TIME raged when Trump said 'Chinese Virus'; squeamish with India blocking 'Indian variant'

Taking umbrage to the term 'Indian variant' of COVID-19, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) on Friday issued a directive to all social media platforms to 'remove all content referring to or implying to the 'Indian variant' immediately. The Centre cited the recent clarification made by World Health Organisation (WHO) stating that the B.1.617.2 variant in India was not classified as the 'Indian variant'.

American news magazine TIME has however termed it as the Government’s ‘clamping down’ on social media. In its latest article, TIME has claimed that India’s new internet rules do not give the government the legal basis to demand such a “broad takedown like removal of the term Indian variant.

“But there’s a vague sense of threat which hangs in the air. The rules that are just about to come into force are so onerous and so vague that they give immense power to governments,” reads the article, citing one Apar Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation in New Delhi.

It went on to say that the Government’s pressure on social media companies has become ‘increasingly common in India, citing a false news piece which claimed that the Centre forced Facebook and Twitter to remove posts that were critical of the government’s response to the second wave of the pandemic.

Hypocrisy much?

The TIME article openly backs social media posts using the term ‘Indian variant’ but was irked when former US President Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as the "China Virus" while in office. Last year, when Trump repeatedly used term like “Chinese Virus” or “Kung Flu virus” amid the pandemic, TIME said the President is part of a ‘long history of associating diseases with certain countries.’

“Trump and many of his allies are doubling down on COVID-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’ at a moment when the disease unconfined to any one region. The fear may be linked to a desire to fix the blame on someone else. That’s a repeating pattern in US history and so is the damage it can cause,” read the TIME article published in March 2020.

The American magazine’s ‘double standards’ were exposed by a Twitter user (erbmjha) on Thursday, who shared snips of the two articles - Govt’s crackdown on the use of ‘Indian variant’ and Trump’s ‘Chinese virus’ reference. “TIME cried when Trump called ‘Chinese Virus’ but has no problem calling it Indian variant,” the tweet read.