John Oliver is famously known for his daily show “Last Week Tonight With John oliver” on HBO. He is known for his news reporting style of comedy where he takes current political situations and news and presents it in the utmost hilarious ways. He has also won an Emmy for his work on The Daily Show With John Stewart. So, it goes without saying that he’s watched everywhere including Pakistan and India.
But he has been receiving some backlash lately. In short Oliver ridicules India and India responded how most broken-up couples respond: BLOCKED!
John Oliver exposes Modi
So here’s what happened:
Oliver did an episode where he wanted to cover three main things:
- Why Modi’s supporters stand up for him regardless of his vile actions,
- Where things could be heading for India in particular,
- And why Trump calling Modi ‘The father of India” is not only stupid but also dangerous.
You know who a father is; he brings the family together by giving them lots of money but never emotional validation…….
……well modi is like that for India. You know a “father”.
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Don’t Poke The Bear
While Oliver also covered the controversial Trump and poked fun at him, Indians did not take lightly to him demeaning their Prime Minister. Or so it seems. And here’s why:
While Oliver’s humor is his yellow sun, Modi is India’s kryptonite. And in an attempt to keep it light and humorous, Oliver did touch some of the serious pressing issues on-going in India.
While Modi may have charmed Bear Grylls, the world and our current President. Within India he is an increasingly controversial figure… because his government has pursued a steadily escalating persecution of religious minorities.
India, the world’s largest democracy and home to over a billion people, has been divided into two groups according to Oliver. One wears face masks of Modi and the other has taken to roads in anger.
While Modi has made some rash decisions like fighting corruption by canceling commonly used banknotes with only a four-hour notice, a majority of people love him. Oliver calls this his “dangerous superpower”.
And if his superpower wasn’t enough, his roots are even worse with connections to the RSS whose leaders in the past are known to support the ideologies of Hitler. In particular, his notion to “maintain the purity of the race and its culture”.
It is extremely worrying to have a Prime Minister with that association, because India has always struggled to strike a balance between its ideals of tolerance and the reality of religious tensions which have erupted multiple times over the years.
Said Oliver in the episode:
Modi is known to stay silent over the mass killings that took place while he was in charge.
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He shook up things like changing the textbooks of Indian schools to add racist content and remove some of Nehru’s secular stand-points. He also appointed people like Yogi Adityanath as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who has been openly racist towards Muslims in many of his interviews and rallies.
Oliver, while addressing the introduction of NRC and CAB as part of the new law in India against Muslims, showed a short clip of a Muslim working in the construction of concentration camps, where he may as well end up in the near future.
That is simply the most nauseating thing that I have seen tonight and I’ll remind you that just 16 minutes ago I showed you a man squeezing a piece of fresh elephant shit into his own mouth.
Ending his episode on a seemingly positive note, he said:
The thing that unites them (Indians) may actually be their complete disgust over what he (Modi) is trying to do.
If you want to watch the full episode, it is available on YouTube:
And in case you were wondering how Trump’s visit to India went, here’s Trevor Noah’s report on it:
Oliver ridicules India and Disney India reacts by blocking his episode in the country, but more and more people, from various different backgrounds, are apparently uniting against Modi’s actions.
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