India’s ‘Mahatma’ complex stops nations, global media, Big Tech from taking it seriously

In the global jungle of nations, fellow beasts check you for fangs, incisors, and canine teeth before giving you respect. Molars are not enough. Singapore, a nation of roughly five million people, snapped at the chief minister of India’s Capital Delhi which has four times its population, for erroneously mentioning a “Singapore variant” of COVID-19. India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar swiftly stepped in to placate Singapore, calling it a “solid partner”. In the same public statement, he scoffed at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. “Delhi CM does not speak for India,” he said. What drips of irony is that this comes in the middle of the entire western media referring to this deadly wave of COVID-19 as one caused by the “Indian variant”. The Indian government, besides a meek plea to desist calling it that, that too followed by World Health Organisation statement, has shown no signs of publicly going after these international media houses. “…the new Indian variant had two significant mutations to the portion of the virus that attaches to human cells,” writes Reuters. ‘Wastewater monitoring being used to track India variant,’ says one The Guardian headline. ‘Confirmed cases of India variant in UK rise 160 percent in a week,’ says another. ‘Covid India variant: Where is it, how does it spread and is it more infectious?’ reads a BBC headline. The same Reuters wrote in 2020: “US President Donald Trump’s use of the term ‘Chinese virus’ and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s use of ‘Wuhan virus’ may have encouraged the use of hate speech in the US.” The Guardian had snarled: “Republicans face backlash over racist labeling of coronavirus: China says US politicians are stigmatising the country with ‘despicable’ practice of calling the virus ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ and ‘China coronavirus’.” So, what makes international media so fiercely defend China (from whose biological weapon labs the virus, from West’s own accounts, may have originated) while so casually and in a brazenly racist and unscientific manner demonise India? Is China a democracy and India an iron-walled, authoritarian, Communist regime? No. The world respects those who respect themselves. It fears those — like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Emmanuel Macron or even Scott Morrison — who can demonstrate an unpredictable and asymmetrical response to provocation. It does the bidding of those who tenuously, determinedly and as an instrument of state policy, penetrate the deepest ante-chambers of global media. China’s influence on western media today is stunning. It has Big Tech like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple and others genuflecting before it even as it forbids their entry at home. The Indian establishment is still deeply suspicious of talent and chooses unquestioning loyalty, and thereby often mediocrity, over it. Twitter has recently tagged tweets by BJP leaders on the Congress toolkit as ‘manipulated media’, giving an early glimpse of what it might do in the run-up to the 2024 general elections. The ruling party’s response so far has been a ‘strong’ letter. The ‘Mahatma’ complex still informs India’s foreign policy ambivalence. While incrementally shifting towards Israel in the nuance of its statements on the Gaza conflict, it still has not been able to muster the courage to robustly back friends and ideologies closest to it. Even when dealing with internal turbulence like the post-election “Bengal violence” or the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act or the new farm laws, the government pussyfoots. Pleasers seldom become immortal leaders. And a nation that hesitates to act in self-interest, even if it means displeasing others, will certainly not have a top seat at the committee of nations.