Is Saina Nehwal anti-national or this government?
The Indian patriotic nationalist believes in being a patriotic nationalist only when the narrative is convenient to him or her. They believe in selective outrage, random trolling and blindly ignoring facts that would otherwise just simply destroy their argument. And as always, anyone who points this fallacy is also, surprise surprise, an anti-national scumbag.
The prime minister’s Make In India plan has led to a lot of blind supporters spreading propaganda about discarding Chinese products in a bid to boost India’s manufacturing sector. These “facts” of course, completely ignore global economics, India’s export-import model and just plainly, the vacuum that would be created, if we wholeheartedly shun Chinese involvement in our economy.
Only a month ago, while the nationalist patriots were busy outraging against the import of Pakistani artists in India, they conveniently ignored the product that India imports from Pakistan: Ajwain seeds. In the year of 2016 alone, India has imported 247.285 metric tonnes of ajwain seeds from our troublesome neighbour. But of course, Fawad Khan is the bigger issue.
The latest incident in this mind-bogglingly blind fanaticism Indians have with nationalism is attacks on India’s badminton champ Saina Nehwal. What did she do? Saina Nehwal posted a picture of herself with her phone with the highly unpatriotic caption “My new Honor 8 phone …… love the phone and the colour”.
Let that sink in.
Clearly, the badminton star was too busy taking great selfies, because she managed to not learn anything from the 10,000 odd WhatsApp messages an average Indian receives on their family group on a daily basis, warning them about the dangers of the insidious Chinese economy. But that’s alright because even though it’s a Chinese company, Huawei’s Honor 8 is decent enough smartphone that’s affordable and real (did you hear that Freedom 251? That’s right; this is a taunt on you).
Of course, this did not go down well with the herds of Indian sheep cleverly disguised as human beings who berated an Indian sportswoman (who, by the way, has brought more glory to this nation that all of these so-called nationalists combined) for openly endorsing a Chinese product in these troubled times.
“Kindly dont promote Chines product...its dangerous for our nation.”
“Saina please dnt use r promote bloody Chinese goods.... We have lo of respect for u. Please kickoff those bloody Chinese goods”
“Ur buy this product is China. Please feel sad for buying this mobile. ....”
“I am so disappointed from Indian princesses promoting Chinese products. Kindly refrain from doing so.”
“I am your fan, but if you say buy China product am not. I will say stop this nonsense,”
These are but, a few of the lot of people criticising her choice of a smartphone purely on the basis of the country that manufactures it. Let us just analyse the idea here for a moment. The use of any Chinese product makes you someone who empowers the Chinese economy. Ergo, anyone endorsing a Chinese product or company is someone who wants their economy to grow stronger. That is what makes them an anti-national piece-of-trash. Good that we cleared that out.
Because by that logic, the government of India has been nothing but complicit in the act of boosting the Chinese economy. So, is Narendra Modi anti-national?
Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s announcement on December 8, to install two point of sale (PoS) machines in over 1 lakh villages with a population of less than 10,000, has sent banks running amok in search of the required technology. According to a BloombergQuint report, the largest providers of PoS machines are two overseas firms - Verifone and Ingenico, who control nearly 80 per cent of the market, manufacture in China.
“The banking sector in total has placed orders for six lakh terminals out of which we (SBI) are ordering two lakh PoS machines after the government’s directive” said Rajnish Kumar, managing director, State Bank of India.
Wonder if that makes everyone from Arun Jaitley to the State Bank of India anti-national?
Another count on which the government could be called out for its supposed lack of patriotism is the prime minister continual push for mobile wallets. While most economists have called the demonetisation drive a monumental failure in planning and execution, the prime minster, a defiant man, has continued to back it up without any real data to support him. In fact, he has quite openly pushed for the use of mobile wallets like Paytm or Freecharge.
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| Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet brand, is owned partly by a Chinese company. [Photo: Indiatoday.in] |
Paytm, a company that has seen nothing but gains since the November 8 announcement, has made no efforts to hide its apparent glee. But fun fact: Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet brand, is owned partly by a Chinese company.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, a Chinese e-commerce company that provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals, and its affiliate Ant Financial have invested close to $680 million into Paytm's parent company One97 Communications last year. At present Alibaba’s shareholding in the company stands at an astounding 40 per cent; this, according to reports, can go up to 70 per cent in the near future.
Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma may claim that he’s as Indian as Maruti, but the numbers don’t lie, do they?
So, while people are completely free to call out a award-winning badminton player out for endorsing a China-manufactured phone, they should also, in the same spirit, call out these Indians who are doing their bit, happily, to lift the Chinese economy a bit more.