Daily Times

Rudyard Kipling, Bard of Empire, famously said, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. Little did he know that the twain shall meet one day as epitomized by India and the West of today”.

Over the years, India has nurtured and publicized, apart from the mystical land of rajas image, a charade of a secular, tolerant and democratic country. This image gained all the more prominence given India’s posture as a counter to China and Pakistan.

Today’s world is built more on perceptions than reality. These perceptions are shaped and propagated in the West by the media and Hollywood. The hyper- jingoistic Indian media and Bollywood ape these convoluted and biased worldviews, more so in the post 9/11 years.

The saber rattling Indian media anchors and analysts present war plans, nuclear ones at that, as they whip up paranoia. Not an isolated phenomenon, this has been a domino effect of the fictitious Modi image of an alpha male leader.

An example of the smoke and mirror illusions had, among others, the war-monger Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV continuously flashing a self-congratulatory spin reading: “Titanic win for India: Pakistan, crumbling under unprecedented pressure from India, to release IAF’s Wing Commander Abhinandan tomorrow”.

A year on the Indian media eulogized the “valor of Abhinandan our hero” reporting that the “officer is back to full-time flying in the Western sector, training young officers for another situation like Balakot”! One is amazed at the Indian media’s gall at distorting facts and even more at those euphorically lapping it up.

India dubbed its nuclear test at Pokhran as “Smiling Buddha”; had Pakistan named a nuke thus it would have been castigated as a Buddha sacrilege. The Pioneer, India’s second oldest paper, called it an “explosion of self-esteem”. When Pakistan retaliated with its own nuclear tests, the Indian media shrieked, “Rogue copycats”.

This has been the Indian story. Modi admitted India had worked actively to dismember Pakistan. Kulbushan Yadav spilled out India’s role in fomenting terror in Pakistan; yet India remained the darling of the West.

Some were infatuated within the Muslim ‘ummah’, bestowing Modi with their highest national award. It is Pakistan, thanks to our self-serving rulers, which remained a pariah; perpetually in the crosshairs.

The perception hoax got a gigantic impetus with the entrance of the new kid on the block – social media. Disguised in the garb of a harmless facilitator connecting people around the globe, it wormed its way into the very confines of each single home on this planet.

The virulent effect has impacted the whole world. Kevlarised with US 1st Amendment like layers, it poses a far greater threat than the world might have faced ever before.

A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed that Facebook India’s Public Policy Director Ankhi Das refused to ban BJP’s (Hindutva) Telangana MLA Raja Naval Singh whose Facebook posts were an epitome of hate speech.

Another example had AnantkumarHegde, a BJP member of parliament, accusing Muslims in a Facebook post of “Corona Jihad” by deliberately spreading corona virus in India.

However, Ankhi Das told staff members that “punishing these violations by BJP politicians and Hindutva groups would damage the company’s business prospects in India”.

The anti-Muslim views of Ankhi Das herself are well-known. She has shared posts referring to Indian Muslims as a ‘degenerate community’. She only cemented her credentials by refusing to remove BJP hate-posts and banning the individuals.

Dr Rashmi Das, identical twin sister of Ankhi Das, was general secretary of the AkhilBharatiyaVidyarthiParishad (ABVP) students’ union during her days at Jawaharlal Nehru University. ABVP is the student wing of the extremist RSS. In an interview to Times of India Rashmi said: “My work with ABVP and Sangh (extremist SanghParivar) organizations has been public knowledge for 25 years”.

Karan Thapar, ace journalist, was India’s David Frost. In a 2007 interview he confronted Modi with his “the butcher of Gujarat” adage. The interview lasted a mere three minutes as a fuming Modi walked out in a huff. Since then, Thapar has been reduced to a pariah within the Indian media. Thapar details the same in “Devil’s Advocate”, his memoir.

Modi, after becoming Prime Minister, effectively cut off the mainstream media, choosing instead a one-way spiel through social media. He is a voracious user with his twitter handles, WhatsApp outreach, his NaMo app (Modi’s official mobile app) and ‘Munn keebaat’, his radio monologue.

BJP has mastered the art of the virtual world running approximately half a million WhatsApp groups across India. So sure is BJP’s IT cell in charge, Amit Malviya, about the social media and Modi’s fake / hate news behemoth that he declared, “the upcoming elections will be fought on the mobile phone, they will be a WhatsApp election”.

The fake news and hate speech churned out by Modi’s hate speech brigand reach 700 million online people in India alone; 560 million of these use mobile phones

The fake news and hate speech churned out by Modi’s hate speech brigand reach 700 million online people in India alone; 560 million of these use mobile phones. 400 million use WhatsApp whereas 325 million are Facebook users. The virulent reach and effect itself is extremely worrisome.

The BJP’s IT Cell at Delhi’s Ashoka Road is, in essence, the HQ of an online troll army and disseminator of fake news. This is apart from the Hindutva execution brigade that eliminates dissenting journalists and activists.

The BJP troll army regularly sends out death and rape threats to female journalists; in many cases the threats have been carried out. “Getting Away with Murder” is a report by journalists GeetaSeshu and Urvashi Sarkar.

It tabulates 198 attacks on journalists in the last five years resulting in the death of 40 journalists. The fatalities include Modi critics GauriLankesh editor of LankeshPatrike and Shujaat Bukhari editor Rising Kashmir. The report says “FIRs were lodged in just 25 cases, charge sheets were filed in only three but the process stalled thereafter”.

Modi critic, ABP News channel is being muzzled with Amit Shah telling journalists that he would “teach ABP a lesson”. One of India’s oldest news networks, NDTV, has also been critical of Modi’s fractious policies.

The house of Prannoy Roy, co-founder of NDTV, and his offices were raided by Central Bureau of Investigation officials. Advertisers and sponsors have been forced to back off; 25 percent NDTV employees have been laid off.

When Chair of India’s premier paper Hindustan Times, ShobhanaBhartia met Modi, he conveyed his displeasure regarding the editorial policies of Bobby Ghosh, editor Hindustan Times.

Ghosh had launched a webpage, “Hate Tracker” that recorded violent crimes based on religion, gender, race and ethnicity. Having refused to remove the webpage, Ghosh was forced to resign. Hate Tracker was taken down immediately.

Rohini Singh’s story in The Wire titled “The Golden touch of Jay Amit Shah” described the exploits of Jay Shah, secretary Board of Control for Cricket in India and Home Minister Amit Shah’s son. The Wire received threats and was slapped with legal notices and defamation cases.

The story narrated how Jay’s business turnover increased 16,000 times from 50 thousand rupees in 2014-15 to 850 million rupees in 2015-16. This Midas touch came about when Modi became prime minister and Amit Shah was elevated to the post of BJP president. It is reminiscent of our very own cabal’s rags to riches stories.

Senior journalist and author ParanjoyGuhaThakurta summed up the Indian media’s state of affairs in a few words: “Senior journalists and editors have been crawling without being even asked to bend”.

In 1939 Kenneth Burke wrote an influential essay, “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle”. It narrates how Hitler had swung a multitude into his wake by whipping up sentiments to foment nationalism.

Hitler united Germans against what he deemed a common enemy. Modi, BJP and its RSS / Hindutva associates use social media to achieve the same by spreading venom based on hate, religion and ethnicity.

Some of the multi-billion dollar social platforms and their apps have their largest user base in India. This fact is the criminal motivation to overlook hate speech and threats so as not to offend Modi and his brigand.

to be concluded

The writer can be reached at miradnanaziz@gmail.com