French News Agency Under Fire for Calling Indian Administration 'Hindu' Gov't

09:17 GMT, 28 May 2019
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The incident which the French agency had reported concerned the granting of a visa extension to a German national, Friederike Irina Bruning, who received India's fourth highest civilian award, ‘Padma Shri’, for her work looking after the welfare of cows in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Sputnik

New Delhi (Sputnik): The French news agency AFP invited heavy trolling for associating Hinduism with the Indian government, calling it a ‘Hindu Government'. AFP said that it was due to the ‘Hindu' government's intervention that the bovine caretaker and Padma Shri awardee Friederike Irina Bruning (age 61 years) was granted a visa extension.

Bruning, who had come to India from Berlin in Germany and had been taking care of cows in the northern part of the country for some 25 years,is also known by her psuedonym ‘Sudevi Dasi'. 

She had threatened to return the Padma Shri award when an extension of visa was denied to her. The visa extension arrived after an intervention by India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj.

The AFP story was heavily trolled for associating the Hindu religion with the Indian government.

"Hindu Govt?" questioned @SumaJAmin, and threw the questioned back to the news agency, jeering "AFP working for the Christian govt of France?"

"Hindu Government — What are you smoking today?" questioned this user.

One user took strong exception to this and called AFP out, saying, "You think we are idiots?"

On the other hand, netizens hailed the Indian government and especially Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj for her timely intervention in granting her extension of the visa.

Ma'am.. you are awesome 🙏

Social media users urged the Foreign Minister to go easy on 'Indic-friendly' people like Bruning in issuing visas. On the other hand, they also highlighted that visas should not be granted to people like evangelists and missionaries who seek to convert Hindus.

I agree if we can't provide support to indic friendly foreigners than we can't expect their support on global level..these are a few people who are fighting for Hinduism at global level..

I think we should have an automatic visa extension system for foreigners record of whose activities is clean and not related to conversion.

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