By Ranjona Banerji
Indian TV channels have worked extremely hard over the past few years to increase social divisions and increase Hindu-Muslim hatred and violence.
What a sweeping statement, you might say.
But is it?
Primetime “debates” regularly take up topics like “Are Hindus in danger?”, shout about socially regressive practices in non-Hindu communities, especially amongst Muslims, deny the existence of caste discrimination. All this does is to inflame and instigate.
This level of open majoritarian – in this case Hindu – sentiment since 2014 is unprecedented, and I include the Ram Janmabhoomi movement here.
It is not just confined to RSS/BJP propaganda channels and websites but to what constitutes the “mainstream media”.
So out of curiosity, I checked the websites of three channels, known for their Islamophobia, to see how they had covered the news that members of the Hindu Mahasabha had been arrested by the UP Police for slaughtering a cow and trying to implicate Muslims during Ram Navami.
News18 had nothing.
India Today and Times Now both had reports. But they were so garbled and so full of ensuring that we knew that Muslims had also been arrested that it was hard to pin down what had actually happened.
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/hindu-mahasabha-workers-slaughtered-cows-themselves-to-cause-communal-violence-up-police-2357323-2023-04-08
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/how-cow-slaughter-case-in-agra-turns-out-to-be-handiwork-of-hindu-mahasabha-leaders-four-arrested-article-99467999
The Wire explained it better than most:
https://thewire.in/communalism/agra-cow-slaughter-hindu-mahasabha-arrests
Obviously, a right-wing Hindu group with close ties to the RSS which tried to provoke sectarian violence during a sensitive time does not lead to a prime-time debate titled “Are Muslims in India in danger”. Most bluster and flying spit was spent on some Indian student being disqualified for Islamophobia from some internal election at the London School of Economics. Immediately, Hindus were in danger. But Hindus provoking riots in India? Don’t be silly.
Instead, we have the spectacle of the Indian mainstream media celebrating extrajudicial encounter killings in UP. As they celebrated the illegal bulldozing of Muslim homes and properties in UP, even going to the extent of gleefully posing with the earthmovers used by the authorities.
Have we as a community failed to educate ourselves on the importance of rule of law and jurisprudence? Or have we just been lax and celebrated the uniform as unquestionable, rather than hold to account those in uniform who do not follow procedures and laws?
There is a whole tranche of journalists – and this is not new – who are so full of blood lust that they revel in vigilante actions and apply their twisted codes to pretend that they are indeed more moral than most.
The entire concept of presumption of innocence is anathema to them. And thus, as we have seen most shamefully since 2014, so is democracy. It is one thing when stray individuals think like this. Internal checks and balances then apply. But when entire newsrooms behave in this manner?
And thus from the coverage of the police chase for a UP gangster to the “encounter death” of his son, we have been trapped in one more travesty of basic journalism.
Here are “live updates”, to add sensational masala to the “story”:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/umesh-pal-murder-case-live-updates-atiq-ahmad-son-asad-killed-in-encounter-in-jhansi/liveblog/99458491.cms
Like everything else which the mainstream media does, this is carefully calibrated to raise the UP chief minister to a higher pedestal rather than to hold him to account.
You fool yourself if you think otherwise.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.