GarvSeSecular

Secularism that celebrates diversity, imbibes multiple cultures and is home to all religions. That's what India has been for centuries. Now under threat, again.

[GarvSeSecular @GarvSeSecular]

When a government encourages scientific temper, promotes education, brings laws to punish superstition, gives voice to the downtrodden, it creates a thinking population that is aware and can bring down the same government. On the other hand...

[Pawan Khera 🇮🇳 ಪವನ್ ಖೇರಾ @Pawankhera]

Jaisa raja, waisi praja.

A Prime Minister whose dog-whistle about identifying Muslims by their clothing has contributed to an increasingly hostile and unsafe environment for Muslims in India presides over a governance model characterised by:

1️⃣Widespread violence against Muslim citizens, followed by impunity.
At least 54 people were killed in 322 reported hate crimes targeting minorities across India in the first nine months of the year. And we know that only a small fraction of documented hate-related incidents and cases of mob violence result in formal First Information Reports (FIRs), prosecutions or convictions <image 1 attached>

2️⃣The deliberate erasure of Muslim religious sites.
The laboratory for this project is, unsurprisingly, the home state of the Prime Minister and his partner-in-crime, the Home Minister.

In Gujarat's Gir Somnath district, a pattern of systematic erasure of Islamic shrines is unfolding, with reports describing a 'plan to wipe out dargahs'. Several historic shrines, including the Haji Mangrol Dargah, Pir Silar Shah Dargah, Garib Shah Dargah and Jafar Muzaffar Dargah, have been bulldozed in the district. <image 2 attached>

3️⃣The deliberate erasure of Muslim homes.
Governments in BJP-ruled states such as Uttar Pradesh and Assam have institutionalised what has come to be known as Bulldozer Raj, with Muslim homes being demolished, often without due process or meaningful recourse for those affected.

Recently, on November 1, the Assam government carried out a series of demolitions in Alamganj, Dhubri. On Nov 8, Himanta Biswa Sarma posted the following on his X account:

"Just before Diwali, we undertook this Ghar ki Safai in Lakhimpur." <video attached. Pay particular attention to the insensitive background music>

None of this happens in isolation.

❌Modi himself, and other BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, Kapil Mishra, Anurag Thakur, Giriraj Singh, and Nupur Sharma - only to name a few - have repeatedly been associated with hate speech, discriminatory rhetoric or actions targeting Muslims, with NO meaningful accountability.

❌When those at the top act with impunity, the system beneath them works, predictably, to Muslims’ disadvantage. There is little reason to expect a leadership that keeps feeding this hate machine will ever treat Muslims as equal citizens.

🔔That is why it matters who occupies the highest office in the country. India needs a Prime Minister who believes in equal citizenship, irrespective of religion, caste, tribe, gender or economic status.

And Modi is not that person.

[GarvSeSecular @GarvSeSecular]

“In the first nine months of 2026, a Muslim or Christian in India was attacked, harassed, arrested, driven from home or killed because of their faith more than once a day, on average. And in one case in every three, the people who were meant to stop it took part.”

[Maktoob @MaktoobMedia]

“Today I have killed one mulla, now I will kill more”: 322 hate crimes, 54 killed in nine months as police, army took part in one in three attacks on Muslims, Christians, APCR report finds

https://t.co/PTqWKKrpcF

[Helle Lyng @HelleLyngSvends]

I got a visa to India and was supposed to leave this morning to attend the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad. I had been invited as a panelist and speaker on the future of media and press freedom.

But «orders from above» in the Ministry of Home Affairs have cancelled my visa.

Here is my message for @AmitShah

[Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) @internetfreedom]

Fake court orders how? Why? Top 10.

As per Reuters, DoT got 129 websites blocked on two fake High Court orders. Last week X told the Delhi HC that the Delhi Police orders against IFF were fake too.

1. Too many censorship bodies. MeitY, MHA, MIB, DoT, state governments, police and courts all issue takedown or blocking orders.

2. Too many censorship laws. 69A, 79(3)(b), IT Rules, BNSS notices, court orders, each with its own format, so nobody knows what a real order should look like. The Sahyog platform by templatisation has only automated the process, not made the orders intelligible.

3. Pressure on platforms to act immediately, even pre-censor. The deadline is three hours and nobody can verify an order in that time.

4. No one to check, just censor. DoT got a fake High Court order on email on a Sunday night and told ISPs to block 34 sites two days later. It was not even on the court's website. Our government is incompetent and trigger happy to take down even global web services. Full domain and app blocking is now a norm.

5. Notices have no legal threshold and rely on subjective perception of offence and vibez. A fake one reads the same as a real one. What’s fact or fiction when our censorship regime is based on magic realism.

6. MeitY is incompetent and can only pressure Silicon Valley platforms to take down more and faster. Ask who issued an order and it says not us. It does not want to provide statistics, shies away from transparency and every six months gets the itch to amend the IT Rules, 2021.

7. Courts pass John Doe and dynamic injunctions so often that lawyers emailing DoT a new list of sites to block is normal. One more email from an "advocate" is not sus to anyone.

8. Orders are kept secret. The person censored rarely gets a copy so they can't say it is fake. We found out only because X forwarded the notices to us, and Reuters because DoT puts court orders online (this category is a rare exception).

9. Platforms are punished only for not complying. Ignore a real order and you lose safe harbour and staff can be prosecuted. Obey a fake one and nothing happens lol.

10. Much of this is automated. Meta reportedly acts on government flags without human review and I4C says it has no record of notices sent through Sahyog.

Quite simply, censorship is the norm and speech is put to suspicion.

[Aditya Kalra @adityakalra]

‘NO SUCH ORDER PASSED BY HER LADYSHIP’

India’s government ordered blocking of 100+ illegal betting websites based on two court orders. But @Reuters has found the court orders were fake.

The two court orders carried blue court seals, a fake QR code and made-up case numbers such as “Writ - A 30480/2026”. They were sent by individuals who claimed to be lawyers, and asked for immediate implementation by Indian government.

The government sent them to internet providers to take down websites. The forgeries are the latest sign that fake orders are slipping past India's official content removal mechanism, considered one of the world's strictest

Following questions from Reuters, Uttar Pradesh police have opened a forgery investigation after Reuters queries to the Allahabad High Court, while the Rajasthan High Court told Reuters in an email the order did not exist on its server.

Who sent the orders to the government & how did officials order takedowns? Read.

https://t.co/PCt4sD4yXI With @MunsifV, edits @Saad_Scrawls

[Tamal Saha @Tamal0401]

The most chilling video of the day. Moment of train detainment caught on camera. 6 coaches of Train 13125 #Kolkata - Sairang Express derailed at Digaru in #Assam. The locopilot is heard saying “nothing is working…signal is red but SA 9 A9 are not working”. They are key brake valves. The #IndianRailway first statement says the locopilot couldn’t control the speed. Glad the man recorded the video.

[Maktoob @MaktoobMedia]

Mohammad Sharif, who spent 17 to 18 years in jail before the Allahabad High Court acquitted him in the 2008 Rampur CRPF attack case, was shot dead in Rampur moments after leaving a police station that had repeatedly summoned him, prompting Rihai Manch to demand an impartial probe into possible police involvement.

@ghazalaahmad5 reports:

https://t.co/1sFjFr7XiU

[Maheshwer Peri @maheshperi]

India is waging a war against its own researchers:

In Careers360’s Research Summit, Prof. Ram Gopal Rao, Vice Chancellor of BITS Pilani described India’s lack of investment in research beautifully. He said “India’s Higher Education is described as African Budgets, American ambitions, Russian methods, Chinese opacity and Indian Bureaucracy.
In the past decade, we have seen a slide in scientific temper and investments in research.
1. Non-NET fellowship are stuck at ₹8,000 a month since 2012, for 16,270 scholars in 45 central universities.
2. JRF stipend: In 2014, the JRF was Rs.25,000 per month. In 2019, it was revised to Rs.31m000. it is ₹37,000 PM. The hrowth hasn’t even kept pace with inflation and in real terms, it has FALLEN. IISc scholars even went on a hunger strike demanding an increase.
3. Maulana Azad fellowship: where more than 1,400 scholars have had stipends stalled since January 2025.
4. OBC fellowships: lists for three NET cycles in 2024-25 were held back, which the social justice ministry put down to insufficient funds.
5. INSPIRE: fellows have their stipends unpaid for 3 to 9 months. The schemes now under Vigyan Dhara fell 67.5% between 2016 and 2025.
6. KVPY: scrapped in 2022, after nearly two lakh students a year had taken its test.
7. JRF bottleneck: only 5,108 of 7,35,614 candidates (0.7%) got JRF in December 2025. Minister Sukanta Majumdar gave no year-wise data when asked.
8. The University of Hyderabad stopped Rohit Vemula’s ₹25,000 stipend in July 2015, and his last letter said he hadn’t been paid for seven months. He later committed suicide.
9. India’s R&D spending: fell from 0.82% of GDP in 2009-10 to 0.64% in 2020-21. PMRF spending was revised to ₹290 crore, less than half its ₹600 crore outlay.
10. SC fellowships: fell 61%, from 4,841 to 1,872, between 2020-21 and 2022-23.
If India indeed wants to be a Vishwa Guru, India should be investing in research, in creating quality Higher-Ed institutions. We cannot be cutting down on stipends, not paying our researchers, holding back payments, scrapping scholarships, not increasing fellowship amounts even to match inflation and still expect students to choose research.

[GarvSeSecular @GarvSeSecular]

Mom is not going to like this.

[the reporters' collective @reporters_co]

A year ago, the Opposition accused the Election Commission of vote theft. The ECI demanded evidence. Now, ECI’s internal records accessed show that votes cast and votes counted do not match.

@TweetSumedha &amp; @VenkateshNSS report
Video by @ShubhangiJourno

1/2

[Siddharth @svaradarajan]

If you can’t win an election ‘Gyanesh style’ — by tinkering with the rolls and deleting and adding names — or the ‘Modi style’ of using Hindu-Muslim rhetoric or the ‘Amit Shah style’ of using threats and allurement to induce defections, there is now the ‘Fadnavis method of vote chori’.

This method has just been seen in the BJP’s capture of the Gokul Milk Union, Maharashtra’s milk producers’ cooperative.

In elections last month, the Congress-led alliance won 13 seats to the BJP-led alliance’s 12. So what Fadnavis did was pass an ordinance giving government appointees 5 seats and use this managed ‘majority’ to give the BJP side a ‘victory’.

https://t.co/RcWV4Q8GdY via @thewire_In

[Sonia Gandhi @SoniaGandhi]

Food has always had a special place in my story. It was while looking for a good meal that I met Rajiv, and fell in love.

Years later, India came to me the same way, one meal at a time. At first the variety amazed me and the spice scared me. Now dal chawal is the taste of home, and I can't go a day without it.

[GarvSeSecular @GarvSeSecular]

@Vishwaguruu2047 Ancestors ke wapas jaane ke raaste ko light up karne wala achha tha.

[VishwaGuru2047 @Vishwaguruu2047]

Chakkar aa raha Bhai Mujhe 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫🫨

[GarvSeSecular @GarvSeSecular]

@USEmbAustralia India = Pakistan, when rated on “electoral process, pluralism/participation, functioning of government, freedom of opinion/belief, associational/organizational rights, rule of law and personal autonomy”.

[Брат @1vinci6le]

Why is Diwali Celebrated?

Diwali is celebrated as the Festival of Lights, symbolizing the victory of good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance.

[In her sandwich-making era @ItsAllDandy_]

Been laughing whole morning thinking about Indira Gandhi comparing baby Rahul to Kamalapati Tripathi 😭😭

[Mohammed Zubair @zoo_bear]

Wah @RajatSharmaLive ji Wah!

[Clash Report @clashreport]

Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez:

Milei, Trump, Bolsonaro, Orbán — they all belong to the same international far-right movement, which, incidentally, is also financed by tech oligarchs like Elon Musk.

Ultimately, what they all want is to turn Spain into their colony.

We are not going to allow this country to become a colony of tech oligarchs or an international far-right movement acting against the interests of the Spanish people.

I am very clear: Spain is a sovereign country. Spain will not be governed from any capital other than Madrid.

[Avadhojha @OjhaAvadh57]

श्रद्धा जिज्ञासा की हत्या कर देती है और पूरे क़ौम को भिखमंगा बना देती है संदेह जिज��ञासा की माँ है और ज्ञान की आधारशिला और क़ौम को महान बना देती है ।
जय हिन्द