Ashok Swain, the notoriously anti-Hindu troll with a base in Sweden, has made a comical U-turn on India hosting the G20 Summit in 2023. When India conducted the tourism meeting in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, the “professor,” who was up until six months ago urging the Modi government to organise the G20 conference in the “Muslim minority region, Kashmir,” appeared to be noticeably upset. In Srinagar, on the shores of the renowned Dal Lake, the SKICC hosted the third meeting of the G20 Tourism Working Group from May 22–24, 2023.
Ashok Swain, who was extremely upset by the choice, hurried to Twitter on May 20 to complain that the Modi administration’s choice to hold the G20 summit in Kashmir had the same impact as repealing Article 370. “Holding the G20 meeting in Kashmir has the same impact as repealing Article 370,” he wrote. The Kashmir dispute’s increased internationalisation does not strengthen India’s position; rather, it merely appeases Modi’s Hindu supremacist support base.
Amusingly, Ashok Swain had been urging the Modi administration to hold the G20 summit in Kashmir up till six months ago. Swain lauded Indonesia for hosting the G20 summit in the “Hindu minority” neighbourhood of Bali and advocated for India to exhibit the same level of religious tolerance by hosting the G20 Summit in “India’s Muslim minority, Kashmir” in 2023.
On November 14, 2022, he posted on Twitter, saying, “Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, is having the G20 meeting this year in its Hindu minority area Bali. Can India, which hosts the G20 conference next year, do so in Kashmir, a province with a Muslim minority? The Indian government’s choice to conduct the summit in Jammu and Kashmir seemed to surprise Swain. He might have thought that the BJP government would never pick a Muslim-dominated area to host the significant event, and by issuing an open challenge to the national leadership, he might have been trying to deceive Indian Muslims into believing that there is a “rising intolerance,” which fits in perfectly with the tired liberal thesis that the Modi government is hostile to Muslims. But when India chose to hold the G20 summit in Jammu and Kashmir, his preparations were derailed. The “professor” then chose to reverse course and claim that the action was taken to “please Modi’s Hindu supremacist vote base.”
It’s interesting that Pakistan, which has also firmly opposed India’s intention to hold the G20 summit in Jammu and Kashmir, shared Swain’s concern with the choice to conduct the event in Kashmir. The nation claimed that it is alarming that India is hosting the G20 conference in what it bluntly referred to as “Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK)”. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry issued an official statement on the subject criticising India’s action and claiming that it was continuing its ‘illegal occupation’ of Jammu and Kashmir. The UN Security Council has been seeing Jammu and Kashmir as an international dispute for more than 70 years, the statement continued, and such incidents cannot disguise that fact. This wasn’t unexpected, though, as Pakistan has always been a strong market for Ashok Swain’s anti-India rhetoric.
His tweets claiming the NDA administration was inciting hostilities between India and Pakistan to win electoral points were picked up by Pakistani media, who used them to clear Pakistan of responsibility for the horrifying terrorist assault in Pulwama. The Vajpayee administration was also charged by Swain with “setting up” the Kargil conflict. It’s interesting to note that a Pakistani Minister recently acknowledged in the National Assembly that Pakistan was responsible for the incident in Pulwama. Ashok Swain has frequently asserted that he does not make anti-Indian remarks and just criticises the administration, however, this has been proven to be utterly false. He has often been exposed for propagating hate towards India and disseminating incorrect information that portrays India as an anti-Muslim nation. He recently released a video in which he claimed that a man had been abused only for being Muslim. He tweeted, “Another day, another lynching!” while posting a video. The lynching of yet another Muslim guy in Maharashtra, India. Even though the man lived, he incorrectly claimed it was a lynching; nevertheless, he later clarified this in a tweet. The man was also beaten, but not because he was Muslim; rather, he was beaten because he was thought to be a thief.
Similar false accusations were made earlier by Ashok Swain, who characterised random acts as anti-Muslim. When a Muslim boy had burned himself on fire in a dargah, he had earlier in the year claimed that the boy had been lit on fire because he had not sung Jai Shri Ram. After catching a robber, pickpocket, etc., people frequently in India take the law into their own hands, and most of the time the mob is completely unaware of the religion and other identities of such individuals. People like Ashok Swain, however, assert that they are attacked because they are Muslim when such criminals also happen to be Muslim. The only motivation for doing this is to portray India as a Muslim-hating nation. Consequently, it is unquestionably an anti-Indian practice.
‘Muslim Lives Matter’ demonstrations were also something Ashok Swain wanted to see happen in India to denounce alleged extrajudicial deaths of Muslims there. In May 2020, he stated that India needed to emulate the ‘Black Lives Matter protests in the US following the death of George Floyd to ‘oppose extra-judicial killings of Muslims in the country. The ‘Black Lives Matter movement at the time was associated with rioting, violence, and store looting. They had fought with the police and burned down cars, and buildings, including several police stations, and pharmacies.
He supported such anti-Indian activities like riots and arson carried out in India by Muslims and Muslim followers. Additionally, Ashok Swain frequently uses degrading language to insult the BJP, RSS, Narendra Modi, and other political figures. He disputes both the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits and the destruction and looting of Hindu temples by Muslim authorities. He had referred to the LTTE as a group of Hindu terrorists and even held Hindutva responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak. Additionally, he praises Pakistan while denouncing India, demonstrating his commitment to that direction.
Many people in this world are spreading comedy on Twitter assuming that they are heroes. Ashok Swain is one of them.
