international media falsely portrays it to be, and that it is a dynamic democracy that ranks among the greatest in the world. When he said that activists in India had been gradually shifting from criticizing the party they don’t like to attacking the Indian state, he appeared to be echoing the Hindu nationalist narrative. Additionally, he warned the Indian government of the threat these academics and activists constituted.
Babones is listed as a “foreign agent” with the US Department of Justice and the Australian government, according to an article in The Print, for his work with an Indian media organization based in Uttar Pradesh. He added that his “consulting assignment” with Noida-based Democracy News Live for “a period of less than six months” was the reason he was registered as a foreign agent. For fewer than six months, I worked with this company on a modest consulting project. They came up to me and requested my assistance in connecting with the western audience. I gave them advice on how to frame pieces for the Western media so that their message would be understood by a larger audience.
When considered in context, his name “Bharat Bhakt” (Devotee of India) actually sounds more like “Modi bhakt” (Devotee of Modi).
He compares the Zionist movement to the Hindu right in India in an article that was published in the Firstpost. He claims that western secularists and Islamists have worked together to despise Hindutva, a movement or philosophy that seeks to convert India into a Hindu nation, in the same way that they despise the expansion of Israel and the Jewish people. He makes the untrue claim that Indian intellectuals have been coerced into promoting anti-Hindu propaganda by western secular elites.
When Babones is unable to refute analytical research and empirical data, he resorts to fallacies and irrational claims. He then quickly assumes the persona of a typical Hindu extremist fringe. Based on his alleged conviction that western seculars and Islamists have plotted to degrade India and the Hindus, he has objected to international institutions for expressing worry over the erosion of press freedom and minority rights in India.
When he attempts to invent instances of international media coverage of the illegal demolition of Muslim homes in India, his vile ambivalence regarding the status of minorities in that country is on display. He charged that the Western media had circulated false information to denigrate India. He claimed that the New York Times’ ‘Low-effort, low-accuracy India coverage’ couldn’t tell the difference between a bulldozer and a backhoe, demonstrating how little they knew about India.
‘This whole unfortunate scenario (of how backhoe was labeled a bulldozer) aptly illustrates how activist narratives are often enlarged and exaggerated as they are moved up the media food chain from original reports to the New York Times,’ Babones wrote in his conclusion.
Notably, bulldozers—a term used loosely in India to refer to all heavy equipment used to demolish buildings—have come to represent Muslim tyranny in India.
He enjoys discussing the plight of the minority in India through his subtly provocative Twitter feeds.
A few tweets
Since UP is a severe law-and-order state, I smile when the sign instructs me to do so.
(Under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh has developed into one of India’s most hostile states for Muslims.)
Posing among images of Yogi and Modi, he posts.
The “Three Musketeers” .
Is it time for me to join the Khan Market Gang?
(Modi and the Hindu right make fun of their political rivals and India’s English-speaking secular intellectuals with the slur “Khan Market gang”).