Introducing my newsletter

I’ll keep this brief: I’ve been thinking for a while now about starting a newsletter on Substack. But like the gent in the image above pictured reading a newspaper and three books while working on his laptop and feeding ducks, I’ve been multi-tasking these last few months, and just couldn’t find the time.

Now that I’ve sorted out some parts of my life and carved out a slice of time to think beyond the ducks, here it is: edition one of the Substack version of Smoke Signals.

Read, subscribe — here on, updates will happen on that medium.

Take care, stay safe, vote sensibly.

By the way, in Manipur…

21 January was a busy day for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The pran prathishta at the Sri Ram temple in Ayodhya was less than 24 hours away. There were temples to be visited; holy dips to be taken; rituals to be observed; foundation stones to be laid, even… The job of prime minister is no sinecure.

And yet, in the midst of all this, Modi found the time, while praying in the south, to think of the east.

On Manipur’s Statehood Day, my best wishes to the people of the state. Manipur has made a strong contribution to India’s progress. We take pride in the culture and traditions of the state. I pray for the continued development of Manipur.

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 21, 2024

His words inspired me to think of Manipur, and to revisit the relevant page in my Roam Research app. Here is what I found, just in this brand new year:

Alternate facts

I’m reading two books concurrently.

The first is Love Jihad and Other Fictions, by Sreenivasan Jain, Mariyam Alavi and Supriya Sharma, journalists with distinguished track records, who have come together to explore some of the tropes that animate hindutva.

The core of the book — the nut graf, in journalism parlance, is this bit from the introduction:

We realised early on, though, that investigating Hindutva conspiracy theories was like entering a hall of mirrors — how can you disprove a theory if you can’t pin it down? This haziness partly stems from the fact that while many endorse these theories, no one claims ownership over them. Moreoever, they are vaguely defined. For instance, the label of ‘love jihad’ can be applied to a seemingly infinite number of cases, making the task of fact-checking akin to a game of whack-a-mole — you manage to debunk one, and ten new ones show up. A new theory, or a sub-plot of an old theory, is born every day.

From Love Jihad and Other Fictions, published by Aleph

The other book I am reading is H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars by Kunal Purohit, on how an entire industry has sprung up to infuse the tropes of Hindutva into the popular imagination, and to give it an insidious veneer of acceptability, through the medium of hate lyrics set to peppy beats.

We are all Ram bharose now

Image of the week:

The road from Ayodhya airport was lined with cutouts — four of Modi, for every one of the temple town’s presiding deity. For once, public pushback worked and the Modi images were taken down, Print reports. There is a worthy entry for your ‘gratitude journal’, assuming you keep one.

Not that one cutout more or less makes a difference — this past week, the media has been a willing participant in the anointing of Modi as the latest — and greatest — saint in the Hindutva pantheon. Modi goes to the temple — actually, temples, plural; every day a new one, in a different state. Modi sleeps on the ground. Modi only drinks coconut water and that too, one glass in the morning and one at night. No, Modi eats only fruits. And so on. (Apropos, read Samar Halarnkar on Modi’s transformation from chowkidar to divine messenger)

Anti-Hindu? Present sir!

In Gujarat, a school has changed the response to a roll call from ‘Present sir’ to ‘Jai Shree Ram’.

Ahead of Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir's inauguration in Ayodhya, a school in north Gujarat's Banaskantha permanently changes Roll-call to 'Jay Shri Ram' from 'Yes Sir' pic.twitter.com/DgbT4nTQyy

— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) January 10, 2024

As we build towards the inauguration of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a brief Smoke Signals roll call of anti-Hindus:

Congress? Jai Shree Ram

Four Shankaracharyas? Jai Shree Ram

Nirmohi Akhara? Jai Shree Ram

Hindu Mahasabha? Jai Shree Ram

Next?

(The sequence is interesting, btw. When the Congress turned down the invitation to attend the consecration, the right wing said the Congress was anti-Hindu. Then the Sankaracharyas refused to attend, and the right wing attacked them as being irrelevant — the Ram temple, the argument went, is for and by the Ramanandi sect. Union Minister Narayan Rane even demanded to know what the Sankaracharyas had ever done for Hinduism. Then the Nirmohi Akhara, one of the leading Ramanandi sects, said the consecration ceremony is not according to prescription. Now what to do?

To make matters worse, the Hindu Mahasabha — founded in 1915 by, note, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, and the original proselytizers of Hindutva — has joined the growing chorus of naysayers.)

राम मंदिर निर्माण के नाम पर आस्था का मजाक कैसे बनाया जा रहा है -हिंदू महासभा राष्ट्रीय महासचिव # देवेन्द्र पांडे#BB7TitleWinnerArchana #RamMandirPranPratishta #ElClasico #BaddiesEast pic.twitter.com/6LaaM6Nebn

— TANVIR RANGREZ (@virjust18) January 15, 2024

Hindutva khatre mein hain. Kya karein?

I am embarrassed

Back in the day when the United States, deploying an arsenal of lies, fabrications and outright chicanery, was making its case for an attack on Iraq, talk show host Bill Maher was one of the loudest of the naysayers.

For his pains, his show was canceled; he was labeled anti-national; supporters of the war said that Maher hated America. His response was a standup show where he listed every stupid thing the Bush administration was doing, and his refrain was “I don’t hate my country—I am merely embarrassed by it.”

I now see what he meant.