New Delhi: The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) has raised concerns over the number of Indian students going abroad for higher studies. In a blog post, SJM co-convenor Ashwani Mahajan wrote that the number has increased tenfold in the past 30 years.
“According to the central government, between 2016 and 2021, 26.44 lakh Indian students went to study abroad. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) estimates that in the year 2020, 4.5 lakh Indian students went abroad for education and they spent $13.5 billion. In the year 2022, this expenditure was $24 billion i.e; about Rs 2 lakh crore and according to the report of Redseer Strategy Consultants, this expenditure can reach $80 billion or Rs 7 lakh crore by 2024, when an estimated 20 lakh Indian students will study abroad,” Mahajan wrote.
“Young students move to foreign countries expecting to land jobs there… But they do not understand that today, educational institutions in Canada, Australia and European countries are easily giving them admission for their own survival. Not only this, many education ‘shops’ are being opened to extort huge fees from interested students from India and other countries, which has nothing to do with real education,” he added.
Mahajan said it would be a dangerous situation for the country when, by 2024, the number of students going to study abroad reaches 20 lakh and the amount spent by them hits $80 billion.
“In such a situation, the central and state governments need to make special efforts to make the youth aware of the reality so that they do not waste their parents’ hard-earned money by going abroad,” he added.
Speaking of students, here in India, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) students’ wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) said activities sympathetic to the Palestinian militant group Hamas at educational campuses are not acceptable.
In a press note, the ABVP said the silence by some political parties and groups on last week’s attack on Israel was indicative of “intellectual bankruptcy”.
“Various organisations of the country should express their views in accordance with the current foreign policy of the Government of India. There is a need to be alert to the organisations which are blindly singing their own tune on this extreme situation of violence due to religious fanaticism and prejudices. In some educational campuses in India, an attempt is being made to strike a different note on the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel and this is like supporting the evil ideology of Hamas,” the press note said.
The Delhi Police’s raid on digital media house NewsClick and arrests of its founder and HR head and the diplomatic row between India and Canada were also among the issues the Hindu Right press covered and commented on this past week.
Treason as free speech?
Commenting on the NewsClick controversy, RSS mouthpiece Organiser said that self-certified media liberals should not defend treason in the name of free speech as ‘”ommunism and free democracy cannot work together”.
“It has been a fashion to declare oneself an ‘independent’ media organisation, even if Communist-leaning publications and journalists run it. The prerogative of certifying someone as independent, eminent, or expert is also vested in the same group. They brand voices not toeing their line of stories as mouthpieces or ideologically biased or ‘Godi’ media, therefore destined to be boycotted or disregarded”, the editorial commented.
It also questioned the success of NewsClick over the past few years. “If the idea of NewsClick, which Purkayastha founded in 2009, was so great, why didn’t the news content click earlier? What changed suddenly from 2018 onwards, the period of investigation that the company’s fortune suddenly changed once it reincarnated with a new avatar called Ppk Newsclick Studio Private Limited”, the editorial asked.
In another article, the RSS’s Hindi mouthpiece Panchjanya questioned the intentions of NewsClick’s reporting, by saying that the website made fun of the Make in India initiative and “spread propaganda” about Indian Covid vaccines, the PM CARES fund and the Indian armed forces’ acquisition of the Rafale fighter jet. “It crossed the limits of indecency and spread false propaganda regarding the Ram temple. It spread false propaganda about the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. It spread propaganda on the Central Vista,” the article said.
“Like some English newspapers in India, dozens of respected international publications such as The Washington Post publish Chinese propaganda supplements for which they are paid handsomely. More dangerously, the Chinese state radio station, China Radio International (CRI), broadcasts paid content over the airwaves of independent broadcasters around the world, from Australia to Turkey,” it added.
Canada ‘centre of terrorism’
The Vishva Hindu Parishad in an editorial of its magazine, Hindu Vishwa, wrote that Canada has emerged as the “centre of terrorism” after Pakistan, in light of the diplomatic row between India and Canada over the death of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
“Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supports Khalistani terrorist activities of these Sikhs. Nijjar was declared a fugitive and terrorist in India and had a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head. Even after three months of his murder, the Canadian government has not been able to make a single arrest, but it is blaming India for the murder,” the VHP said.
It said that Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, founder of the separatist group Sikhs for Justice, had released a video asking Hindus in Canada to leave the country.
It alleged that the same terrorists living in Canada had also funded radical preacher Amritpal Singh, trained him, instigated him and helped him to create havoc in India.
“When the Assam government arrested Amritpal and put him in jail, Pannun threatened the chief minister of Assam. Today, Canada has become a safe place for Khalistanis. When Beant Singh, the then chief minister of Punjab, took the strictest action against them, they all fled to Canada and started living there on the money of Arab countries. Now their terrorist activities have got the protection of Canada. This is dangerous for India,” the VHP editorial said.
‘Hamas attack similar to 26/11′
Former BJP leader Balbir Punj compared Hamas’s attack on Israel to the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai.
“This is kind of a monstrous act that the jihadis of Hamas have done in Israel, in which they killed 40 innocent children aged between two and four years by slitting their throats in an Israeli village called Kafr Aja. In support of this, a narrative is being created by the Left-jihadi clan in India that the Hamas attack is a response to ‘Israel’s forcible occupation and oppression of Palestine’”, Punj wrote in an article for Punjab Kesari.
He added, “These are the same people who call the plight of Kashmiri Pandits who were victims of jihad and love jihad propaganda, but call the burning alive of 59 karsevaks in a train bogie by jihadis on 27 February 2002 an accident. In fact, this is a suicidal discourse in the country born from the thought of nurturing Islamic fundamentalism under the guise of secularism and human rights.”
Punj warned that the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has a signal for India.
“The possibility of the kind of horrific terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on Israel is strong in India too. India has faced many such attacks in the past years. Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir in 1947, terrorist attack on Indian Parliament in 2001, Jihadi havoc in Mumbai in the form of 26/11 in 2008,” he said.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
Also read: ‘India’ is a word linked with ‘slavery’, not identity— Hindu Right press on Opposition alliance