The artist Anish Kapoor’s piece in The Guardian, dated June 4, (“Modi’s bulldozing of parliament shows him as the architect of a Hindu Taliban”), is outrageous, if somewhat predictable1. Across both international media and social media, you witness the airing of self-righteousness and performative opinions, with guns ubiquitously trained on India and its government, even as India battles an unprecedented and monstrous second wave of Covid-19.

Firstly, as New Delhi’s Central Vista Redevelopment Project acquires shape, its iconic Parliament building is not going to be demolished, nor are its elegant North and South Blocks, which accommodate the offices of India’s central government. The latter will eventually house the National Museum, after being upgraded, according to heritage standards. Kapoor, activists, the media, and our native Mrs Jellybys need to register these facts. They clearly have not.

....

The unfounded and jejune allegation that the expenditure on the Central Vista project during a pandemic is at the expense of the health budget has been busted. A whopping Rs 35,000 crore ($4.82 billion) has been earmarked for vaccines, and the Ministry of Health’s budget has been scaled up2.

....

Kapoor does not stop there. He leaps from one ad hominem fallacy to another, and his averments are predicated on a map of misreading. The Parliament building and North and South Blocks are not built on an Islamic architectural model as Kapoor erroneously states. Elements of architecture from all faiths and styles are felicitously incorporated into these buildings, and there certainly is a notable Palladian influence.

....

• 1. In 2012, it was the UPA government which mooted the idea of a sorely-needed new, modern Parliament building and was supported across party lines. When the BJP government followed up, the nectar swiftly morphed into poison. We need more consistency and maturity in a public debate on what the Delhi High Court has rightly called, a project of “national importance.”
• 2. Kapoor’s wild rantings hit a new low when he falsely attributes his fabricated demolition of the Parliament house, and North and South Blocks to the Indian government’s dislike of anything Islamic. He calls this a process of “de-Islamisation” and hurls expletives at India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His charge of de-Islamisation is pure hallucination