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Newslaundry
Newslaundry
National
NL Team

Hafta letters: Minorities in Bangladesh, Shehla Rashid interview, dealing with smog

Raman sir, I've always appreciated your presence and perspective on Hafta. Finding out you're a Liverpool fan made me a bigger fan of you. YNWA. 

ST

Persecution of minorities in any country – be it India, Bangladesh, Myanmar or any state – is bad and should not happen. But we human beings are very hypocritical and deranged. In case we are in minority and face oppression and persecution and decry about it, and when the situation changes and we become the majority, we similarly oppress and persecute the minorities under us.

For example, we Muslims are a minority in India and are facing challenges regarding it by the majority Hindu. But in Bangladesh, we are in majority but are oppressing the Hindu minorities. Just a question – now what will Amit Shah, Modiji, Assam CM say if minority Hindus migrate to India because of persecution in Bangladesh and settle in Assam or Chhattisgarh or Manipur?

Farqul

***
Hafta 513: Did you really have to talk about Musk’s media comment? Thought it was such a waste of time. 

Sunita

Hi guys,

A subscriber letter in this episode talked about Democrats being “too woke”. There was a fantastic section in Jon Stewart’s election debrief on this please see here (8.16 onwards).

Good luck on the campaign on Delhi's air pollution crisis, I would like to offer support on research on this if needed, please feel free to reach out (pro bono).

Best wishes,

Saanaee

Hi Abhinandan, writing to share my appreciation for how the interviews with Shalini Passi and Shahla Rashid were conducted. It reminded me of one you did with Major Gen GD Bakshi some years ago. These are people with polarising public images and it would be all too easy to enter the conversation from a place of ridicule, but I liked the balance between space to speak as well as challenging some of their more ridiculous opinions that came across in the interview. There was something to learn in how to have a proper conversation with someone I may disagree with vehemently. Looking forward to more. 

Thanks as always, 

Salman 

Dear Abhi uncle,

The Delhi situation you and others discuss every year is similar to the 1952 London smog. The point is someone like Winston Churchill – who in my view was one of the most regressive right-wing PMs – could decide that the solution was getting out of coal. It was that leadership push that led to the shutting down of Battersea Park powerplant in London which, by the way, is a multi-billion dollar real estate park now. 

The thing is, great leaders like Modiji and Abhi uncle, who sit at two ends of the opinion spectrum, both can’t say the solution is in bringing down coal power plants. Both have presumably reasonable information to decide that moving away from coal actually accelerates economic activity. 

Yet you would not act as a leader! Why are you such a ‘dhith aadmi’ uncle?

Satwik

Hi Abhinandan, I am hearing your interview with Shehla Rashid. I feel sad for the state of our country that’s behind whatever has forced Shehla Rashid’s changed avatar 

I can’t imagine what kind of pressure might be on her or her family from the supreme leader’s party. 

Also I appreciate your candid way of putting her on the spot ;she unleashed Arnab mode when questioned about the prime minister, or when you showed her the ad from Jharkhand elections. Feels superb to subscribe to NL – this is true sense of journalism for me

Manan

Thank you for taking my feedback, I can see many of the reports in both English and Hindi now. However, still waiting for the audio embedding for Hindi reports, just in case there are some Hindi-specific reports. Watching all the content you guys put, especially TVN, has become a ritual for me and my partner, so keep up the great work guys! I love your interviewing skills, Abhinandan, and hoping you get to interview DY Chandrachud next with some serious questions!

A quick request: I am a huge fan of cartoons so, like other newspapers, could we have a weekly or monthly (based on budget) cartoon? Something like the works of Satish Acharya, Sandeep Adhwaryu or Manjul. Cartoons are very fun and a picture is worth a thousand words.

Sumanth

Hi Abhinandhan,

Quite an engaging interview with Shehla Rashid and it was a lawyer’s job well done when you got her admitting to going out of line to plug in the alleged contributions/vision of  Mr Modi’s policies in either shaping the success stories or bringing forth new ones. While it is praiseworthy for her to highlight her community’s shortcomings and inspire them to stand up for themselves, she is only failing at her task when she willingly chooses to ignore/deny the problems posed to her community from the very same people/power with whom she wants to build a bridge with.  It is a two-way process and to succeed in her task of playing a positive role in improving the living standard of her community people  , she must borrow some courage from her old avatar and constructively criticise her new found friends.

Qurram

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