Have you ever wondered how fairly the most celebrated news media houses in the world, BBC and CNN report news? Well, the answer is, not so fairly. They are biased in one way or other, but in a dignified way, yeah, because they wear suits. British government and their media had glorified Winston Churchill as the crusader of democracy and ultimate strategist when he was directly responsible for the deaths of 5 million people in India with the man-made great Bengal famine. And, they don’t talk about famine he had caused.
Much before the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in France, we had worse attacks in Mumbai. Attacks in Mumbai were more lethal and bloody. While 12 people were killed in attacks on Charlie Hebdo, 164 people were killed in Mumbai attacks. We all know how many people, even in India, changed their DPs to black colour to display their solidarity. Everybody in the world condemned the attack, in fact, few countries even raged a war against ISIS. Do you know what was the reaction of BBC on Mumbai attacks? BBC referred the terrorists who carried out attacks as ‘Gunmen’ not terrorists. Even the British parliamentarian Stephen Pound criticized BBC, referring to the BBC’s whitewashing of the terror attacks as “the worst sort of mealy mouthed posturing. It is desperation to avoid causing offence which ultimately causes more offence to everyone.”
Coverage of Mumbai attacks was not a one-off incident. BBC referred to the commander of a terrorist outfit in Kashmir as ‘Charismatic Young Militant’, as if he is going to win Nobel peace prize. Recently, BBC interviewed culprits of Nirbhaya’s rape just to portray a picture, ‘India is not safe for women’. This is how they operate. People even named it as ‘Indophobia’. British media has always been biased against Indians; after all, they have expected and they wanted us to fail as a state after ‘granting’ independence. They have always underreported the achievements and socio-economic development of India, but, they are ready to make documentaries out of every single problem in India.
It’s not just India as a country they try to derogate, but, anything that relates to India, even Hinduism or Sikhism. The Vivekananda Centre (London) and The Hindu council (UK) openly accused BBC stating, “Anything that may show Hinduism in a poor light is immediately picked up by the BBC programme makers, while anything that may show Hinduism in a glorious light remains ignored by the BBC”.
And, they were not wrong. In 2012, BBC referred Holi as a filthy festival and they had to apologize later for same. BBC Asian Network opined Sikhs should not always carry their Kirpan, a ceremonial dagger. BBC was much interested in covering Ram-Rahim event when there was much bigger issue, India-China stand-off, was going on. One can clearly see where their priorities lie. Anti-India bias, Indophobia, is not limited to BBC/UK media houses, even the New York Times joined the elite club by constantly reminding us about what their outlook on Indians is. From Kashmir conflict to the cartoon on India’s mars mission, their agenda is same.
BBC accused India of funding a Pakistan political party ‘Muttahida Qaumi Movement’, and not-so-surprisingly the source of the information is ‘anonymous’. BBC failed to produce any evidence supporting their claim. Their reporting was so biased; Indira Gandhi government had to ban BBC in 1970. Even during 1965 war, it was shut down for pro-Pakistani reporting. BBC even tried to portray Indian Armed Forces in negative way. Forget about India, UK’s longest serving PM, Margaret Thatcher called BBC as ‘Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation.’ She went on to say, she had to fought BBC in last three elections.
Due to their imperialist and neo-colonialist stance, BBC has always tried to portray India in a pervasive and hostile manner. On our 70th Independence Day, BBC chose to cover unrest in Kashmir over the socio-political advancement we have made in the last 70 years. Lack of global media house from India helps their propaganda. Whenever there is objectionable news, we can only shout so loud that will only be heard in India. And, there is no way we can make our side of story be heard globally. That has become a boon to biased media houses.
Even the British government is scared to reveal their true history to their citizens, understandably so. It is impossible to maintain that saintly status when their ancestors were brutal murderers, without the support of their media. British still think that their ancestors were the saviours of the world and colonized world to structure it. Even now, they talk about the railway network they have built in India, but, they fail to mention at what cost that was built. They have crippled the very soul of India by turning the second richest country in the world to poster boy of third world nations. Literally, we have risen from ashes. Now, our economy is bigger than theirs and they don’t receive it well.
It is too evident to ignore the biased-ness against India in not just reporting but also in news debate/discussion they carry out on various issues related to India. The panelists of those discussions will, almost always, be the so called ‘Indian intellectuals’ who fail to find anything positive in India. Most of the intelligentsia that takes part in discussion are the people who left India long back and settled down somewhere around the London for ‘better prospects’ of their life. People who were born in India and contributed none to very minimal in development of this nation, critique India about poverty, saftey of women and on all other issues. If you think any individual made you or India proud by leaving India to scale the heights, let me tell you this, no, they don’t.
As long as we think foreign media houses are epitome of fair reporting, they keep throwing crap at our faces. No, they don’t want India to grow and they don’t want power to shift from West to East. And, they are doing anything and everything in their power to prevent or delay that. Intolerance in India is their topic of discussion not the Mars mission. Unrest in Kashmir is of their interest not the strong foreign policy of India.