Since tweets by @rihanna and @miakhalifa are now considered 'external forces' and 'foreign interference', a small reminder... During the first Emergency, the Sangh's main line of dissent was through foreign press, governments, activists, and funding.
A short thread.

(2) The RSS has a fanciful mythology of its resistance within India, but there's not much evidence of it. @Swamy39 wrote in the year 2000 that ‘most of the leaders of the BJP/RSS had betrayed the struggle against the Emergency,’ offering ‘to work for the nation’s tormentors’...

(3) Instead it was overseas intelligentsia (from the Left) who gave the anti-Emergency movement early moral support. But Sangh leaders like Makarand Desai also lobbied @nytimes & other Western papers to editorialise on the silencing of dissent & capture of the judiciary in India.

(4) Following this, the US Congressional Committee on International Relations held hearings about human rights in India. Witnesses included Ram Jethmalani; Jagjit Singh Chohan, of the Int'l Council of Sikhs; and Leila Kabir Fernandes, married to union leader George Fernandes.

(5) Questions were also asked in the UK House of Commons – just as they were last year, in the US Congress, in the House of Commons, and in the European Parliament, in support of the anti-CAA Citizenship movement.