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In 2020, <keyword id="19915884" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Facebook" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Facebook" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> parent <keyword id="19911549" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="Meta" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Meta" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Meta">Meta</keyword> faced heavy criticism for allowing the "Stop the Steal" movement to spread like wildfire on its platform. This far-right movement falsely claimed that electoral fraud had deprived Donald Trump of victory in the 2020 United States presidential election, leading to widespread violence in the country. Now, Meta has come under fire again for a similar role in promoting political polarisation during <keyword id="19895063" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="India" source="keywords">India</keyword>'s ongoing <keyword id="19895394" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="lok-sabha" source="keywords">Lok Sabha</keyword> <keyword id="19900767" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="elections" source="keywords">elections</keyword>.<br /><br />A recent research report by the corporate accountability group Ekō, in collaboration with India Civil Watch International, has revealed alarming shortcomings in Meta's ability to detect and block <keyword id="21749265" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="AI-generated-ads" source="keywords">AI-generated ads</keyword> that promote <keyword id="20028741" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="hate-speech" source="keywords">hate speech</keyword>, election disinformation, and incitement to violence. These findings are particularly concerning given the critical election period in India, which several experts have termed as the most important Lok Sabha elections in recent times.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Infiltrating election silence periods" comment="subhead" text="Infiltrating election silence periods"><span data-til="noop">Infiltrating election silence periods</span></cmsannotation><br />The investigation, spanning the third and fourth phases of India's seven-phase election, targeted 189 contentious constituencies during the election's 48-hour "silence period." This period mandates a halt on all election-related advertising, in order to grant citizens some breathing room to make a considered voting decision. However, researchers found that Meta failed to enforce these restrictions, allowing the dissemination of harmful political advertising, mainly by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (<keyword id="14666" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="bjp" source="Orion">BJP</keyword>).<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Type of ads approved by Meta" comment="subhead" text="Type of ads approved by Meta"><span data-til="noop">Type of ads approved by Meta</span></cmsannotation><br />Between May 8-13, the study organisations received publishing approvals for 14 self-submitted highly inflammatory advertisements, meaning that Meta’s auto-check systems were unable to pick up on the posts’ disturbing content. These ads contained violent rhetoric anywhere from targeting Muslim minorities, spreading disinformation by exploiting communal conspiracy theories, and inciting violence through Hindu supremacist narratives. One ad even mimicked a recent AI-doctored video of Home Minister Amit Shah, which had recently gained enough notoriety to sanction arrests of some opposition party members. <br /><br />The approved ads were placed in English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati and Kannada, and mimicked or exaggerated existing Hindu-supremacist propaganda, such as:<br /><ul><li>Ads targeting BJP opposition parties with accusations of Muslim favouritism</li><li>Dog whistles about Muslim “invaders” and calls for violence against <keyword id="20024988" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Muslims" source="keywords">Muslims</keyword></li><li>Narratives claiming electronic voting machine tampering, calling for uprisings</li><li>Hindu supremacist language and calls for burning Muslims</li><li>A call for executing a lawmaker accused of Pakistani allegiance</li><li>Disinformation about affirmative action policies</li></ul>Each ad featured manipulated images created using common AI tools such as Stable Diffusion, <keyword id="20004545" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="midjourney" source="keywords">Midjourney</keyword>, and Dall-e, highlighting how easily AI can amplify harmful content.<br /><br />This news comes despite Meta’s earlier announcements to detect and label AI-generated content to protect the electoral process. Of the total 22 provocative ads that had been submitted to the platform, 14 were reportedly approved within 24 hours, despite them all breaching Meta’s own policies on hate speech, misinformation, and violence.<br /><cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Exploiting Meta's weaknesses" comment="subhead" text="Exploiting Meta's weaknesses"><span data-til="noop">Exploiting Meta's weaknesses</span></cmsannotation><br />The research also highlighted vulnerabilities in Meta’s automated ad review system. When faced with regional roadblocks, researchers managed to simply set up dummy Facebook accounts from outside India to circumvent Meta's security measures and post these ads — including during the silence period. Even in the rare chance that these ads were flagged by the platform, slightly adjusting the content was enough to bypass Meta’s scrutiny, the researchers found. This reveals how easily bad actors can exploit Meta’s platform to spread disinformation and incite violence.<br /><br />Civil society groups, both in India and internationally, have called on Meta to enforce stricter measures during elections, emphasising the need for transparency and accountability. As India continues its electoral process, the need for robust action from social media giants like Meta is more critical than ever to protect democratic integrity and public safety.<br /><br />A comprehensive report of the investigation can be accessed <a href="https://aks3.eko.org/pdf/Meta_AI_ads_investigation.pdf" data-type="tilCustomLink">here</a>.<br />

Facebook parent Meta’s systems fail to block anti-Muslim propaganda advertisements amid ongoing Lok Sabha elections, claims report

<br /> The <keyword id="2219970" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="World-Book-Night">World Book Night</keyword> (now in its fourth year and coincides with the <keyword id="2219971" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="UNESCO-International-Day-of-the-Book">UNESCO International Day of the Book</keyword>) came and went, but did it impact our life in any way? In the UK, 20 titles were selected and thousands of those <keyword id="5050" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="books">books</keyword> were given away for free on the night of <keyword id="6460904" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="April-23">April 23</keyword> to inspire people who “haven’t yet been turned on” to reading. A quick look at the list had us pleasantly surprised. It included the works of <keyword id="210859" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Agatha-Christie">Agatha Christie</keyword>, <keyword id="17397" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Jeffrey-archer">Jeffrey Archer</keyword>, <keyword id="324611" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="John-Grisham">John Grisham</keyword>, <keyword id="241349" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Roald-Dahl">Roald Dahl</keyword>, <keyword id="1367712" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Andy-McNab">Andy McNab</keyword> and others – mostly popular stuff that may actually drive reluctant readers back to the age-old habit of reading.<br />
<br /> And that brings another startling fact to the forefront. If reading less is a global malady, men could be suffering more from it than their female counterparts. No, we are not getting gender-biased here. The findings came from a survey commissioned by the <keyword id="2219978" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Reading-Agency">Reading Agency</keyword> and conducted by <keyword id="2219982" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="OnePoll">OnePoll</keyword>. According to the report, researchers from OnePoll spoke to 2,000 British men and <keyword id="624" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Women">women</keyword> ahead of the World Book Night and it was found that 75% of the men would watch the big screen version of a story, instead of reading the original book. In fact, 30% of the men said they had not read a book after their school days.<br />
<br /> But in spite of all the statistics, reading does change one’s life. They say everyone can write at least one classic – their own life story. Surprisingly enough, we have one such book in our April list – the <keyword id="2219985" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Posthumous-collection">posthumous collection</keyword> of <keyword id="642178" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Essays">essays</keyword> and <keyword id="851600" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="short-stories">short stories</keyword> by a young <keyword id="2219988" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Yale-graduate">Yale graduate</keyword> that has gone viral and read by at least 1.4 million people across 98 countries. That gives us great hope that books (in any format) will never become obsolete. Browse through our list of seven wonder works – analytical, inspirational, <keyword id="820033" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="sublime">sublime</keyword>, but essentially a <keyword id="6374782" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="journey">journey</keyword> towards a changing world order, a look into the changing times.<br />
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<strong>Image:</strong> Thinkstock/Getty Images<br />

April Read: Try These
7 Books To Usher In A Summer Of Change

Prologue: <br /><br /><em>The history of the <keyword id="81273" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="British-Raj" source="Orion">British Raj</keyword> in <keyword id="3658" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="india" source="Orion">India</keyword> is so vast and so full of life that no movie – be it the action-heavy RRR, a gamified Lagaan or even the many passionate Bhagat Singh movies – could scratch the surface of it. </em><br /><br /><em>But an American and a Frenchman paired up to achieve this in their book ‘<keyword id="400044" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Freedom-at-Midnight" source="Orion">Freedom at Midnight</keyword>’. It’s the story of India that many Indians know little about. For years, I have regaled many with the unbelievable anecdotes from the book, which is soon to be made into a web series. </em><br /><br /><em>As we complete <keyword id="2177193" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="75-years-of-independence" source="Orion">75 years of independence</keyword>, I believe a brief summary of this epic is in order for we all need to know the history of how we got here today, breathing free in a country we can call our own. </em><br /><br />      <div type="image" title="India at 75" msid="93508033" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;India at 75&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />A century and a half after Vasco da Gama discovered India, most of Europe had given up bland meals, and now pepper mills are on every dinner table. But India remained a free country only until the 1600s. That’s when Dutch traders decided to raise the rates of a pound of pepper by five shillings — a move that made a cartel of Englishmen receive an official sanction from Queen Elizabeth I to exclusively trade in all countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope. <br /><br />The company, called East India Company (EIC), also the world’s first company to issue equity shares – kickstarted a reign of evil, by a race which believed was ‘destined to govern and subdue’, according to Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s classic Freedom at Midnight.<br /><br />      <div type="image" title="Freedom At Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre" msid="93508039" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Freedom At Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />The wolf of this yet to be formed Wall Street was Captain William Hawkins, a seaman who was more of a pirate than an explorer. He soon found himself in the court of Jahangir, in an empire so vast and wealthy that his own Queen would have appeared to be the ruler of a provincial hamlet in contrast. <br /><br /><strong>Queen, Kipling and memsahibs<br /></strong><br />EIC’s coffers filled but India, with its numerous territories and squabbles, would not let him hold on to their policy of ‘trade not territory’. But white supremacy is to prevail amongst ‘lesser breeds without law’ as Jungle Book writer Rudyard Kipling puts it. Even the British born writer believed that the right to rule Indians was placed on British soldiers by “the inscrutable decree of the providence”. <br /><br />The British shouldered it and region after region was lured by treasures if not treachery, weak and powerful kings won with weak enemies. The great Maratha Shivaji himself was known to have admired the British who fought for their honour, as he laid siege on Surat. <br /><br />Droves of young English men arrived in this strange land – with men in sagging <em>dhotis </em>and bare-armed women in sarees, and travelled the length and breadth of the country into villages with rations and letters that proclaimed their rights. And, they were all taught one principle - The English ran the country but they dwell apart. <br /><br />Memsahibs in India started running a very large version of Downton Abbey – with dinner parties that boasted of a servant per guest. They also set the tone for the Victorian era social seclusion – probably to keep their men away from the exotic temptations of the state. But it also made the British much different from many rulers that made India their home. Also, they were sending away taxes they collected from them back to the crown, as Indians starved. <br /><br />The British in India lived it up, served by <em>coolies</em>, and none were ‘better than Gunga Din’, a poetic character that saves an Englishman. They hunted tigers and killed ‘almost all’ cheetahs, the smallest of the big cats - which are now extinct in India, thanks to the <em>Raj</em>. They were having champagne in silver buckets and golfing, in style – golf arrived in India 30 years before New York. They also built the world’s highest golf course at 11,000 feet on the Himalayas.<br /> <br />Almost a century after India became a British colony directly under the Queen’s rule, after the devastating Second World War, the country’s parliament voted to ‘leave the country’. George VI was sad that he had let go of a country he always wanted to visit but couldn’t. <br /><br />To ensure there was a smooth transfer of power that didn't lead to anarchy, he chose his handsome cousin, who was known as much for his charm as his military prowess. The former trait would serve Louis Mountbatten more than the latter, as he became the lord and the last viceroy of India, as he took over what his predecessor called, ‘Operation Madhouse’. <br /><br />      <div type="image" title="Louis Mountbatten" msid="93508078" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Louis Mountbatten&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br /><strong>The new-age Buddha and Christ</strong> <br /><br />Elsewhere in another continent and another British colony, a young lawyer who was an utter failure in Bombay, landed in South Africa and to his own surprise found success. He profusely read Henry Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy and the Gujarati brain of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was working in wonderful ways. <br /><br />      <div type="image" title="Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi" msid="93508085" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />When the British government irked him by closing Transvaal borders to India, he led a movement of Thoreau’s civil disobedience with over 2,000 people that included women and children. He added his own twist – non-violence and he brought it back to India. <br /><br />Now called Gandhigiri, his principles continue to inspire generations across continents. The man who took a vow of poverty, had held on to his Ingersoll watch for years until it was stolen when he was travelling in a train. He was moved to tears as he told this story with child-like pain to Lord Mountbatten, but his loss was short-lived. The man who stole it, returned it and begged his forgiveness – which was given with a hug and a chuckle. <br /><br />Gandhigiri had taken over India at the time of Mountbatten’s arrival. Mountbatten knew that this man who Winston Churchill sneered at, ‘as a half-naked fakir’ was not to be taken lightly. After all, Gandhi had already sent back Sir Richard Cripps without a deal, refusing UK’s offer during the war to rule India as a British dominion. <br /><br /><strong>Goat curd and surgical precision</strong> <br /><br />Mountbatten called it Operation Seduction and while he forged a great friendship with Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi was another soul altogether. He insisted on eating his own goat curd at the Viceroy House, took prayer breaks and insisted that India should remain one – keep the baby alive instead of cutting it into two. <br /><br />Jinnah, however, was all vanity, which was deeply hurt when he received fewer seats during the 1937 provincial elections. He demanded a Muslim state. India would be divided with surgical precision, he promised Mountbatten. <br /><br />The King’s cousin, the book says, dealt with him like a sailor rather than a statesman but Mountbatten knew that he could not move the unmoved, and most of Congress were in favour of two nations.<br /><br /><strong>Rooms full of rubies and a pen pistol</strong><br /><br />But it took India’s iron man, Vallabhai Patel, to keep the rest of India intact and convince over 500 rajas, princes, nawabs and nizams as they called themselves to shift their allegiance from the crown to the nation. Stronger than the unity statue built in his honour, Patel continued summing up a case for the jury even after he was handed a note saying that his wife passed away.<br /><br />        <div type="image" title="The Statue Of Unity" msid="93508178" hostid="261" sizebytes="162276" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The Statue Of Unity&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />Patel and the career bureaucrat, V.P. Menon, executed their operation seduction to gain control over men who were already seduced by sex, sport and the worst of all maladies - boredom. <br /><br /><br />Most of them amused themselves with Lancaster pistols made of solid gold, rubies the size of pigeon eggs and working train sets on silver rails. The Jeff Bezos of that time, known to be the world’s richest, was the Nizam of Hyderabad, who had rooms full of precious stones eaten away by rats as the miser spent nothing and resorted to smoking the leftover cigarette butts of his departed guests! <br /><br />Most of the eccentric rajas sided with India – even Hari Singh of Kashmir, who wanted to be independent, was worn down by logic that a landlocked state would forever remain in a state of war. But the young Maharaja of Jodhpur, certain that his lavish life wouldn’t be approved by the Congress socialists, tried to go over to Jinnah’s side. But Menon’s watchful spies got wind of it, cornered him, and the Maharaja held a pen-pistol to the bureaucrat's forehead until Mountbatten confiscated it – and used it later to liven parties back home.<br /><br /><strong>Cursed by the stars</strong> <br /><br />Mountbatten was warned by the most popular astrologist of the time that August 15, 1947 was a ‘day cursed by stars’. He, however, chose sentiment over astrology – the date was the anniversary of the day Burma won against Japan, a war he was part of. <br /><br />It wasn’t just the viceroy, even Nehru and Jinnah did not see the bloodbath that followed. What stopped them from seeing what was to come was their own tolerance and atheism. Communal passions ran so high and so deep that right after the Union Jack came off the Viceroy house, Punjab and Bengal fell into a riotous rage – something a wily Gandhi always knew. That’s why the 78-year-old spent the midnight far away from the celebrations, spinning and lamenting the night India became independent, 75 years back.<br /><br />Before we let you go, here's what we like you to know-Innovaccer's solutions have been transforming the healthcare industry their unique approach to data analytics. Sandeep Gupta Co-Founder and COO, Innovaccer details this scion's growth as they continue to make healthcare data accessible, useful and transformative.<br />Register Now: <a href="https://saasscions.com/" target="_blank">https://saasscions.com/</a><br /><br />      <div type="image" title="Business Insider India brings you SaaS Scions" msid="93508208" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Business Insider India brings you SaaS Scions&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div><br />

SIMPLY PUT: What happened before India got Freedom at Midnight

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Trump-United-States-India/c635706bb5144bec9386352d86f2a0ea/17/0">Susan Walsh/AP</a></span></p><p class="caption">President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hug in the White House Rose Garden on June 26, 2017.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>The Indian government has repeatedly accused news outlets, including the BBC and Reuters, of reporting fake news about the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/kashmir">ongoing Kashmir crisis</a>.</strong></li><li><strong>Among other stories, those outlets reported that Indian security forces had shot at civilians with pellet guns and tortured people for information.</strong></li><li><strong><span style="background-color: #ffffff;">Indian officials are widely believed </span>to have intimidated newsrooms and academics into not publishing their critical work, and paid people to troll critics online for years.</strong></li><li><strong>Experts told Insider this climate of fear has ramped up since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, and has also been encouraged by US President Donald Trump.</strong></li><li><strong>"Targeting the freedom of the press is a popular tactic used by authoritarian regimes to govern through fear," Angana Chatterji from the University of California, Berkeley, told Insider.</strong></li><li><strong>Insider reporters have received an uncommon number of inflammatory and abusive messages on Twitter and email accusing them of "fake news" and promoting "jihadi propaganda" after writing about Kashmir.</strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</strong></li></ul><p>The Indian government is taking a page out of President Donald Trump's playbook by relentlessly accusing journalists of publishing false reports about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/kashmir">the situation in Kashmir</a>, where millions of people have been cut off from the internet and the outside world for over five weeks.</p><p>Indian authorities have imposed a state-wide internet and phone blackout in the disputed region of Kashmir since the beginning of August, which has seen ordinary people <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-blackout-locals-dont-know-india-revoked-autonomy-report-2019-8">unable to access the news</a> or communicate with people outside the region.</p><p>As of September 6, more than 3,800 people - including prominent local politicians - in the region have been arrested, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-detentions/thousands-detained-in-indian-kashmir-crackdown-official-data-reveals-idUSKCN1VX142">Reuters reported</a>.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Men with pellet injuries being treated in Srinagar, a major city in Jammu and Kashmir state, on August 14, 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Security forces have <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-man-blinded-pellets-police-insist-no-major-injuries-2019-8">shot at people with pellet guns</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-villagers-allege-beatings-abuse-electric-shock-india-denies-2019-8">tortured people living in villages known to be hubs</a> of anti-India militancy by beating them with sticks, giving them electric shocks, and filling their mouths with mud, multiple journalists on the ground have reported.</p><p>India's crackdown came after it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-india-revoke-article-370-quasi-independence-internet-tourists-2019-8">removed a constitutional provision</a> in early August which guaranteed the independence of the Jammu and Kashmir region to make its own laws, and prevented outsiders from buying property in the mostly-Muslim region.</p><p>India has repeatedly shut down all of these reports, resorting to the widely-used refrain that the journalists were falsely reporting the news, even when there was video footage of the events transpiring. Here are a few instances:</p><ul><li>After the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/49306816/article-370-tear-gas-at-kashmir-rally-india-denies-happened">shot video footage</a> of thousands of people in Srinagar, a major city in Kashmir, demonstrating against India on August 10, the Indian government denied the protest ever happened.</li><li>On August 10, Indian Ministry of Home Affairs spokeswoman Vasudha Gupta tweeted that a <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-india-kashmir/thousands-protest-in-indian-kashmir-over-new-status-despite-clampdown-idUKKCN1UZ0OV">Reuters report</a> that said Indian police used tear gas and pellets to disperse the Srinagar protests - based on the testimony of a police officer and two witnesses - was "<a href="https://twitter.com/PIBHomeAffairs/status/1160081078486368256">completely fabricated &amp; incorrect</a>."</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-villagers-allege-beatings-abuse-electric-shock-india-denies-2019-8">The Indian army denied multiple allegations</a> of torture outlined in a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49481180">BBC report from Kashmir</a> on August 29, calling them "baseless and unsubstantiated."</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-man-blinded-pellets-police-insist-no-major-injuries-2019-8">Kashmiri police shot down a CNN report</a>, also published August 29, which <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/28/asia/kashmir-survival-pellet-wounds-intl-hnk/index.html">cited a Srinagar resident</a> as saying he was blinded in one eye after being hit by three pellets, and a local hospital's eye unit as saying that it's treated at least 30 victims of pellet injuries that month. Police claimed that there had been "no major injuries to anybody," save for "a few pellet injuries, who were treated and sent back."</li></ul><p><strong><em>Read more:</em></strong><em> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-villagers-allege-beatings-abuse-electric-shock-india-denies-2019-8">Kashmiris say Indian officers tortured them and shoved mud in their mouths so they couldn't scream. The army denies it ever happened.</a></em></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Adnan Abidi/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Kashmiri protesters run for cover as Indian security forces fire teargas at them in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir state, on August 23, 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>India has been screaming 'fake news' for decades</h2><p>The Indian government resorting to fake-news accusations is nothing new - in fact, the government and its supporters have used this refrain for years. And it's only getting worse.</p><p>In 2014, the Press Council of India - the government's <keyword id="6354777" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Media">media</keyword> watchdog - denounced the reporting of mass rapes in 1991 by Indian security forces in the Kashmiri villages of Kunan and Poshpora as "<a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/kunan-poshpora-rape-charges-baseless/story-e4EzYdSFmxnax6Kna0rogM.html">baseless</a>," even as multiple women came out with allegations.</p><p>Earlier this year, the Indian government also <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-slams-un-rights-office-report-on-jk-as-continuation-of-false-narrative/articleshow/70127923.cms">slammed</a> an official UN report on Kashmir as a "false and motivated narrative" that violated the country's sovereignty. India has for decades maintained that only Pakistan and itself can be involved in Kashmir's issues.</p><p>These denials are working in India, where the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is growing increasingly authoritarian.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p><p class="caption"> Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi in June 2019. </p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>India's climate of fear</h2><p>The Indian government is widely believed to employ an army of online trolls who attack journalists and critics online, as well as pressure people into reporting favorable coverage only.</p><p>It has never openly admitted to this, but circumstantial evidence all but confirms it. The government spent more than 52 billion rupees ($728 million) on pro-BJP ads and social-media posts between 2014 and 2018, India's <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/govt-has-spent-over-rs-5200-cr-in-ads-since-2014-15-rathore-in-ls/articleshow/67077392.cms">Economic Times reported</a>.</p><p>The BJP also hires hundreds of thousands of people to recruit voters via phone and door knocks, ultimately helping build "the most extraordinary personality cult in modern Indian history," Indian politician <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/narendra-modi-india-election-personality-cult-by-shashi-tharoor-2019-05">Shashi Tharoor said</a>.</p><p>"The government denies something on one level, and then its army of trolls and people in [civil] society follow," Hafsa Kanjwal, a South Asia and Kashmir expert and assistant professor at Lafayette College, told Insider.</p><p>"Basically if you question that, they say that you're being anti-national, or you're putting India at risk by questioning the state narrative, or that you're falling into Pakistan. They use these age-old tropes to bring people into line."</p><p>Insider has received an uncommon number of inflammatory and abusive messages on Twitter and email accusing this reporter and another at Insider writing about Kashmir of publishing "jihadi propaganda" and "fake news," and of being paid to report critical news on the region. </p><p>Insider is unable to confirm whether such messages are in any way directly linked with reports of state-sponsored trolls.</p><p>Arvind Rajagopal, a media studies professor at New York University, also told Insider: "I've seen several thousand people being employed to post BJP-friendly messages online and make life difficult for their opponents."</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Adnan Abidi/Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Smoke rises from teargas shells fired by Indian security forces in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir state, on August 23, 2019.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Civil institutions like universities and newsrooms are intimidated into silence. Researchers have told of advisers not allowing them to say anything too critical of the government, and critical reports being censored.</p><p>"Basically the media are terrified now of saying anything the government doesn't want them to say because they get attacked not necessarily online, they get attacked behind the scenes," Rajagopal said. "They get telephone calls from the prime minister's office saying: 'What do you think you're doing?'"</p><p>Those who do speak out are publicly smeared in an effort to intimidate them into silence.</p><p>For example, Indian investigative journalist Rana Ayyub, wrote a <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gujarat-Files-Anatomy-cover-up/dp/1533341524">book</a> about a state government cover-up concerning the 2002 Gujarati Riots, which left over 1,000 people dead.</p><p>Ayyub <a href="https://medium.com/global-editors-network/rana-ayyub-on-online-harassment-in-india-i-get-daily-rape-death-threats-c970f542e554">described in an interview with the Global Editors Network</a> getting daily rape and death threats, being doxxed, and having her image superimposed on a viral porn video after her critical work was published.</p><p>Kanjwal said: "The government finds a way to send a message across and let people know that if they push back against this narrative, then they'll make it very difficult for them."</p><p>She and Rajagopal both said, in separate conversations with Insider, that they personally know Indian academics who have been smeared or intimidated into silence.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p><p class="caption">Kashmiri residents throw stones at Indian security forces during protests.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The ongoing lockdown and communications blackout in Kashmir is also making it difficult for reporters to travel around the region and to file stories online.</p><p>Ordinary citizens are also unable to access the news online. Shortly after the blackout many <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kashmir-blackout-locals-dont-know-india-revoked-autonomy-report-2019-8">didn't even know that India rewrote its constitution</a>, Kashmiri journalist Fahad Shah <a href="https://time.com/5646005/inside-kashmir-communication-shutdown/">wrote in TIME</a> last month.</p><p>"Exerting harsh control over communications is being used to influence the public's impression and experience of governance," Angana Chatterji, the co-chair of University of California, Berkeley's Political Conflict, Gender and People's Rights Initiative, told Insider.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Greater Kashmir</span></p><p class="caption">The local Greater Kashmir daily newspaper's front page as on September 16, 2019. The front page has been blank since early August.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Trump is encouraging this 'textbook fascist' behavior</h2><p>Though this behavior has existed long before Trump and Modi, the US president's arrival on the world stage has encouraged it, experts say.</p><p>"There are so many similarities in general between an ideology like Trump's and Modi's, which is exclusivist, relies on fear of the other, which doesn't address real issues that people are going through but distract people," Kanjwal said.</p><p>"It's very textbook fascist."</p><p>Other countries with strong-willed authoritarian leaders have also launched attacks on critical journalists and intellectuals who they see as threatening their hold on power:</p><ul><li>Under President Xi Jinping, Chinese officials have routinely clamped down on reporting on the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/xinjiang">oppressed Uighur Muslim minority</a> by repeatedly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/05/fake-news-china-dismisses-reports-about-detention-of-uighurs">denying</a> reports of their forced incarceration and claiming that the detentions are "free vocational training."</li><li>Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fake-news-exporter-bans-putin-bill-2019-3">one of the world's premier sources of fake news</a>, and hosts campaigns that aim to spread misinformation around the world.</li><li>Pro-government newspapers in Turkey have <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46137139">published hundreds of false stories</a> and <a href="https://observers.france24.com/en/20160718-turkey-coup-attempt-fake-images">doctored photographs</a> about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's opponents.</li><li>Critical media outlets in the Philippines, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3003752/philippines-arrests-rappler-co-founder-journalist-maria">such as Rappler</a>, have been hit with multiple criminal charges and arrests under President Rodrigo Duterte.</li></ul><p>"There is a growing authoritarianism within [these] countries that rely on similar strategies of suppressing dissent or trying to undermine these [civic] institutions," Kanjwal said.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Carlos Barria/Reuters; Leah Millis/Reuters; Jacquelyn Martin/AP</span></p><p class="caption">A composite image of Modi, Trump, and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><h2>Will this ever end?</h2><p>Experts say these scare tactics are likely to continue in India, where the strategy of cowing critics into silence is working.</p><p>Despite being one of the world's largest democracies, a large portion of ordinary Indians tow the party line because of the traditional lack of political discourse in the country, Rajagopal said.</p><p>"At some level it's about the latency of India's political democracy and the lack of a deep tradition of debate, arguments, and public disagreement," he said.</p><p>"There is a cultural aspect to this conformism, which is basically an unwillingness to publicly disagree and a willingness to bury your disagreement - which is really the response of an old colonized population."</p><p>Chatterji added: "Targeting the freedom of the press is a popular tactic used by authoritarian regimes to govern through fear.</p><p>"In India, this is likely to continue, and perhaps even escalate, under a majoritarian government."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reporter-luke-harding-explains-life-under-fsb-surveillance-2017-12">A reporter who lived in Russia for 4 years reveals what it was like being stalked by Russian spies</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

India is replaying Trump's favorite strategy by accusing the media of fake news in Kashmir, where it cut off the internet and tried to silence journalists

<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><span><span data-post-image="" class="image on-image"></span><p></p></span></span>In 1906, in a lodging house for Indian students in Highgate, a pleasant area of north London, a young lawyer called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi dropped in on a law student called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who happened to be frying prawns at the time. Savarkar offered Gandhi some of his meal; Gandhi, a vegetarian, refused. Savarkar allegedly retorted that only a fool would attempt to resist the British without being fortified by animal protein.</p>
<p>The meeting is said to have begun hostilities between the two young Indian nationalists; whether or not the story is apocryphal, there were real reasons for antipathy.</p>
<p>The two men had very different approaches to the struggle against Britain. Gandhi, who became leader of the Indian National Congress (INC), was a pacifist with an inclusive attitude towards Muslims and Christians. Savarkar, who would lead the Hindu Mahasabha, was a right-wing majoritarian who spawned the idea of hindutva, or Hindu-ness--the belief that the Hindu identity is inseparable from the Indian identity. Congress eclipsed the Mahasabha and, since history belongs to the victors, the story of India's independence movement became one of non-violence. But the strand of thought that Savarkar represented was more important than is generally recognised, and is enjoying a revival.</p>
<p>A member of the Mahasabha broke away to form the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or national volunteer organisation, in 1925, modelled, some say, on the British army. A social rather than explicitly political organisation, it presented itself as the world's largest non-governmental group, in which like-minded, khaki-uniformed men could gather for dawn calisthenics. It recruited boys at an impressionable age, as the Jesuits did, the better to inculcate them with discipline and with passion for the cause. One such was the eight-year-old Narendra Modi. The future prime minister attended training sessions with the RSS, was subsequently inducted as a cadet, and in 1985 was assigned by the RSS to its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he rose to lead.</p>
<p>Mr Modi is India's strongest leader since Indira Gandhi, and its most controversial. The source of controversy is his failure in 2002, when chief minister of Gujarat, to avert a massacre of Muslims, which opponents attribute to a hostility to Muslims born of the ideology that Savarkar spawned. Mr Modi has never apologised for the massacre, though he said last year that he felt regret over them, as he would at seeing a puppy run over in the street. Nor has he made any attempt to distance himself from the RSS.</p>
<p>The RSS, meanwhile, is becoming more overtly political. Mohan Bhagwat, its current leader, is somewhat in the mould of Savarkar, paraphrasing his beliefs and promoting Hindutva. In August this year Mr Bhagwat directly echoed Savarkar by saying all who live in "Hindustan" are in fact Hindus, whatever Muslims, Christians or secular Hindus might say. More striking, the RSS leader has switched the organisation's methods. Now, far from eschewing party politics, the group has become an enthusiastic and effective actor within it. The RSS's millions of members and volunteers (no one knows just how many active ones there really are) played a big role in electing the BJP by a landslide in 2014. At least 19 ministers in government, including Mr Modi, have a background in the RSS. Its leaders are seconded to senior posts in the party too. So the ideas of the man who inspired the RSS matter more than ever before.</p>
<h3>The naked jumper</h3>
<p>The lawyer described by a British official in 1906 as "a small man with an intelligent face and a nervous manner" does not sound like the muscular hero that Indian nationalists crave, but Savarkar clearly had a certain dash. In 1910, while he was in London, he was charged with conspiring to wage war against the king and with providing weapons used to assassinate a Briton in the Indian civil service, sentenced to two life terms--50 years--in jail and sent back to India. While the steamship "Morea" was berthed in Marseille harbour, he slipped away from his guards, leapt, almost naked, into the sea and swam ashore. Unfortunately for the eulogists, he was promptly caught by French police and bundled back to the ship.</p>
<p>His daring did, however, win him fame, and also created legal history. France's government, annoyed that Britain had overseen an arrest on its territory, wanted Savarkar returned. Britain refused so the matter went to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It ruled his arrest was indeed "irregular", but decided Savarkar might as well stay in India. The case was one of the earliest heard by the tribunal.</p>
<p>Savarkar's next stop was the Andaman Islands--a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. This palm-fringed tropical paradise served as a penal colony for the British. Cellular Jail in the capital, Port Blair, is now a memorial for freedom campaigners. In a park opposite stands a row of statues of independence heroes. One is of a slender man with a pinched face behind round spectacles. A pen protrudes from his jacket pocket, one hand rests on a part-furled umbrella and the other wags a finger at the sky. You might mistake him for a prissy bank manager, but a plaque identifies him as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. The park is named after him.</p>
<p>Ranjit Savarkar, his great-nephew, who runs the Savarkar trust, says that he showed great fortitude in jail. A trained yogi, he overcame thoughts of suicide. Other inmates nicknamed him "Barrister Babu", for his London legal training. Already a published historian and poet, he used Cellular Jail to work on his writing--literally: he wrote on its walls. He spent a decade there before being moved to the mainland in 1921. He was subsequently freed, after pledging to keep out of politics--a promise which the ideology he was developing in jail suggests he did not intend to keep.</p>
<p>A fierce nationalist, he adored Guiseppe Mazzini, who fought for the unification of Italy, writing about him in the hope of inspiring resistance to the British in India. Savarkar believed that India is really composed of, and must only be run by, Hindus. In his 1924 book, "Hindutva", he drew on cultural, philosophical and religious practices of ancient Hinduism, a rich faith that allows immense variety in how it is followed. But he also distinguished the ideology of hindutva--an attempt to unite disparate Hindus in a political project--from the religion. He himself was an atheist, and disapproved of aspects of traditional Hindu belief, dismissing cow worship as superstitious--a stance that would upset many today. He was an early outspoken opponent of caste discrimination. In the 1920s and 1930s others among the emerging Indian political elite opposed "untouchability", the rejection as sub-human of those considered "below caste". But Savarkar went further, saying modern India should drop altogether the idea of dividing people by caste.</p>
<p>His attitude towards Muslims, who made up a quarter of the population before partition, and other non-Hindus was less liberal. He regarded them as alien and separate, in effect not as real Indians. He was fiercely opposed to the formation of Pakistan and what his great-nephew calls the "appeasement" of Muslims. He believed that they, along with the Europeans, had crushed Hindus for a millennium--a sentiment echoed by Mr Modi in an address to parliament after his election this year, when he spoke of ending "1,200 years of slave mentality" in India.</p>
<p>Aside from his view of Muslims, the big difference between Savarkar and the nationalists in the INC lay in their contrasting attitudes to violence. He also wrote one of the first Indian accounts of the uprising in 1857, centred in Delhi. Known as the "Mutiny" to the British, it is referred to by many Indians as the "first war of independence"--echoing the title of Savarkar's book, "The Indian War of Independence". It was a gruesome episode, in which hundreds of thousands were killed, but Savarkar was untroubled by the violence, and seemed to justify the murders of British women and children. His works are steeped in a desire for revenge against those who have humiliated Hindus, and his frustration with the passivity of his co-religionists: "I want all Hindus to get themselves re-animated and re-born into a martial race." In his early years, he circulated manuals on bomb making. He approved of--and probably assisted in--the assassination of colonial administrators. He was suspected, for example, of encouraging a student radical who shot dead Sir Curzon Wyllie, a government official, one summer night on a Kensington street in 1909.</p>
<h3>Rewriting history</h3>
<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container"><span data-post-image="" class="image on-image"></span><p></p></span></p>
<p>Today, some Indians adulate him. On the day your correspondent called in at Cellular Jail, a party of jovial men in their 80s and 90s, an official "Eminent Committee of Freedom Fighters", was also visiting. Among the last surviving veterans who battled the British in the Quit India movement in the 1940s, they raised gnarled fists to chant "Jai Hind", posed for pictures and praised Savarkar as strong. The local MP called veer (brave) Savarkar a "ferocious, dangerous man who frightened off the British". Rashida Iqbal, the jail's curator, assessed him as "one of the most important freedom fighters". Port Blair's airport, like the park, bears his name. Some 2,000km away, in his native Maharashtra, a street and a park in Mumbai also each carry his name. (In London a blue plaque identifies his former home in Highgate.)</p>
<p>Savarkar's enthusiasm for violence sits uncomfortably with conventional ideas of how India got its independence. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and then the Congress party (successor to the INC) promoted a pacifist narrative of history, the idea that Gandhi and the likes of B.R. Ambedkar, a social reformer who inspired the Modern Buddhist Movement, triumphed through non-violent resistance. That meant downplaying the bloodshed of 1857, in which atrocities were perpetrated by both sides, and also the roles of Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel.</p>
<p>Bose, the Bengali leader of an Indian National Army against the British in the second world war and an ally of Hitler and imperial Japan, led some 40,000 soldiers against the British. (He didn't get far, though the Japanese briefly handed him control of the Andamans.) Patel, the "Iron Man of India", had the Bismarckian task of uniting the country. He oversaw the integration of 562 princely states into India, threatening and using military force. Operation Polo in 1948, a five-day conquest of Hyderabad, a wealthy and Muslim-run state in the south, was bloody indeed. Official estimates, only made public in 2013, suggest the fighting and subsequent Hindu-Muslim clashes there killed between 27,000 and 40,000 people. Some historians claim the real toll might have been five times higher.</p>
<p>The way the story of Indian independence is told is beginning to change. Mr Modi and the BJP are keen to celebrate muscular, nationalist figures. Patel is likely to have a much higher profile in future: in the national budget, in July 2014, the government set aside $32m to erect a statue of him in Gujarat, twice the size of the Statue of Liberty, by 2018. And while Mr Modi frequently invokes Gandhi's name and beliefs, he refers almost as often to Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century nationalist who revived Hinduism and promoted it abroad. Mr Modi is said to be named after him (the swami was originally called Narendra Nath Datta) and frequently poses before his photograph. Vivekananda's ideas on invigorating Hinduism foreshadowed Savarkar's hindutva project.</p>
<p>Savarkar's profile is lower, but is also rising. Educational comics, hagiographies and patriotic films retell parts of his life story. In 2008 Mr Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, inaugurated a website (savarkar.org) that promotes a man "largely unknown to the masses because of the vicious propaganda against him and misunderstanding around him that has been created over several decades", and in 2012 he launched a Gujarati-language biopic. A previous BJP-led government put Savarkar's portrait in parliament. On his birthday this year, May 28th, the prime minister paid homage to him there. Mr Modi tweeted about Savarkar's "tireless efforts towards the regeneration of our motherland". Ranjit Savarkar's group plans various events to mark the 50th anniversary of Savarkar's death in 1966. (Aged 83, he submitted to what he called atmaarpan--refusing food, water or medicine in order to die. It took 20 days.)</p>
<p>Yet Savarkar remains immensely divisive. He was a fiercely outspoken critic of Gandhi, still India's top national hero: he called Gandhi weak, a "sissy" and far too willing to collaborate with Britain. Gandhian talk of man's common humanity he regarded as utopian to the point of naivety. In articles from the 1920s to the 1940s Savarkar lambasted Gandhi as a "crazy lunatic" who "happens to babble...[about] compassion, forgiveness", yet "notwithstanding his sublime and broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head." Gandhi promoted ahimsa, a Buddhist rejection of violence which Savarkar called "mealy-mouthed". He said Gandhi was a hypocrite for supporting violence by the British against Germany in the first world war. Nor did he cheer Gandhi's prominent backing for the Ottoman Caliphate Movement, designed to win Indian Muslims to oppose British colonial rule.</p>
<p>Over the years, Savarkar was eclipsed by his rival. During the 1920s and 1930s, the INC benefited from its ability to claim plausibly that it spoke for Muslims as well as Hindus, which made it a more credible interlocutor with the colonial authorities. Perhaps more important, it had an impressive organisation and, in Gandhi and later in Nehru, accomplished political leaders.</p>
<p>By the mid 1940s Savarkar and his supporters in the Mahasabha (which he led until his death) had a new gripe against Gandhi. They were enraged at the prospect of Pakistan seceding from India. Gandhi, in their eyes, did nothing to stop that "vivisection". Worse, he seemed to favour Pakistan when it sent forces to violently seize Kashmir, evidence to Savarkar that warlike Muslims were again crushing passive Hindus. When Nehru applied economic sanctions on Pakistan (refusing to pass on its share of central-bank funds from before independence), Gandhi launched a fast in protest and forced him to back down. To Savarkar's followers in the Mahasabha, that constituted national betrayal.</p>
<p>On January 30th 1948 Gandhi was assassinated in Delhi. The killer, Nathuram Godse, was a member of the Mahasabha, edited its newspaper and was an associate of Savarkar's. Godse's explanation of his actions echoed Savarkar: he said he murdered Gandhi for his "false notions of Hindu-Muslim unity" and in fury over the secession of Pakistan. Savarkar was arrested and tried as a plotter in the murder. He denied all and was acquitted. That did not convince everybody. As the leader of the Mahasabha, who had praised the efficacy of violence and railed against Muslims, it was reasonable to suspect he had at least inspired Gandhi's killer. A.G. Noorani, author of a book on Savarkar and Godse, goes further. He draws a parallel to the Kensington murder of Wylie in 1909, saying the elder man had twice pressed others to pull the trigger. "I would definitely call him complicit in the assassination of Gandhi," he concludes. He points, too, to an official commission of inquiry into Gandhi's death, in the late 1960s, which drew on testimony unavailable at the original trial. It found the evidence was "destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group". Following Gandhi's murder the RSS was also banned, for a year. Yet the final reason why Savarkar should remain unacceptable in modern India goes beyond suspicion over Gandhi's murder. It lies in his attitude to his fellow, non-Hindu, Indians. In his own writing he relates joyfully how as a 12-year-old boy he led a gang of schoolmates to stone his village mosque and smash its windows and tiles, in the aftermath of Hindu-Muslim riots. Relating how "we vandalised the mosque to our heart's content", he adds that when confronted by Muslim boys, he and his pals wielded knives and sticks and chased them away.</p>
<p>Throughout his writing he sets out Muslims as savage, immoral, sensual and eager to destroy the Hindu way of life. In 1937 he wrote of there being "two antagonistic nations living side by side in India", an idea that relies on using religion as the defining characteristic of any Indian, one utterly against the secular constitution of India. And while he occasionally wrote admiringly of the political and religious fervour of Islam, or rather of Muslim political leaders, he did so to encourage his fellow Hindus to match or exceed it.</p>
<p>In India today the fear of communal clashes--between Hindus and Muslims--should not be overblown. But it is never far away. Especially before elections, parties exploit religious tensions. Those who promote hindutva and echo Savarkar whip up stories of "love jihad", alleging that Muslim men convert large numbers of Hindu women by seducing them. Earlier this month a BJP parliamentarian praised Godse as a "patriot" equal to Gandhi. Members of the increasingly influential RSS feel emboldened. Such majoritarian politics, when a larger religious group sets out to absorb or flatten a minority, is utterly destructive. One need only look at the failure of Pakistan as a reminder of that. Sarvarkar could be a brilliant, eloquent and progressive leader. He could also be extremist, violent and divisive. If his influence grows, India's tolerance and moderation will be at risk.</p>
<p>"Notwithstanding his...broad heart, the Mahatma has a very narrow and immature head," wrote Savarkar</p>
<p>&#xa0;</p>
<p>Savarkar (back row, second left) was arrested and tried as a plotter in Gandhi's murder. He was acquitted</p>
<p>&#xa0;</p>
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