Indian journalist Rana Ayyub has distinguished herself as a courageous defender of Kashmiri self-determination against the Indian occupation & lockdown, especially against the strident nationalism of journalists like Barkha Dutt who function more like ventriloquist dummies for the Modi regime.
Nationalist Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, who apparently thought he could not effectively attack her journalism using misogyny, instead resorted to white baiting & the white savior complex to impugn her reporting on Kashmir. If that’s all you’re packing in defense of a brutal colonial occupation, you’ve already conceded to your own disgrace.
Let me just speak personally as a white antiwar activist (who Abhijit Iyer Mitra has blocked on social media): the white savior complex is a pernicious problem in the fight against racism, Islamophobia, war, occupation, genocide. It is one of the main pillars of racist propaganda & war mongering. To misuse & distort it to attack a fearless woman journalist & to defend colonialism in Kashmir is grotesque in the extreme. If Iyer-Mitra were capable of shame, he would hang his head for making such an ass of himself in this putrid article.
This is the New Yorker article about Rana Ayyub referenced by Iyer-Mitra: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india?
Article by Iyer-Mitra: https://theprint.in/opinion/in-rana-ayyub-the-white-west-has-found-its-next-arundhati-roy/331730/?
In Rana Ayyub, the White West has found its next Arundhati Roy