Huffpost India, formerly known as HuffingtonPost India should once again consider changing its name to something more appropriate such as “Hinduphobicpost India”. In its latest attempt to malign Hinduism, Hindus and the political right wing, the opinion blog has tried to twist basic facts about the Chandni Chowk temple desecration case in Delhi so as to favour its preferred Hindu-bashing narrative.
An article on Huffpost titled, ‘How BJP Supporters Turned A Fight Over Parking Into A ‘Terror Attack’, talks about how the Chandni Chowk incident was essentially a local fight between 2 individuals and just because a temple had been vandalized (the tone of the article suggests it was an irrelevant incident), the incident does not deserve the national attention it has garnered. By referring to the incident as a “scuffle between 2 individuals over a scooter parking that turned into vandalizing a temple”, Huffpost appeared unnerved over how such a “local incident” invited mass outrage and condemnation on twitter and trivialized the incident with twisted facts. Huffpost clearly exhibited irritation with the hashtags #TempleTerrorAttack and #TempleDestroyed which became the top trends on twitter a day after the news of a 100 year old Hindu temple being ravaged by a mob of hundreds surfaced. “How did a local incident in Delhi take over Twitter?“, Huffpost wonders. To justify how the “local news” is garnering nationwide attention, Huffpost puts the blame on the BJP leaders and supporters, accusing them of having a “network of supporters, paid contractors, political consultancies and bot accounts” to “dominate the national news cycle”.
Perhaps Huffpost fails to comprehend that if the incident only constituted a scuffle and a local fight, and not a scuffle culminating into an attack on a temple by a mob of Muslim men, it would be confined in the back pages of a newspaper. But a temple was ravaged by a massive uncontrollable mob of men yelling “Allah hu Akbar” in the country’s capital and there is no valid explanation for it except severe cracks in communal harmony in the area and an absolute disregard for the sentiments of Hindu families living in the muslim majority area. As soon as the temple was vandalized, that too, a 100 year old temple intrinsic to Old Delhi’s culture and heritage, the incident took the form of an attack on the entire religion, which does not deserve to be restricted to mere local news. Not only is the blatant statement on the occurrence being a “local incident”, entirely misleading, but is also insulting to the religious sentiments of nearly 80% population in India as Huffpost is essentially stating that the desecration of their place of worship is not worthy enough to gain TV news prime times and social media attention.
Huffpost is not alone in its thoughts. The entire secular cabal of the nation, who are extremely forthcoming on their thoughts on how an incident can be harmful for the “daara hua musalmaan”, seem as though the cat got their tongues. While the law takes its course, these left-liberal journalists have been trying hard to divert the public attention away from the alarming nature of the incident by painting it as just a ‘parking dispute’ while underplaying the larger concern that a Muslim mob decided to attack a temple of Hindus exposing the state of communal harmony in the capital.
This insensitive and biased attitude of Huffpost hardly comes as a surprise, given their penchant of peddling anti-Hindu narrative in the past. Even though it is left leaning, the publishing has no regard for media neutrality or even journalistic ethics. From maligning the PMGDISHA program of the government to misleading reporting to encouraging a division in the country, Huffpost has left no stone unturned ever since it set up shop in India. It has twisted reports only to suit an anti-right narrative, blatantly spread fake news and had virtually launched a campaign against the BJP, which gained prominence ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
A couple of years ago, HuffPost had released an article headlined as, “Three Muslim Cattle Traders Killed By Mob In Jharkhand On Suspicion Of Kidnapping Local Children”. Clearly, the headline was attempting to insinuate a communal angle in the incident, implying that Muslims are the victims. However, the truth of the matter was that 2 cases were registered along these lines, first was a group of Muslims killed by a mob and the second was a group of Hindus beaten to death by the mob. Both the cases occurred because the victims were suspected of being involved in human trafficking, which is a rampant issue in the state of Jharkhand. Huffpost had thereafter revised the headline to, “6 People Killed By Mob In Jharkhand On Suspicion Of Kidnapping Local Children” and had also issued a clarification which stated, “An earlier version of this story, which said three Muslim cattle traders were lynched by a mob, has been updated with the latest details.”However, the deed was done and through the elite and intellectuals, the fact that Jharkhand has faced an incident of “Muslim lynching” was spread across the country.
Moreover, Huffpost had even taken it upon itself to educate the left liberals in the country as to how to break the unity of the right wingers. Shivam Vij, Contributing Editor on HuffPost India was preaching to the left liberal establishment that in order to “Counter Hindutva, left-liberals need to focus on caste.” This was ratified in a post by Vij titled, “When Will Indian Liberals Stop Falling Into The Right-Wing Trap?” in which he stated, “Hindu-Muslim polarisation seeks to unite Hindus against Muslims. The politics of Mandal served to fragment the Hindutva cause.” Vij essentially told the liberals to break the unity of the Hindus by dividing them on the basis of caste.
There are a number of other instances in which Huffpost’s views have been detrimental to the unity and sovereignty of India, not just the Hindus. Moreover, as a foreign entity, the organization is just aimed at peddling the left leaning narrative, without regard to the implications on the harmony of the country. There is nothing wrong is expressing one’s opinions, even if they are against the current government, but to actually manipulate the facts, as Huffpost has been accustomed to especially ahead of the elections is unacceptable.
The recent appalling piece belittling people’s outrage on social media over the attack on the temple and its desecration insinuated that it was some sort of sponsored and coordinated viral activity by supporters of the BJP and had nothing to do with the horrendous crime and exposed the acute levels of dishonesty infesting the left-liberal establishment and laid bare the depths to which the cabal can dive to make pathetic attempts at whitewashing such crimes. The publication has time and again, disregarded journalistic ethics and this attack on the faith of the Hindus, deeming them unimportant is the last straw. A foreign entity cannot possible understand the culture and traditions of the Hindus; but that does not give them the right to treat Hindus as less important and their plight less worthy of attention. If it is impossible for Huffpost to be neutral in its reporting and to keep their anti-Hindu sentiments at bay, they should best refrain from making such any statements. As a foreign entity, the conduct of Huffpost in India: from taking a partisan line to spreading fake news and underplaying news that do not suit an anti-government and anti-majority narrative, can be termed as a blatant misinformation campaign by the foreign entity. As such, it is imperative that the government takes steps to cancel Huffpost’s license to operate in India for its history of blatant political agenda.