Left with no counter to Sudhir Chaudhary’s Zameen Jihad report, Leftist media cries some more

Sudhir Chaudhary has set the pants of left-liberals and jihad-sympathisers on fire, courtesy a show he aired describing jihad and its various forms, and also explaining how it was much more entrenched in society than normally thought to be. Needless to say, Chaudhary was made an immediate punching bag, with competitors like Rajdeep Sardesai leading the charge against the man for airing content the latter never had the spine to.

Sudhir Chaudhary’s discussion was mainly concerning a parameter called ‘land jihad’, by which he drew the attention of viewers to the gradual marginalization and demographic assault on the Hindus of Jammu, using a piece of legislation called the ‘Roshni Act’, which of course, was scrapped by the Modi government in 2018.

The Roshni Act was nothing but an eyewash to alter the demographics of the region. As a part of this Act enacted in the year 2001 by Ghulam Nabi Azad, it was aimed at ‘conferring 20.55 kanals of state land to the occupants’. The legislation patronised illegal occupants of government lands by selling away the land to them at throwaway prices. This is exactly where the claims of the Act being an instrument to change the demography of the region drastically come into picture.

Lutyens’ didn’t seem glad about Sudhir’s unpardonable travesty, having analysed topics way above the pay-grades of many in the media industry. Moreover, how could Zee News be so blunt about the realities, and not sugar-coat it with a dose of secularism at the very least? And so, some media portals took it upon themselves to establish equilibrium of narratives, unsuccessfully so.

Newslaundry reported that apart from being absurd, the flowchart used by Zee News was plagiarized! Eureka! Speak about investigative journalism, against those trying to inform a rather passive audience about the realities of jihad. Quoting from their article, “It seems Chaudhary can’t come up with an original graphic, let alone an argument, in support of even his primary agenda – the demonization of India’s Muslim minority.”

Of course Newslaundry here conveniently brackets all Muslims as ‘jihadis’, when they speak of Sudhir’s primary agenda being that of ‘demonizing Muslims’. Sudhir Chaudhary was speaking about jihad and jihadis, yet, Newslaundry generalizes all Muslims to be jihadis. Talk about demonization! As another plus point, Newslaundry had no factual counter to any points raised by Chaudhary during his show. What they have in abundance though is a load of humour, to mask their obvious lack of content and arguments.

Taking their cue from Newslaundry, ThePrint went a step ahead to congratulate Muslims for giving it back as good as they got. In an article titled “Sudhir Chaudhary’s jihad rant on Zee News just got hit with eggs, petrol and some beauty” by one Saif Khan, ThePrint leaves no stone unturned to deride Chaudhary for growing the spine to adventure into unchartered territory.

While they call Sudhir’s analysis a rant, they also make heroes out of fools. A common binding factor between Newslaundry and ThePrint is their lack of content and arguments to counter any point raised by Sudhir Chaudhary. Instead, they both claim that the flowchart in itself was plagiarized from a Facebook page. ThePrint also incorporates multiple tweets of Muslim handles in their article to somehow validate and of course, elongate their piece. Remove the tweets and there will be no substance to the article, not that there is any as of now. Again, ThePrint too, does not present a single factual counter to Sudhir Chaudhary’s arguments, because they have none.

Lutyens and durbaari media needs to realise that the media industry has been democratized in the country post 2014, and nobody is obliged to follow one particular line of editorial policy, descending directly from 10 Janpath. While there are still many who do so, there are also those who refuse to lie prostrate infront of the masters of certain media-barons.