April 12, 2020
Indian Media Against Muslims
By Syed Rifaquat Ali
By and large, journalists in India, both electronic and print, have sold out their souls to the ruling party at the Centre: Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). And the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, master-mind behind the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, makes hay while the sun shines.
But for a slew of electronic media journalists like, Ravish Kumar, who won the Magsaysay Award in 2019, Abhisar Sharma, Paurush Sharma, and a few others, the entire electronic and print media in India has been attacking the Muslim community on one pretext or the other ever since the BJP wrested power from the Congress at the Centre in 2014.
And at the helm of this malarkey is the Republic TV, which has poisoned the minds of Hindus towards the Muslims through ugly debates. Instead of uniting the various communities in divergent India, Republic TV is playing a grubby role in dismantling the unity of India.
It is no wonder that Republic TV is licking the boots of the ruling party which espouses the agenda of Hindu Rashtra since the channel, launched on May 6, 2017, was funded by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, independent member of Rajya Sabha (Upper House), who had intricate links with BJP and was Vice-Chairman of the National Democratic Alliance in Kerala. Rajeev Chandrasekhar officially joined the BJP in April 2018.
Noted political scientist Christophe Joffrelot and New Yorker Staff Writer Dexter Filkins have compared Republic TV to Fox News, an American TV channel that practices biased reporting in favor of the Republican Party.
Other newsmen have compared Republic TV to North Korean media for its extreme pro-government affinity and muzzling of dissent. Renowned historian Ramchandra Guha noted it to be a pro-government channel, which ignored issues of joblessness, agrarian distress et al. and instead took to demonizing Pakistan along with opposition parties furthering religious bigotry in the process.
Fact checkers have documented it to have propagated outright fake or dubious news
on multiple occasions. The Republic TV has earned such disrepute that the Indian National Congress has banned its reporters from any press conference.
The most ugly party in this murky Indian political scenario is that the rift between Hindus and Muslims is constantly widening and if this is not instantly checked, there could be anarchy in the country when the Muslims will cry hoarse and say enough is enough.
The BJP government must wake up to this stark reality, and take adequate measures to pull up the electronic and print media to stop vilification of the Muslim community and hatred towards the minorities.
Muslims apart, the Christians and Sikhs too are at the receiving end and BJP should not sleep over it.
Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) has called for referendum in Punjab on November 6 this year which is an indicator that the Sikhs do not want to live with India any further. If the hate against minorities in India further deepens, India is likely to disintegrate.
The government at the Centre must step in to stop forthwith the dangerous trend visible in Republic TV debates. TV debates should unite, and not disintegrate, people to ensure national unity.
Syed Rifaquat Ali is Sydney-based journalist
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
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