Islamophobic Remarks :
American sociologist Salvatore Babones is an associate professor at the University of Sydney.
His research study, Indian Democracy at 75: Who Are the Barbarians at the Gate?, may have shown weaknesses in foreign assessments of Indian democracy.
Babones was praised by Hindu nationalist media and Hindu supremacists for protecting India against the “Islamists” and “Seculars” after the research paper was published.
He received an invitation to participate in a session titled “Demonizing a Democracy?” at the media company’s annual India Today Conclave 2022.
The Hindu far-right fervently shared his remarks from the conference on social media, portraying them as evidence from a “independent” foreign voice. The Hindu right-wing has welcomed Babones as a “informed independent voice” from outside of India who would “legitimize” their conspiracy ideas, along with a few others he brings up about the “West” and “Islamists.”
Babones said that “India’s intellectual class is anti-India” and that there is a class that is “anti-Modi and anti-BJP” during the conclave, while repeating the talking points of the Hindu far-right. Additionally, he contended that India is a dynamic democracy and one of the best in the world, and that the international media is incorrectly depicting it as a fascist regime. When he stated that Indian activists have been gradually moving from criticizing the party they dislike to assaulting the Indian government, it appeared as though he was reiterating the narrative of Hindu nationalists. He also forewarned the Indian government about the threat these activists and intellectuals presented.
The Print said that Babones is listed with the US Department of Justice and the Australian government as a “foreign agent” due to his affiliation with an Uttar Pradesh-based Indian media enterprise. Additionally, he affirmed that he had been registered as a foreign agent due to a “consulting assignment” he had for a “period of less than six months” with Democracy News Live, situated in Noida. For a little over six months, I worked on a consulting project for this organization. They came to me and asked for assistance in getting their message out to the western audience. I gave them advice on how to structure pieces for Western media in order to spread their message to a wider audience.
When you consider it, his title of “Devotee of India” (Bharat Bhakt) sounds more like “Modi bhakt” (devotee of Modi).
He makes a comparison between Zionism and the Indian Hindu right in a piece that was published in the Firstpost. According to him, Islamists and western seculars have banded together to detest Hindutva—an ideology or movement that aims to transform India into a Hindu nation—in the same way that they detest the expansion of Israel and the Jewish people. He makes the untrue claim that western secular elites have exploited Indian intellectuals to propagate anti-Hindu propaganda.
Babones quickly adopts the persona of a typical Hindu extremist fringe by turning to fallacies and unfounded claims when he is unable to refute empirical data and analytical investigations. He has taken issue with international organizations expressing worry about the decline of minority rights and press freedom in India on the grounds that he believes Islamists and western seculars are working together to malign India and the Hindu people.
His attempts to invent examples of international media coverage of the illegal demolition of Muslim homes in India are a prime example of his cruel ambivalence regarding the status of minorities in that country. He charged that disinformation about India was being disseminated by western media. He claimed that the New York Times’ “Low-effort, low-accuracy India coverage” demonstrated how little the publication knew about India as it was unable to tell a backhoe from a bulldozer.
The unfortunate story of how a backhoe came to be known as a bulldozer, according to Babones, “aptly illustrates how activist narratives are often expanded and amplified as they are passed up the journalistic food chain from initial reports to the New York Times,” the author said in closing.
Interestingly, bulldozers—which are broadly defined in India to include other large vehicles used for demolition—have come to represent Muslim subjugation in that country.
He relishes the plight of the minority in India via his suggestive, flirtatious Twitter postings.
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