‘He must apologise’: Indian comedian’s monologue lauded, hit with legal complaints

The comedian from Mumbai stood onstage Friday night at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC with a camouflage-print shirt on his back and fire in his belly.

Before closing his sold-out show, Vir Das told his Washington audience he needed to talk about his homeland. He didn’t come from one India, Das said, but two Indias, seemingly at odds.

Today’s India is a country that is proudly vegetarian yet oppresses protesting farmers, Das said. It’s a country that worships women but grapples with horrific rape cases. It’s a country brimming with a huge, young population but is led by septuagenarian leaders with outdated ideas.

Now, two Indias are responding to Das’s soliloquy: one with rapturous applause, another with sputtering rage.

After Das uploaded his six-minute speech to YouTube this week, it has gone viral on social media in the country and become debate fodder on prime-time television. Liberal politicians, performers and writers emerged to cheer Das’s jabs at India’s authoritarian turn and swelling nationalism. On the other side, critics lashed into Das for broadly painting India as, among other things, a country plagued by rape.

Das, a high-profile, 42-year-old comedian who has released several specials on Netflix, was savaged on social media and quickly issued a clarification. On Wednesday, angry citizens filed two cases against him with the police in Mumbai, where he is based, and in Delhi.

“I don’t mind if he makes mockery of Indian politicians, but he made a mockery of India, which is my country, my pride. He hurt the sentiments of India,” said Ashutosh Dubey, a lawyer for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who filed a defamation case in Mumbai in a personal capacity.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/he-must-apologise-indian-comedian-monologue-lauded-hit-with-legal-complaints-20211118-p599wj.html

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Rupert Murdoch slams Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives

Rupert Murdoch criticized Big Tech’s censorship of diverse views on Wednesday.

In remarks to shareholders of News Corp., which owns the New York Post among other publishers, Murdoch attacked Facebook and Google for censoring conservatives.

“For many years, our company has been leading the global debate about Big Digital. What we have seen in the past few weeks about the practices at Facebook and Google surely reinforces the need for significant reform,” the News Corp. executive chairman said. “There is no doubt that Facebook employees try to silence conservative voices, and a quick Google News search on most contemporary topics often reveals a similar pattern of selectivity — or, to be blunt, censorship.”

The Post was gagged last year when Twitter shut down its account over a story about the business dealings of President Biden’s son, Hunter, and his efforts to monetize his family connections in China.

Robert Thomson, News Corp.’s CEO, said the company opposed “cancel culture designed to silence diverse voices.”

“As Rupert mentioned, there’s obvious censorship, as was experienced at the New York Post, and the more subtle institutionalized censorship in Big Digital,” he said. “It’s a confluence of the institutional, the technological, the social and political, and it is important that we stand firm against that morbific movement to mute.”

https://nypost.com/2021/11/17/rupert-murdoch-slams-big-techs-censorship-of-conservatives/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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