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Comment by kaesar14 | Hacker News Reader

By an absolute quantity or an absolute measure? I daresay at least in India, the toleration for homosexuality, women, and general non-conformity is quite higher than it used to be. Casteism and religious hatred still exists in great quantity but has it improved relative to 1950? Probably? Things are not perfect but you’re underrating how awful they used to be.

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Are you kidding? With what Modi has done and is continuing to do, India is becoming far more repressive. It is another one of the countries I would fear to visit because of reactions to what I might say.

Until just seventy five years ago India had been ruled for a century by an emperor in London and an occupying army, exploiting caste discrimination, religious sectarianism and regional rivalries to keep Indians subjugated for the profit of a racist colonial Empire. At partition, the rival religious hacked each other to bits wholesale.

So, despite setbacks, maybe there has been real progress in what is now the worlds largest democracy.

Yes, there are recent setbacks, but you really need to put yourself back in time to where India was in the earlier part of the 20th century. Caste discrimination was fully legal. Women had next to 0 legal rights over themselves and their property. The Partition of India was the most violent outburst of religious violence that has occurred in human history.

There are many problems in contemporary India but I would suggest you not generalize the average Indian in this way. Many young people are quite open minded and quite westernized in their attitudes towards social issues. Modi’s victories in Parliament are complicated and not all driven by religious intolerance.

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