"India & USA are under the gravest threat to their Democracies" | Suketu Mehta Aug 23, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsYUHG7lKFI
Suketu Mehta speaks to Barkha Dutt about the country of his birth, the free speech debate. He is among the 100 writers to come together under PEN-America to write about India at 75, an anthology of essays that examine where the country stands more than 7 decades after independence.
‘As goes India, so goes democracy’ https://scroll.in/article/1030219/suketu-mehta-as-goes-india-so-goes-democracy Aug 15, 2022
To mark India’s 75th Independence Day, PEN America asked authors from India and the Indian diaspora to write short texts expressing what they felt. people of other religions are actively harassed, even lynched on the streets; their freedom to practice their religion in their own way is circumscribed. And when they protest, they are jailed and their houses bulldozed. Most worrying, much of the judiciary seems to be sympathetic to the Hindu nationalist agenda, and issues its verdicts accordingly.
When countries safeguard the rights of their minorities, they also safeguard, as a happy side effect, the rights and wellbeing of their majorities. If a judiciary forbids discrimination against, say, Muslims, it is also much more likely to forbid discrimination against, say, LGBTQ+ people. The obverse is also true: when they do not safeguard the rights of their minorities, every other citizen’s rights are in peril.