Foreign media’s campaign against PM Modi touched a new low in 2019 general election. A few days back, The Economist, a mouthpiece of the global liberal order that attacked the Modi government and supported the Congress for the 2019 general election. Now Time Magazine, the popular American weekly which published ‘Person of the Year’ and Time 100 called PM Modi “India’s Divider in Chief”. The cover of the May 20 issue carries a caricature of PM Modi’s and the controversial title pertains to an article written by Aatish Taseer with the headline “Can the World’s Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government?”
The writer of the article, Aatish Taseeris is a typical ‘liberal elite’, the kind of person most despised by common people of any country. He was born to Salman Taseer, the former governor of the Punjab province of Pakistan and Tavleen Singh, senior Indian journalist who contributes regularly to English dailies. His paternal grandfather, Muhammad Din Taseer made all efforts to bring Jammu and Kashmir under Pakistan after partition. He was sent with Faiz Ahmad Faiz to persuade Sheikh Abdullah to join supporters of J&K’s integration with Pakistan and when Abdullah refused, he threatened that Pakistan would use “other ways”, if Kashmir does not join Pakistan peacefully. He grew up in an elite residential school in Kodaikanal, a hill station in Tamil Nadu and completed graduation from Amherst College, United States.
what else could be expected from 'liberal elites' like @AatishTaseer? After all his paternal grandfather was a British Government employee like yours and his maternal ancestors built New Delhi for the British government.
— Amit Agrahari (@Amit_Agrahari94) May 10, 2019
The article in TIME magazine, written by Aatish Taseer is based on the argument that Modi has failed to deliver on his economic agenda promised in 2014 and therefore chose ‘religious nationalism’. However, it fails to mention the important macroeconomic reforms like GST, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), and the formulation of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) under Modi government. The healthy economic growth despite the odds in global economic climate also goes unmentioned. The article makes some sound arguments but the omission of important facts makes it weak and just another attempt at maligning the image of the Modi government.
Foreign media’s obsession with India is not new. They always portray India in negative light and leave no stone unturned to malign India’s image with their lies and propaganda at a global level. The foreign media’s incipient hatred for India is very well known. Despite the fact that India has made significant progress since its Independence, the foreign media still presents India as a backward, land of snake charmers and many other derogatory labels are allocated to India. It shows the racist mentality of foreign media.
Before TIME Magazine, The New York Times had ridiculed India’s stand at the Paris Climate Summit where India had asked developed countries to make deeper emission cuts. Earlier also, New York Times published an offensive cartoon making fun of India’s success in its very first Mars Mission. Previously, Thomson Reuters Foundation, while reporting a positive story about how ‘India has the highest number of women pilots in the world’, the publication could not hide its bigotry and racism, and ended up adding “patriarchal society which typically frowns on women in such jobs”.