Matthew Hayden, the legendary Australian cricketer, in a letter criticised the oriental view of the western media and supported the Indian government on its steps taken to handle the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
“India is in the middle of the pandemic second wave’s battering, as never seen before. As it battles the alarming spread of the virus, the world media has spared no time in lambasting a country of a whopping 1.4 billion where the sheer numbers make the implementation and success of any public scheme a challenge,” wrote Hayden.
Anand Mahindra, the ace industrialist, shared the letter by Hayden, with the caption, “Extracts from a heartfelt blog on India by @HaydosTweets . A cricketer whose heart is even bigger than his towering physical stature. Thank you for the empathy and your affection.”
Extracts from a heartfelt blog on India by @HaydosTweets A cricketer whose heart is even bigger than his towering physical stature. Thank you for the empathy and your affection… pic.twitter.com/h671mKYJkG
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) May 14, 2021
As India fights an unforgiving second Covid-19 wave, western media has been having field days on end reporting about the misery of our country and the suffering of its people. India had surprised many last years when during the first wave that struck the country, we as a nation sailed past it almost seamlessly. Liberal mainstream media from around the world scratched their heads in dismay as they failed to witness India’s destruction – as they hoped – the last year. Now, as India is being ravaged by the second wave of the virus that we, frankly, fail to anticipate, liberal media is loving it.
For western media, an opportunity has arrived. The opportunity to deride India. The opportunity to blame Prime Minister Modi. The opportunity to laugh at India’s misery. Indian crematoriums have become photoshoot sites for international media. The privacy of Indians is being infringed; the sanctity of their last rites being made a show of. Cremation grounds with lit pyres are becoming first page pictures to be used by the likes of the New York Times to sell more copies of their publications. The Australian media including the publishers like The Australian also capitalised on this opportunity.
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Hayden, like many other people in the West who are more aware of India than armchair activists with a certain agenda, did not like it and decided to write against it.
“Wherever I went, the people greeted me with love and affection, for which I remain in their debt. I can proudly claim that I have seen India up close over the years and that is why my heart bleeds to see it not only in agony at the moment, but also for the bad press that has been hurled at it by those who I am not sure to spend any time here to understand India, its people, and their myriad challenges,” he wrote in a column for the Institute for Australia India Engagement, a think-tank based in Australia.
After one dreadful year of India fighting the pandemic like no other country, liberal media has been gifted with the opportunity to demean our country, to embarrass it globally and to spread falsities about it. How possibly can this section of spineless media let go of this opportunity? It is not always that such an open-ended chance arrives to launch an attack against Modi and his supporters. This, for international media, is the right time to bog down Indians. We already have our backs against the wall. This is the best chance foreign media will get to land punches on us.
In their drive to somehow paint a miserable picture of India, international media has only yet again exposed themselves. And not just the Indians, but even the western audience is also realising the one-sided agenda of the western media.
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