Two major news hit the stands in the last few days and both of them question none but the government of the day as to what it is doing to uphold the Sovereign Dignity of India. It’s clearly being seen everywhere that being the only Mr. Good Boy on the high table is not really helping India and it’s interests.

The first one is Singapore giving a dressing down to a sitting Chief Minister of India. Who is to be blamed, let’s come to that later. But, why are we that weak-kneed that a foreign government asserted it’s right to punish an elected official in India?

Coming to the backdrop of the issue. Arvind Kejriwal, a known foot in the mouth politician with a not-so-great development track record in India has called out something called Singapore Variant in spite of the fact that WHO asked people to dissuade tagging a variant to a country.

Whatever his motives were in saying that, we, as Indians landed up with an egg on our face where a foreign government demanded action against him, a sitting Chief Minister under it’s own laws. Many argued, surrendering him to Singapore may be the best that can happen to Delhi. But, what happens to India’s sovereign dignity? All of this boils down to one single question – when a rouge element is messing the narrative enough to create bad blood between nations, what exactly is the government of the day doing? Is a clarification enough? Are we not noting that this clarification and letting people go scot-free is the sole reason people who are bent on harming India’s interests are having a free run?

Also to note is the fact that inaction on Kejriwal’s utterings led to more brazenness to harm India’s ties. While there is no apology for harming India’s interests and threatening safety of Indians in Singapore, another minister in the government has called out something called London Strain along with accusing the Centre of playing politics over Singapore.

The other incident is that of the new Congress Toolkit aimed at increasing rifts in India and harming it’s COVID response. BJP leaders have rightly called it out as fake news but Twitter called it as “Manipulated Media”.

The question is this. When a foreign private company which had frequent run ins with the government before is directly daring the government and its extension – the ruling party of India, how exactly is Indian Government responding? There are two facets of this – inaction from the government of the day

and glee from political opposition.

This is in spite of the fact that there are cases filed over this and the matter is sub-judice. It’s the courts which should decide whether a news is fake, not a foreign company operating in India. All this boils down to one single thing – what happened to the sovereign dignity of India and what is the government of the day doing to uphold it?

As an Indian, I will never allow a foreign government to dictate terms to India even when India is wrong and I would want a course correction to ensure such a thing can never happen. As an Indian, I wouldn’t want a foreign private company with it’s own masters and interests to set the narrative in India. It’s time the workhorses of India dealing with this – Information and Brodcasting, Information Technology and Law Ministries start acting and crack the whip on every errant and uphold the stature of India all over the world – after all, that’s one of the primary mandate for any government and is non-negotiable.

DISCLAIMER: The author is solely responsible for the views expressed in this article. The author carries the responsibility for citing and/or licensing of images utilized within the text.