The President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, along with First Lady Melania Trump, daughter Ivanka Trump and the high-level delegation is expected to land in Ahmedabad, India, shortly. Prime Minister Modi will receive him at the airport from where he will go to Motera stadium for the grand Namaste Trump event. Over a lakh people are expected to participate in the Namaste Trump event during his India visit. En route, he will stop by at Sabarmati Ashram and pay respects to Mahatma Gandhi.
Trump will be the seventh American President to visit India. Taking to Twitter on Sunday, Prime Minister Modi tweeted that India looks forward to welcoming US President Trump.
While the event is being touted as a historic milestone in the relationship between India and USA, the usual activists, backed by Congress, have taken it upon themselves to find ways to mar the visit, for petty political reasons.
A shameful article published in the National Herald today bore testament to how the political and civil society dispensation often acts out of hate, against the interests of India.
While a historic engagement is about to take off between India and the USA, National Herald, the Congress mouthpiece, decided to publish an opinion article by Aakar Patel headlined, “India is the only poor and ‘shit-hole country’ that Donald Trump has ever visited”.
The article written by Aakar Patel is essentially a rant that gives away the author’s hate, not only for Donald Trump but also for India.
At the outset, Aakar Patel tries to prove, with aa flurry of assumptions, why he thinks, Donald Trump considers India a ‘shit-hole’. First, middle-aged Aakar Patel reminisces and says that when he was 16 and spending time in an American village, there was a desk for exchange student programs where Americans could travel abroad and per him, nobody signed up. Aakar uses this experience, which presumably happened 3 decades ago, to extrapolate and claim that Americans, in general, don’t like to travel, and hence, by extension, neither does Donald Trump.
Then, Aakar Patel proceeds to lie in order to prove why he thinks Donald Trump considers India a shit-hole.
He writes, “Donald Trump since becoming president has visited 20 countries of which the majority are in Europe. He has been to France four times. He dislikes the developing world and doesn’t want immigrants from what he calls ‘shit-hole country’, in which list he presumably includes India”.
Since January 20th 2017, President Donald Trump has actually visited 22 countries, India being the 23rd and unless Aakar Patel considers Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, North Korea, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Singapore as ‘Europian countries’, he is clearly way off the mark.
Further, Aakar Patel sneakily mentions that Trump has visited France 4 times, in order to somehow insinuate that travelling to “poor, non-white countries” is something Trump considers below his dignity. What he fails to mention is that Trump has also visited Vietnam and South Korea twice.
The rest of his statement, based on these lies, is even more problematic. He uses this lie to essentially peddle his agenda on immigration and his hate for India. He says that Donald Trump dislikes the developing world and does not want immigrants from what he calls ‘shit-hole countries’. While Trump has received serious flak for his immigration policy from the Left-Liberal coterie, what he has essentially stood against is illegal immigration, which is something India is also trying to curb. Aakar brings this up, not because he wishes to critique USA’s immigration policy, but because he wishes to stir that hornet’s nest while anti-NRC riots rage across the country by Muslim mobs and also, to lead into his next assertion. After this, Aakar willy-nilly extrapolates, that since Trump does not support illegal immigration, he must assume that “poor country” India is a shit-hole. That assumption is them added to the headline, which gives the impression that Trump, at some point, has actually called India a ‘shit-hole’, which he has not.
The ideological moorings and bias of Aakar Patel are quite evident when he lashes out at conservatives and praises the liberals, Presidents of the USA or Prime Ministers of India, subtly.
For example, after praising Clinton for having “harsh words about India” when a “Hindutva Govt” under AB Vajpayee was in power, he goes on to deride George W Bush, seen as a conservative and visited India when “Liberal” Manmohan Singh was in power.
Nestled carefully in the body of his article, Aakar Patel reveals the true agenda of writing this hate-rant.
Hilariously, National Herald, which is a Congress mouthpiece, tries to paint Barack Obama as a frugal middle-class man while Modi, as the flamboyant spend-thrift. Aakar Patel writes how Obama wears re-soled shoes and thus, is a “very middle-class man”.
Interestingly, according to Businessinsider, the net worth of Barack Obama runs into a whopping $40 million. From the time he joined the US senate in 2005 to the end of his presidency, Obama made $20 million alone from his salary, book royalties and the money he charges for speaking engagements – yes – the frugal middle-class do-gooder does not speak to children for free.
The Obamas had entered the White House in 2008 with a little over a million dollars and by the time they left, his net worth was conservatively, over $40 million with the number set to soar higher considering how he has been speaking at several events on a regular basis. Further, in 2017, both the Obamas signed book deals worth well over $60 million. They have also recently signed a production deal with Netflix, the amount of which hasn’t been disclosed yet.
Read: Congress mouthpiece compares Supreme Court of India to Pakistan’s after Ayodhya judgement
According to Business Insider, in his post-Presidency life, Obama is set to earn well over 242.5 million dollars. Again, a conservative estimate.
While the frugal middle-class Obama is set to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Modi, after a political career spanning decades, has assets worth Rs 2.5 crore including a residential plot in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar, fixed deposits of Rs 1.27 crore and Rs 38,750 cash in hand.
He has declared movable assets worth Rs 1.41 crore and immovable assets valued at Rs 1.1 crore.
The prime minister has invested Rs 20,000 in tax saving infra bonds, Rs 7.61 lakh in National Saving Certificate (NSC) and another Rs 1.9 lakh in LIC policies.
His cash balance in the savings bank account is Rs 4,143.
Modi has four gold rings, weighing 45 grams, valued at Rs 1.13 lakh.
Read: How media calculated the figure of Rs 10 lakh for Modi suit without caring for facts
With such a massive disparity, it is sheer hate towards PM Modi and India that allows Aakar Patel to lie and for Congress mouthpiece National Herald to publish the drivel.
After this litany of lies, National Herald goes on to equate PM Modi and President Trump as narcissists who hate Muslims, lying that Trump has banned travel of Muslims from certain countries and also, that Modi has excluded Muslims from CAA. CAA is an act that aims to expedite citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations and since the law is aimed towards persecuted, religious minorities, the question of “excluding” the majority people of Islamic nations does not arise – since Muslims being religiously persecuted in Islamic nations does not exactly make sense.
After the blatant lies and assertions that the visit of the US President to India won’t yield much, Aakar Patel finally, albeit unknowingly, admits that this article published in the Congress mouthpiece, was nothing but a propaganda piece aimed to almost campaign for the Democrats in the upcoming presidential elections.
He writes, “A Democrat in the White House will mean greater scrutiny of our actions in Kashmir and over the CAA and National Register controversy. The best thing that Modi can hope for in this visit is that he is able to mobilise Indians in America to vote Republican and try and help Trump return to power”.
Essentially, the Congress party and Aakar Patel would ideally want the Democrats to return to power in the USA so as to ensure that their liberal, Muslim appeasing policies find an audience.
Essentially, the Congress party’s mouthpiece, by publishing this shoddy piece has attempted to cater to their main vote banks – deluded liberals and the rioting Muslims who have taken to the streets since the passage of CAA. For the Liberals, the conservative regime, whether in the USA or India (though both very different principally) is an abhorrent outlier and for the Islamist, USA will always be the big monster out to get them. By equating PM Modi to the big-bad-USA-regime, the Congress effectively caters to its Islamist vote bank and succeeds in fear-mongering. Considering several Congress leaders have been charged in the anti-CAA riots and have actively supported seditious anti-India elements, this motivated article falls completely in line with the official stand the Congress party seems to have taken – Oppose Modi, even if it means breaking India.
