[parent] > Making such a remark is equivalent of calling someone here a nazi etc. Hardly newsworthy

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[answer] > Indeed and better reasoning explained here over guardian [...]

Are you trying to answer from alternate account @amreeksohata, to hustle traffic? Making a comment & replying it as an legitimate answer looks bit confusing & suspicious otherwise.

I should have probably edited the original one

From the article:

> He was arrested on Thursday on accusations of attempting to disturb “public tranquillity and peace”, the police said.

Disturbing public tranquility and peace != defamation

Where is “here”? In the US, for example, defamation is a tort, not a criminal offense. And calling the president or any other public figure a “Nazi” would be totally safe.

The Grauniad is a U.K. newspaper. They're criticizing India for something that happens all the time in their own country. A total double standard.

The article was a rather neutral reporting of facts. The facts should be embarrassing to India, but that’s not the newspaper’s fault.

The Guardian often reports on similar issues occurring within the UK. Here are just two examples:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/14/transgender-...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jun/04/gender-criti...

So you are utterly mistaken.

Guardian largely doesn't publish false news as such but is incredibly selective about the events it chooses to write about.

Every newspaper is narrowly selective about what it writes about. Clearly the Guardian has chosen to write about free speech issues within the UK, regularly, putting the lie to what zozbot234 implied.

In the UK, yes. But my point was, recent incidents of suppression of free speech through law enforcement agencies by other parties in India haven't made it to Guardian coverage like this has. So they are selective about what they choose to write.

Guardian is as infallible as any other media organisation run by humans who have their own biases.

Interesting. In regards to some countries this type of comparison is "whataboutism" and for others it is "total double standard"

What? Telling a lie and calling names is not worthy of arrest in India? If so it's even more newsworthy :)

I'm surprised he doesn't have parliamentary immunity/privilege.

This actually has less details than the Guardian article. It just recites the government's argument. It doesn't seem that he incited violence but rather accused Modi of doing so.

The tweet baselessly accused Modi of worshiping the terrorist who killed Mohandas Gandhi. That would be highly offensive to many Indians, and easily construed as "fighting words" and inciting violence.

We know this especially well because earlier fringe attempts to "rehabilitate" the perp have caused widespread offense in India; also as far as can be ascertained, Modi has not given any support whatsoever to these extremist fringe efforts. So any such claim is complete misinformation as well as trying to stoke offense.

Without knowing much of how Indian law is spelled out, this would be very clearly permitted language in every other liberal democracy. The narrow exceptions for "fighting words" need to be very explicit physical threats. Insults, even lies, are well within the realm of protected speech. Protection against causing offense is exactly what free speech rules are written for. Americans say absolutely awful things about our presidents whether or not they're true and none have ever been punished for expressing an opinion no matter how odious.

Modi and the BJP may not literally worship an assassin, but they absolutely do support violent confrontation against Muslims. The kind of thing that is not only offensive and "fighting words" but a very real existential threat against a minority of Indian citizens. Yet they don't receive punishment because they have the protection of the government. It makes it seem very obvious that this prosecution is just government oppression.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/world/asia/india-hate-spe...

“every other liberal democracy”

In every liberal democracy. India is not one of those. They have elections, but those are necessary, not sufficient conditions for a meaningful state of democracy to exist.

Sure, it's been mired in the "flawed democracy" category for a long time. I'm explicitly not commenting on the actual legal justification of this action because I don't know anything about how their law is written. I think the point of this article is very much to grade India on an absolute international scale of behavior. They fancy themselves as the "world's largest democracy" and things like this put a huge asterisk on their use of that kind of title. Permitting dissent would be a big signal that they're still committed to being a part of the liberal order, but they went the other direction. Same with their tepid reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The US is in that category too, for what it’s worth—at least on the list compiled by the Economist.

https://thefulcrum.us/big-picture/Leveraging-big-ideas/flawe...

The Organization Modi belongs to:RSS and the political party he leads:BJP, both of them have pictures of Godse on their office walls. They garland his pictures, they celebrate the day Gandhi was assassinated and they believe Godse did the right thing by shooting Gandhi. There was nothing baseless about the tweet. Either u are intentionally trying to mislead the audience here, or you do not know enough about RSS/BJP's politics and Ideology. In the latter case, perhaps do not accuse others of 'baseless accusations'

Adding to your point, people have been arrested for similarly offensive tweets in the U.K. too. Yet I have not seen much concern for free speech rights in the Grauniad. Why is India being singled out here? It looks like old colonial attitudes resurfacing again, where exotic colonial dependents are always stereotyped as "backward".

> people have been arrested for similarly offensive tweets in the U.K. too

A member of Parliament? For something as vague as “attempting to disturb ‘public tranquillity and peace’”?

> old colonial attitudes

When non-MP Brits were arrested for similar nonsense, was the public’s response whataboutism and appeals to colonial victimhood?

Same weird misspelling of the newspaper’s name in two different comments? How does that happen?

It's a reference to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#:~:text=Frequent%....