Following the deadly riots in Delhi that essentially trace their origins to the anti-CAA agitation in the National Capital, the left-liberal activists in India and mainstream media outlets have made a desperate attempt to surreptitiously paint the riots as an anti-Muslim pogrom.
A lot of propaganda and rumours about the riots have been doing the rounds as a part of this larger conspiracy to attribute an anti-Muslim template to the riots.
And now the international media and other organisations too seem to have jumped into the picture. Media outlets that were writing grossly misleading, stinging editorial against the Citizenship Amendment Act based on half-baked information and rumours have now joined hands to manufacture falsehoods about the Delhi riots with the mala fide intention of tarnishing India’s image with bizarre allegations of cracking down on the Muslim community.
Leading the pack is obviously the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) which has claimed that the riots in Delhi were specifically targeted against the Muslims. Of course, it didn’t mention how Muslims like an IB officer- Ankit Sharma and Delhi Police Head Constable-Ratan Lal were hacked to death by Hindu mobs.
It also refers to India’s efforts to “target and potentially disenfranchise Muslims across the country, in clear violation of international human rights standards”- efforts that have no roots in reality and therefore propagandist organisations like the USCIRF only happen to know about it.
More misleading and vicious is the reporting carried out by international media, which appears to have a pre-meditated agenda to paint the Delhi riots as a pogrom against Muslims. Here are some of the most shameful violations of journalistic ethics, a clear cut case of propaganda.
A New York Times (NYT) story (read ‘pulp fiction’) about the Delhi riots is particularly unsettling. NYT has gone a step further in the attribution of an anti-Muslim template to the riots. Taking a cue from the Indian mainstream media outlets, the NYT goes on to pin the entire blame on BJP leader, Kapil Mishra.
“A local Hindu politician told the police to evict a group of Muslim protesters or he and his men would. Now, 25 have died in some of the worst violence in years.”
Referring to him as “a local politician with India’s leading Hindu nationalist party“. Alluding to his “Upper Caste Hindu” identity, NYT projects him as a turncoat from India’s most “progressive political organisations”- the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). It is definitely not a matter of great surprise that the NYT doesn’t refer to how a Corporator from the same “progressive” political organisation faces allegations of being involved in the murder of an Intelligence Bureau (IB) staffer.
NYT makes a reference to an excerpt from Mishra’s speeches and quoted him as saying, “either clear out the demonstrators, who were blocking a main road, or he and his followers would do it themselves.”
The anti-India, Hinduphobic media outlet however doesn’t bring to light how the demonstrators were raising Islamic supremacist, anti-Hindu slogans. It also glosses over how a man, identified as Shahrukh, fired eight rounds at Delhi Police and how the anti CAA protesters reacted to Kapil Mishra’s utterances by killing a Delhi Police Head Constable.
Other global media outlets like Reuters, Vice News and Al Jazeera have run similar stories in an attempt to create a hogwash of the riots being blatantly anti-Muslim.
A particularly disturbing and misleading story has been run by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)blaming Hindus for the death of Intelligence Bureau staffer, Ankit Sharma. This report titled, “India’s Ruling Party, Government Slammed Over Delhi Violence”, unabashedly uses one of the most gruesome and horrifying of tragedies during the riots to push its anti-India, anti-Hindu agenda.
WSJ refers to Hindu mobs chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and lynching the deceased IB officer. Attributing a fake quote to Ankit Sharma‘s brother, WSJ horrendously goes on to claim that he was attacked with sticks, rods, knives and swords by a mob which chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ before killing Sharma. Contrary to eye-witnesses and the family of the victim, Tahir Hussain, an AAP leader who orchestrated the riots, is responsible for the murder of the IB official, and not a single account claiming that the mobs chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ has been heard on the news or from locals who saw the events of that fateful day. Amongst all the misleading reports, WSJ has to be the most vicious.
The Guardian also did a venomous, almost celebratory report titled, ‘Anti-Muslim violence in Delhi serves Modi well‘ which said, “The riots have been driven by a ruling party intent on painting its largely peaceful opponents as seditious sectarians” and went on to claim that “In news reports it is always “violent members of one religious community” attacking violent members of another.”
Even Barkha Dutt who has been trying to paint the riots as an anti-Muslim pogrom from the word go has contributed to this facade of international media. She has written a story for Washington Post titled, “India’s politics of hate have erupted for all the world to witness,” in a desperate attempt to perpetuate the myth of the Indian State and its Hindu majority murdering Muslims.
The global media is therefore in an overdrive as far as the attempts of creating a sham of anti-Muslim pogrom out of the Delhi riots is concerned. Not a single report in prominent international media has done justice to the riots the wreaked havoc in the streets of Delhi, and while some have resorted to one-sided agenda based reporting, others have resorted to outright lying and this sets a very worrying tone for Indians who care for the truth.