14 thoughts on “A passage to India”

1. Modi and the political party he represents are adherents of Hindutva. Hindutva is an ideology that states that India is the homeland of the Hindus. According to believers, those who profess other faiths can live in the country only at the sufferance of Hindus. This proposition is profoundly disturbing and deeply antithetical to the evolving central tenets of Hinduism. India is supposed to be a secular state.

   1. Brahman-ist/”Hindu” Nationalism a.k.a “Hindu-tva” has been the foundation and flavour of indian politics in trinidad and guyana since the 1930’s.This is where the UNC’s ethos and behaviour comes from.. the obsession with projecting brahman-ists Vs. Muslim conflict, “hindu” vs african conflict and indians as the largest ethnic group.Hidutva politics is widely known to engage in agressive intelkectual dishonesty and falsifying history for political advantage…sound familiar? It’s inherently a nasty and malicious politics!…”anything goes” This is why they obsess over gaining state control and weilding it like a cutlass whenever they do.They just haven’t PUBLICLY admitted their true agenda as yet.
      ” Trinidad is the home of the brahman-ists (“hindus”)…”

      https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/13/why-white-supremacists-and-hindu-nationalists-are-so-alike

   2. Hindutva is merely political “hindu-ism”…moral compass is identical

      The Racist Ideology in Brahman-ism (incorrectly called “Hindu-ism”) http://www.trinicenter.com/more/India/invasionsandracism.htm

      Varna/”caste”= RACE
      Therefore, “The Varna /”Caste” System” = The Race System

2. India is the largest pharmaceutical nation in the world. Rowley is not interested in vaccines from India. Last year over $1.2 billion in loans was taken to fight covid. Trinidad is way behind when it comes to using that money, it just disappeared like that.. Nobody knows where it gone. Rowley is hoping to beg and get it all free. Same as he have that poor girl begging for laptops. He is worst PM in TnT history. Businesses are suffering.

   1. Mamoo, this seems to be a scheme by WHO and Big Phama to suck unsuspecting nation dry.. and like you said, India just happen to have the biggest drug printery in the world..
      But it was not their vaccines that rid India of Covid, Their Covid rate began to decline months ago.. just when their Health Minister advised in the use of Ayurveda…

      1. Ramk these guys are so corrupt that they make me sick. They don’t want the free vaccines. They want the one costing $30 U.S. a shot (full price) or $210 TT. Soon the Caribbean will be inoculated with TnT standing out as the sore thumb…Last year they took $1.2 billion in loans for Covid and it all disappeared.

3. The humanitarianism expressed by India is nothing short of admirable. As Mahatma Gandhi expressed ‘politics and religion are inseparable’ is what we do see day to day, lately e.g., Evangelism and Trumpism. In the past we see religious leaders effecting governmental duties effectively e.g., Ian Paisely, Maharios, Sithole, Tutu etc. So let us not be distracted by the respective ideologies but be appreciative of the wholistic approach by India in celebrating life.

   1. Yeah, right…

      https://minorityrights.org/minorities/dalits/

4. The last year or so may have been one of the most traumatic periods for humankind. It seems that the whole world has been shut down. Borders have been closed. Economic activity has slowed down. Businesses have failed in many sectors of the economy, globally. Lives have been interrupted, in some countries the morgues have been inundated with bodies, in some the hospital systems have collapsed. The fear of the covid virus is probably more powerful than the actual effect of the virus, the Spanish flu of the 1920s was a more lethal virus in terms of the number of people who died, but the way people seem to be suffering when they are unable to breathe, and the loneliness of it, has had an impact on people’s minds. So with all of this angst going on, it is no wonder that the covid vaccines are seen as salvation, and no one can deny that to a great extent, it is. So in this moment of dread and angst, enter the geopolitics of vaccines. There is vaccine nationalism where every country sees about itself. There is vaccine diplomacy where countries that produce the vaccine can use it as tool to obtain particular objectives. There is the call for vaccine cooperation in a global way by institutions like the WHO. No doubt there is also vaccine profit making where massive corporations see it as a means to making huge profits, after all it’s all about supply and demand and there are about 6 billion people out there who need vaccines, urgently. The priority of the developed countries in the West is to make available the million of vaccines for their own citizenry. They have the money to pay for it and the relationship with the makers of the various vaccines that have been approved – pfizer, moderna, Oxford/astra zenneca, Johnson and Johnson, which have all been developed in the West. So that leaves a whole bunch of countries needing vaccines so that they too could beat the virus. The WHO has stated that the world cannot beat the virus except by beating it globally so that all countries should have a vested interest in making sure that every country has access to the vaccine. That argument doesn’t seem to be an effective one at this point. So the whole world has gone vaccine crazy and like a ship going down, everyone wants to get in the vaccine lifeboat and the devil takes the hindmost. There are three countries that can supply vaccines to the rest of the world – India, China and Russia – and these countries are indeed getting the vaccines out to the less developed countries.
   Russia’s Sputnik V covid vaccine gives around 92% protection against Covid-19. It is one of the proven vaccines alongside Pfizer, Oxford/AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. As well as Russia, the vaccine is being used in a number of other places including: Argentina, Palestinian territories, Venezuela, Hungary, UAE, Iran, Mexico, and countries in Africa.
   Vaccines have also been developed in China. They are the vaccines from the companies Sinopharm, Sinovac Biotech and CanSino. China is selling or donating vaccines to more than 30 countries and it has committed to give an additional 10 million vaccines to COVAX.
   The Serum Institute of India is a massive producer of vaccines. Astra Zeneca was developed at Oxford University but it also has an agreement with India’s Serum Institute to make millions of doses of vaccines. India also has a locally developed Bharat Biotech vaccine which can be utilized.
   All of this says that countries have every moral right to access vaccines from wherever they are available, whether India, China or Russia or even the US difficult though vaccines from the US may be to obtain. At the height of the Cold War, in 1956, Russia and the US collaborated to develop the vaccine for polio. It eventually virtually eradicated polio from the world. Why can’t we have a collaborative effort again to eradicate an even more dangerous virus?

   1. So… what about the many variants (and emerging variants) that these vaccines seems unable to treat? Look at Brazil..
      How many more stimulus checks can governments send out, how many more billions can TT spend on vaccines, and the human factor of multiple vaccinations (for variants)?

      -Preliminary studies suggest that the variant that swept through the city of Manaus is not only more contagious, but it also appears able to infect some people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus. And the variant has slipped Brazil’s borders, showing up in two dozen other countries and in small numbers in the United States-

      https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/world/americas/brazil-covid-variant.html

5. I am not too bright.. but is Astrazeneca an Indian company? How can Modi give out vaccines that Indian companies were hired to ‘print’ (these were not India’s recently produced vaccines but Astrazeneca‘s).
   And what are the effectiveness of these vaccines against the more potent Covid variants.. look what playing out in Brazil.. should TT spend $4b for a vaccine that cannot protect its population?

   And, India is in no rush to vaccinate their people.. but they have vaccines for we.. what madness is that?

   -The recovery likely isn’t due to vaccinations, either. India has started its vaccination program, with the goal of inoculating 300 million people by August, but it’s still lagging compared to wealthier nations. So far, the country has administered less than one dose per 100 people, according to Our World In Data, a data aggregation website run by researchers at the University of Oxford.-

   https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/asia/india-covid-decline-explainer-intl-hnk-scli/index.html

6. Newsday Editor had no right to print such rubbish. Whatever is happening in India cannot be as bad as what is happening in China. Trinidad is doing billions of dollars in business with a nation that has virtually built these camps to imprison over 2 million Uighurs https://abcnews.go.com/International/uighur-woman-living-france-speaks-alleged-chinese-education/story?id=76202537. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/global#
   https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-hrw-china-idUSKBN29I1Z6

   Rowley is waiting on vaccines from China…all PNM supporters should take that first…

7. Hathras case: Dalit women are among the most oppressed in the world. Written by Soutik Biswas –

   “We are victims of violence because we are poor, lower caste and women, so looked down upon by all,” a Dalit woman told researcher Jayshree Mangubhai some years ago. “There is no one to help or speak for us. We face more sexual violence because we don’t have any power.”
   Last week, it was reported that a 19-year-old Dalit woman (the Dalits were once called “Untouchables”) was allegedly gang raped and assaulted by a group of upper caste men in Uttar Pradesh state again. The news shone the spotlight again on the rampant sexual violence faced by India’s 80 million Dalit women, who like their male counterparts languish at the bottom of India’s unbending and harsh caste hierarchy.
   These women, who comprise about 16% of India’s female population, face a “triple burden” of gender bias, caste discrimination and economic deprivation. “The Dalit female belongs to the most oppressed group in the world,” says Dr Suraj Yengde, author of Caste Matters. “She is a victim of the cultures, structures and institutions of oppression, both externally and internally. This manifests in perpetual violence against Dalit women.”

   https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-54418513

8. Thousands of women join Indian farmers’ protests against new laws
   Mon, March 8, 2021, 2:16 AM
   By Danish Siddiqui and Zeba Siddiqui
   NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Thousands of women joined protests by farmers on the outskirts of Delhi on Monday to mark International Women’s Day, demanding the scrapping of new laws that open up agriculture produce markets to private buyers.
   Since December, many farmers accompanied by their families have camped at three sites on the outskirts of the Indian capital to oppose the biggest farm reforms in decades, which they say hurt them.
   https://www.yahoo.com/news/thousands-women-join-indian-farmers-071608257.html

Comments are closed.