This Sunday, John Oliver, host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight spent a good portion of his show talking about Indian PM Narendra Modi, his policies, the controversial CAA/NRC exercise, and the ruling party’s divisive politics.
First of all, he objected to Trump calling Modi the ‘Father of India’, well because we already have a man for that.
The political commentator admitted that Modi was a charismatic leader and praised some of his policies like providing new LPG connections to millions and building toilets but was quick to jump on his more public and dynamic failures, like the demonetisation.
Oliver also tore into the RSS, calling it a Hindu-nationalist paramilitary organisation and questioned Modi and the BJP’s ideological affiliation with the organisation.
He also reminded us about the founders of RSS, who were in support of Hitler for the ethnic cleansing of the 6 million jewish people.
Oliver then turned his attention to the CAA and the NRC and spoke in length about its divisive a discriminatory nature, especially against religious minorities, which in this case happens to be Muslims.
He actually summed it up quite nicely.
The 18 minutes of the episode that HBO uploaded on YouTube also has him speak about UP’s CM Yogi Adityanath, Home Minister and Modi’s right-hand man Amit Shah and the numerous religiously intolerant statements given by them.
In fact, Twiter has been talking about this episode ever since it aired on Sunday.
You can watch the episode here:
Oliver had previously covered Modi and his politics, his role during the 2002 riots in Gujarat among other things when he did an episode on the Indian elections in 2014.