By Ranjona Banerji
In a carefully and delicately worded editorial, The Washington Post has listed everything wrong with India’s democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And why it is important for US President Joe Biden to have a word with Modi.
The tactic is interesting. There is no fire and brimstone here. No outrage and name-calling. And yet, the problems are all listed: India’s “retreat from democracy”, the violence “unleashed” and the “spiral of communal violence and toxic hate” against Muslims and other minorities by majoritarian Hindu nationalism, the attacks on the freedom of the press and on civil society activists, tax authority raids.
The edit ends with this advice for Biden: “Friends have an obligation to speak the truth to friends.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/17/biden-modi-washington-visit/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Reactions like this from the American media, in the runup to Modi’s first official state visit to the USA including a state dinner at the White House, is why the Indian “media” and the government’s pet media stooges have been ordered by the BJP IT Cell to push various “surveys” which prove that all Muslims are overjoyed with Modi’s rule, that leaders of 120 nations want Modi to lead the world and other such arrant nonsense.
The BJP IT Cell is well within its rights to push its own propaganda. Why these members of the mainstream media do it is part of the saddest episode in the history of the Indian media. Sorry stooges, the Emergency is no longer our lowest moment. We’ve managed to burrow down even lower.
Our top TV channels regularly run massive programmes and debates on Hindus are in danger in India. But when Muslims are openly lynched and whipped in public, sometimes by the police, there is silence. When a Muslim is accused of rape, there is massive anger and calls for violence by the media. When Hindus are accused, the same fervour in the calls for justice are muted. And over and over again, as we see happening now in Uttarakhand, false allegations are common.
Newslaundry for instance managed to get this information, which our widely watched, influential TV channels will not:
https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/17/uttarkashi-how-a-journalist-and-hindutva-groups-manufactured-the-love-jihad-angle
As well as this from The Federal:
https://thefederal.com/the-eighth-column/genesis-to-exodus-how-uttarakhand-the-land-of-gods-became-a-tinderbox-of-communal-hate/
This is India’s reality, no matter what TV hate fests use to brainwash their viewers:
https://thewire.in/communalism/junagadh-muslims-targeted-flogged-after-protest-over-possible-dargah-demolition
The extent of media capitulation is evident in all the issues we no longer react to. There is a massive heat wave in UP and Bihar. People are dying.
But for the government media, it is all right to try and protect the UP government from allegations that the heat is responsible for the deaths and that hospitals are overwhelmed. As with Covid, politicians must be protected from any possible political fallouts. No matter if people suffer.
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/heatwave-in-uttar-pradesh-ballia-district-hospital-54-dead-400-hospitalised-in-72-hours-at-up-district-hospital-due-to-severe-heat-4130837
Across India, we see the same story repeating. The media exists to protect the Modi government from any accusations of inefficiency, incompetence, vindictiveness and malpractice. Given the volatile situation in Manipur, the constant escalation of violence, you would imagine a media going hammer and tongs at the silence of our normally very voluble and publicity-hungry Prime Minister.
But no.
Our loudest media monsters have nothing to say. They are still upset about some Muslim transgression of a line the RSS has drawn in the sands of our democracy, or they are upset with our medal-winning wrestlers for complaining about a BJP MP or they are upset about a movie or they are overjoyed about a survey they have invented.
We have to give thanks to the few newspapers and writers who can still speak truth to power:
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/modi-s-silence-on-manipur-has-destroyed-the-state-s-credibility-1228736.html
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.