{"id":43877,"date":"2022-04-25T22:03:13","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T13:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2022\/apr\/25\/boris-johnson-india-visit-muslim-properties-razed-modi-nationalist-policies"},"modified":"2022-04-25T22:03:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T13:03:13","slug":"boris-johnson-is-a-patsy-for-populist-leaders-as-his-india-visit-shows-mukul-kesavan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=43877","title":{"rendered":"Boris Johnson is a patsy for populist leaders \u2013 as his India visit shows | Mukul Kesavan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By posing in a digger just after Muslim properties had been razed, Johnson is enabling Modi\u2019s nationalist policies<\/p>\n<p>Boris Johnson belongs in a Bombay film. In a photo from his recent India visit he\u2019s pictured leaning out of the cab of a yellow excavator in a JCB factory with all the swagger of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2011\/aug\/15\/shammi-kapoor-obituary\">Shammi Kapoor<\/a> hanging out of a moving train in the 1962 classic film Professor. There\u2019s the same pudgy flair, the same willingness to be ridiculous in the cause of charm, and the same blithe disregard for time and place.<\/p>\n<p>The day before Johnson landed in Ahmedabad, seven of these JCB diggers had been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2022\/apr\/21\/boris-johnson-visits-jcb-plant-india-demolitions-row\">used to raze<\/a> Muslim shops and homes, and the gate of a mosque in New Dehli\u2019s Jahangirpuri area, in defiance of a supreme court stay on demolition. The municipality that ordered the demolitions was run by the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), and the brazen disregard of the apex court\u2019s orders seemed almost staged for television.<\/p>\n<p>Mukul Kesavan is an essayist and author who teaches history at Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2022\/apr\/25\/boris-johnson-india-visit-muslim-properties-razed-modi-nationalist-policies\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By posing in a digger just after Muslim properties had been razed, Johnson is enabling Modi\u2019s nationalist policiesBoris Johnson belongs in a Bombay film. In a photo from his recent India visit he\u2019s pictured leaning out of the cab of a yellow excavator &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1047,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[531,62,433,4,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boris-johnson","category-india","category-narendra-modi","category-politics","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1047"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43878,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43877\/revisions\/43878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}