Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर

BFSI professional - IIMA Alum- foreign affairs enthusiast - aspiring writer - हिंदी कविता - football lover (Chelsea & FC Barca) Views & RTs are personal

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

Intermittent falls are an inherent characteristics of Bull Run. A thread

[Caleb @caleb_friesen]

When I first came to India, the space industry was closed to private players.

The most well-known "startup" at that time was TeamIndus. Skyroot didn't exist.

A year later, in 2018, Skyroot was founded. Private companies in India couldn't launch rockets yet, but Pawan and Bharath forged ahead regardless, optimistic that liberalisation would happen someday.

Then, in 2020, it did. Indian companies were finally free to compete with American, Russian, European, and Chinese startups. They could build their own launch vehicles. And satellites. At an undisclosed location in the United States, Elon swallowed hard.

I was publishing videos about Indian companies on YouTube at this point. I remember thinking, "Making content about these spacetech developments is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Now, ~6 years later, Skyroot has gifted India with the biggest white pill of all time. While the world watched, a team of ~1,000+ Indian optimists (with an average age of 28) flawlessly executed an orbital rocket launch.

No private space company IN THE WORLD has ever done this on their first try. As I write this, I have goosebumps. I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to witness this firsthand. I also feel inspired by the resilience, ingenuity, and wherewithal of the entire Skyroot team.

The next chapter of India's space journey has officially begun.

[Mahesh Jethmalani @JethmalaniM]

Dhurandhar did not just break records. It broke the pretence of an entire ecosystem.

Dhurandhar has turned into a public flogging of the usual frauds, Bollywood’s aman ki asha chorus, Wikipedia’s editorial fixers, and the imported critics who cannot bear an unapologetic India.

The Dhurandhar fight has exposed something much bigger than one film page.

It has exposed Wikipedia’s central fraud: it presents itself as a neutral encyclopedia, but on contentious subjects it often behaves like a political battlefield controlled by a small editorial class. Wikimedia itself says Wikipedia is governed by volunteer editors, that neutrality is a bedrock policy, and that the Foundation does not control article content. That is the theory. The Dhurandhar episode showed the practice. I remember @UnSubtleDesi and @OpIndia_com show their fradulent behaviour in an investigation few months back.

But when does a blockbuster Indian film become politically inconvenient? What happens? Not a calm summary of dispute. Not a balanced note that critics differ. Instead, an edit war erupts over whether the first line should brand the film “propaganda,” and Wikipedia has to lock the page so only “experienced” editors can shape it.

That alone should alarm people.

Because the moment a page is locked, Wikipedia stops being the romantic fantasy of “anyone can edit” and starts looking like what it often really is: a gated republic of veteran editors, procedural jargon, and ideological muscle memory.

Even Jimmy Wales had to step in. And made a rare intervention and pushed back on Wikipedia itself taking sides in the lead on a contested issue.

If neutrality is such a sacred principle, why did it require founder-level intervention to stop the encyclopedia from speaking in one voice on a live political dispute?

Who decides which sources are “reliable”? Who decides what gets “due weight”? Who decides when “consensus” has been reached? Wikimedia says this is an open and transparent community process. In reality, these rules are interpreted by entrenched editors who can close discussions, privilege favored sources, and freeze their preferred framing into the page.

That is the scam, that even @elonmusk keeps pointing out.

To my mind, this is why so many India-related fights on Wikipedia feel eerily familiar.

Because a small, highly active ideological left-wing radical editor class can dominate disputed pages, and once that happens, neutrality becomes whatever that class can proceduralize. That is not crowd wisdom. That is narrative capture by people who know the rulebook better than the reader ever will.

And anonymity makes the problem worse.

Wikimedia openly defends pseudonymous editing as protection for volunteers. Fine. But anonymity also reduces accountability when editors with strong ideological priors end up shaping politically explosive subjects read by millions. When the work is unpaid, anonymous, and intensely fought over, the obvious inference is that many of the most obsessive editors are not detached saints but partisans and ideologues.

This is why the “free encyclopedia” branding is so misleading.

Free is not the same as neutral.

Open is not the same as fair.

Visible edit histories are not the same as balanced outcomes.

The Dhurandhar row simply made the machinery visible.

A blockbuster Indian film depicting terror, memory and retaliation could not just be reviewed.

It had to be framed.

It had to be morally pre-labelled before the reader even arrived.

That is why I do not buy the innocent story anymore.

Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia. On polarised subjects, it can become a laundering machine that converts ideological preference into reference-text authority.

And yes, to me, the larger pattern looks less like random volunteer eccentricity and more like a global ultra-left editorial reflex hardening into platform power.

The Dhurandhar page did not damage the film.

It damaged Wikipedia.

Because it reminded millions of people that behind the benevolent gray interface is not some oracle of objective knowledge, but a human hierarchy of anonymous volunteers, procedural gamers, and ideological radical left-wingers trying to stamp their version of reality onto a page the world is told to trust.

[Mahesh Jethmalani @JethmalaniM]

That is the fraud.
American power on screen is “craft.”
British power on screen is “heritage.”
Indian power on screen is suddenly evidence of political conditioning.

Same cinema. Same nationalism. Different skin colour.

The Economist has a wonderfully colonial rulebook for cinema. When America straps a camera to Pentagon hardware and sells state power with a soundtrack, it is “spectacle.” When a film is made with CIA-adjacent mythology around national revenge, it is “serious storytelling.” But when India puts its own enemies and terrorist attack scars on screen, suddenly the magazine reaches for the psychiatrist’s couch.

That is the real joke here. Fighter jets, spies, commandos and national vengeance are perfectly acceptable as long as the flag fluttering in the background is American or British. Then it is culture. It is craft. It is cinema doing what cinema does. The Economist has invented a very elegant little rule for cinema: Top Gun: Maverick can fly on Pentagon muscle, RAMBO & Zero Dark Thirty can ride CIA mythology, James Bond can sell six decades of British spy glamour, Dunkirk can turn wartime memory into national legend, and all of that is called storytelling. But the moment India puts terror, retaliation and national memory on screen with Dhurandhar, the magazine starts diagnosing the audience instead of reviewing the film.

What @TheEconomist cannot digest is not one film. It is the fact that Indians are no longer outsourcing their memory to London’s approval. A country that has lived through decades of Pakistan-sponsored terror is apparently expected to process all that pain in whispers, with tasteful disclaimers, and preferably under the supervision of foreign editors who still think they are qualified to explain India to Indians.

And that is why the review reeks. Not of sophistication, but of the old imperial tic: Western nationalism on screen is a nation telling its story; Indian nationalism on screen is a pathology requiring diagnosis. The costume has changed. The sneer has not.

The funniest part is that The Economist probably thinks this is fearless criticism. It is not. It is just another imported lecture from people who never mind propaganda when it wears aviators, a tuxedo, or a CIA badge, but develop exquisite moral sensitivity the moment India stops being apologetic on its own screen.

Just FYI: Decades of Pakistan-sponsored terror are apparently meant to be processed quietly, apologetically, and preferably without ever producing a mass-market cultural response. That is the old script. India is no longer following it.

[Yogi Adityanath @myogiadityanath]

देश के इतिहास में 14 अगस्त की तिथि कभी न भूलने वाली तिथि है। आज ही के दिन मजहबी और नफरती मानसिकता ने भारत का दु:खद विभाजन किया, जिसके दुष्परिणामस्वरूप असंख्य देश वासियों ने यातनाएं झेलीं और अपनी जान गंवाई।

'विभाजन विभीषिका स्मृति दिवस' के अवसर पर बलिदा�� हुए सभी नागरिकों को विनम्र श्रद्धांजलि!

इस क्रूर-वीभत्स यातना के साक्षी सभी नागरिकों के प्रति मेरी संवेदनाएं हैं।

[Rajeev Mantri @RMantri]

I am in a WhatsApp group with a bunch of other investors - 9 of us are collectively capable of mobilizing a billion dollars in lesser time than Pakistan if we apply ourselves to it.

A handful of Indian businessmen from Guwahati and Jaipur have that much capital sitting in their bank accounts.

You are a beggar. Your terrorist military-owned country will die a pig’s death.

[Abhijit Majumder @abhijitmajumder]

Just brilliant.
Proud of these young woke-slayers. #IndiaPakistanWar

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@naomi2009 @TheJaggi @AshwiniVaishnaw why don’t we question their India office and revoke all licenses

[Naomi Canton @naomi2009]

https://t.co/chReCVXSGx
BBC continues to describe J&K as "Indian-administered Kashmir" and despite scores of eyewitness reports from victims as to how the Islamist terrorists only shot people once they confirmed they were not Muslim, this BBC story plays this part down and states: "Some eyewitnesses said it appeared the gunmen targeted non-Muslims but others have described the shooting as random. A local Muslim man was among the victims." The only media covering this story properly are the Indian media.
https://t.co/chReCVXSGx

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@pankajtibre All the best chief !

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@mipaltan @ImRo45 💙💙💙

[Mumbai Indians @mipaltan]

Sweet dreams, Paltan. 🥹

Drop a 💙 if you can’t stop smiling after this win.

#OneFamily #MumbaiMeriJaan #MumbaiIndians #TATAIPL #IPL2023 @ImRo45

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

This paragraph is more insightful compared to reams of writings on Alliance strategies #insights #strategy

[Susmit Patodia @SusmitPat]

Spread the word. Calling out to all college founders. Apply at https://t.co/0izigEVrrx

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@PrateekPant20 Awesome and loads of luck to Sanchita !!

[Milind Deora | मिलिंद देवरा @milinddeora]

Ever wondered how 32 million Indians ended up all over the world?

Post abolition, England replaced African slaves with indentured Indians, subjecting them to cruelty & human rights abuses.

Return the Kohinoor & apologise before lecturing others.
https://t.co/lj5GbQVO4L

[Centrum Wealth @centrum_wealth]

Coming soon to Kanpur!

#kanpur #uttarpradesh #centrumwealth #CWinKanpur #wealthmanagement #WeForYou

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@pallav42 @SapientWealth @DhruvLMehta @roopa17venkat @BIVALKAR @tima_usab @SaurabhRBhatia Congratulations 👏

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@connectgurmeet @rohitlamba23 @mandarsilam @kshitiz_m @jitinjain14 @AnkPahuja @PuneetSingh84 @PragyaMBhardwaj @PuriPurivicky @EnSaluja @nityanand00 @GujralShivansh1 @Bhageeath2 Congratulations team Complete Circle 💐👏

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

@AashishPS Best Wishes sir!!

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

Shameless Vistara customer care exec. Asks for DM and doesn't bother to reply @airvistara

[Umang Thaker उमंग ठाकर @thakerUT]

THAKER UMANG MR, your booking Q6YA6F on flight UK 653 BOM-IXC dated 02-Feb-2022 has been changed. now booked on UK 651 Mumbai-Chandigarh on 02Feb UK 651 on 02Feb departs Mumbai at 16:05 & arrives Chandigarh at 18:30 @airvistara onward bookings? Inconvenience caused? No response?