Monday, September 3, 2012

Exposed: The Anti Hindu Media

Exposing the anti-Hindu face of Indian media while covering Assam and Kandhamal riots

Rakesh Vikhar, 3Sept2012
The recent Hindu-Muslim riots in Assam once again reminded the bitter past of Kandhmal riots that took place in 2008 in the Indian State of Orissa. 
Kandhamal and Assam riots have many similarities.
First, the riots took place in remote areas which are typically always ignored by Central and State governments, and media has shown apathy in covering those areas.
Second, there was a simmering tension between two groups for a very prolonged period of time.
Third, Government turned a blind eye to all the warnings, till the time full scale rioting started.
Fourth and the final one, Government wasn’t able to control the riots even after throwing lot of weight behind security forces.
Probably this is where the similarities end.The way media covered the two riots, the way the so called secular political parties reacted, the way Indian journalists behaved, viewed and showcased riots to the world was entirely different during the two riots mentioned above. 
This article is written to investigate and comment on how the top media houses showcased the two analogous riots to the Indian viewers through two different and more importantly heavily biased lenses.


Background

Kandhamal, Orissa:  

The largest community in Kandhamal is the Kandha tribe. Most Kandha tribal people follow tribal and animistic forms of Hinduism. However, the socio-economic and political landscape of Kandhamal is dominated by its second largest community, the non-tribal Pana caste, who are mostly converted Christians. Maoist groups tend to recruit their leaders and cadre insurgents from Christian communities and have thus proclaimed Hindu nationalist organizations as their natural enemy. This has resulted in civil unrest and communal tensions in the past as well in 1986, 1994 and 2001. 


The most recent kandhamal riots broke out in August 2008 after the Maoists backed by Christian missionaries killed a well-known Hindu Spiritual Leader Swami Laxminananda Saraswati for his opposition to forced and incentivized religious conversion of tribal Hindus by Christian groups on a massive scale. Four other Hindus were also killed in this incident. In the aftermath, more than 18,000 were injured and 50,000 displaced. 310 villages were affected with 4,640 homes, 252 churches, and 13 educational institutes torched during attacks. Multiple Hindu temples and an unknown number of Hindus were also killed during the riots. The Christian conversion in Kandhal has gone undetected as most of the people don’t declare it in official records so that they can continue to claim reservation benefits. So for outside world, Kandhamal riots were ethnic clashes between Kandha and Pana communities, conveniently pushing the burning issue of religious conversion under the carpet.


photo: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/violence-in-assam-has-deep-roots/

Kokrazar, Assam:
Assam is a state located in North-East India, sharing a long and porous border with Bangladesh. At the time of India’s Independence, there was a very small percentage of Muslims in Assam but after 1960s, there has been a disproportionate increase in the Muslim population because of illegal migration from Bangladesh. According to recent estimates, out of the 27 districts in Assam, 11 of them are going to be Muslim majority once the 2011 census figures are out. It didn’t ends here; it has been observed that the migrant Muslims started grabbing the land of Bodos, started building mosques on the disputed lands so as to sensitize the issue. Most importantly, Muslims started imposing Islam on the native Bodos, to which Bodos have refused.
The recent violence started when Bodos opposed building a mosque on forest land; only New York Times honestly reported this incident with reasons, whereas most of the Indian media completely blacked-out the same news.
Bodos were under attack from the very beginning of the riots. The Hindu, a leading daily in India, reported on 26th august
“out of the 27 camps in Kokrajhar, 21 are being used by Bodos and five by Muslims. The remaining one is occupied by others. Of the 33,517 people residing in these camps, 26,117 are Bodos, 5,700 Muslim and 1,700 others”.
As of 20th August 2012, 81 people have died and over 500,000 people have been displaced, from almost 400 villages, taking shelter in 270 relief camp. The Assam riots are more of religious clashes between Bodo Hindus and Muslims. Also, these can be termed as clashes between Indian citizens and illegal Bangladesh infiltrators.



The behavior of Indian Main Stream Media (MSM) was suspicious for variety of reasons while covering the riots; let’s have a look at some of them

Complete Boycott of the Assam Riots:

The Main Stream Media, although having all the demographic similarities between Kokrazar and Kandhamal, did not cover the Assam riots for first 20 days (6 July till 26 July). There was very brief coverage in media from 22nd July but those were primarily PTI reports. The same media had reached Kandhamal on the very second day of riots, that too when they had lesser resources. Kandhamal riots were reported 24 x 7 and occupied the prime time slots on most of the news channels. Assam riots on the contrary didn’t even receive a decent coverage on the MSM news channels, forget about prime time slots.

Obscure reporting about groups involved in clashes: 

             Kandhamal riots were very clearly declared as Hindu-Christian riots from day one, media vehemently used the statements like “Christians targeted in Kandhamal” or “Hindu burned houses of Christians” in the news items and the live telecast.Have a look at the below news snippets:



But wait, the same media used far more obscure words like “clashes between two groups” or “Bodos and minority immigrants” or “clashes between locals and immigrants” for most of the Assam riot coverage, completely diluting and hiding the real identities of the groups between which the clashes took place.
Look at the below news items 


Media crossed all the boundaries to protect Muslims:

Assam riots were primarily a fight between Indians & Bangladeshis, so an obvious behavior from any Indian media should have been to protect Indians and lash out against immigrants. However, in the case of Assam, media never tried to protect the interest of nation and of the Bodo Hindus.
Some of the news channels tried to showcase that the Bodos were at the fault, some even reported that India is at fault as immigration rules are too strict which result into illegal immigration. The epitome of biased news reporting was reflected in the way Times of India debated that India should have freer immigration; have a look at this http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/poke-me-why-india-needs-freer-immigration/articleshow/15504321.cms?No other true, honest and nationalistic media in the whole had tried to protect the enemies up to this extent, but the Indian Media did!!
Lash Hindus, appease Muslims or Christians:
During and after Kandhamal riots, the media had not left a single stone unturned to show Hindus in bad light. They didn’t report when the Hindus were killed (Killing of RSS activist Vinod Kumar in Kerala by muslim CPM workers, Killing of Suresh Babu in Kunnur 2008 or more recent, VHP Goraksha Chief Shot in Bhiwandi Mumbai) but on the contrary, they dug out even a small story  where Christians were victimized and magnified it many times more.
The killing of Christian missionary Graham Staines by Hindu activist Dara Singh was shown again and again on TV from 1999 till 2004 and beyond. The relatively small incident like Christian Convent in Kandhamal not celebrating Christmas had occupied a prime time slot on CNN-IBN and NDTV but ironically they did not report the plight of Hindus where almost all Schools in Kandhamal had stopped or banned celebration of Diwali, the biggest Hindu festival of the year

 Commit mistake but don’t concede it

First, the Indian Main stream media missed a step by not covering Assam riots. Second, they refused to accept it as a mistake. Third, Media men tried to justify themselves by giving bizarre logic. Now look at Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor in Chief of IBN18 Network, he twitted

“21 Died in Assam, more than 1000 in Gujrat riots, Scale and Intensity, plus logistics will determine media coverage”

 Wow!! That means that Mr. Sardesai was very confident that the Gujrat riot death toll will cross 1000 mark on the very first day when he started reporting it





 If that’s not all, the deputy editor of CNN-IBN Ms. Sagarika Ghose twitted
 “Assam’s Complex sociological profile, Mosaic of Identities, Land Disputes are being pushed into religious narratives by Internet Hindus”
“In Complex ethnic cauldron of Assam, Internet Hindus are craving ‘Hindu’ equivalent of Gujrat riots as desperately as diabetic craves sweat”.

 The same Sagrika Ghose, During Kandhamal riots wrote
“Hindu rage is the newest threat to civil society: The Hindu is angry about Muslims, angry at Christians, angry that young women, angry at "anti-Hindu Euro-Indians" or "pseudo-seculars" who supposedly defend Muslims”.
 Feel something nasty here? Yes, but in general, most of the media had followed the footsteps of Rajdeep and Sagarika while covering Assam riots.

Selective Hunting:
The media, who broadcasted 2002 Gujarat violence as Hindu-Muslim riots, is hunting for Chief Minister Mr. Narendra Modi till now. The media is screaming hard till today against Orissa CM Mr. Naveen Patnaik for Kandhamal Riots. The same media is silent, not uttering a single word against Assam CM Mr. Tarun Gogoi.Assam riots have seen more than 5,00,000 refugees till now, the highest in number in the history of modern India.
The sole responsibility of this should go to the State and central governments as both of them allowed the Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants to infiltrate uninterruptedly for last several decades. The silence of the media against Tarun Gogoi and central government clearly proves that they are all pro-congress and showing only one side of the story to the common public. Remember, Narendra Modi and Naveen Patnaik both are non-congress, non-UPA Chief Ministers.


The Mumbai Riots by Raza Academy

The reaction of Assam riots was seen in Mumbai on 11th August where several Muslim organizations along with 50,000 supporters gathered at Azad Maidan to protest against alleged killing of Muslims in Assam and Myanmar. Soon after the provocative speeches by the organizers, Muslim youth went on the rampage and torched more than 50 vehicles, beat up almost 46 policemen (out of which two have succumbed to injuries), outraged the modesty of the women policemen in front of cameras, burned the OB vans of news channels; in general they created wild ruckus on Mumbai streets. Most of the media reported the incident in very spongy words like
 “A protest in Mumbai against Assam riots turned violent with demonstrators torching a vehicle- India Today, NDTV”,
 “An OB van of ABP News and some other TV channels were set ablaze as a silent protest against Myanmar, Assam clashes turned violent in Azad Maidan-Star News”.
          It’s the same media which fiercely use abusive words for pro-Hindu groups, like
“houses were torched by rampaging Hindu mobs- ibnlive”
“anti-Christian violence flared up Orissa. Extremist Hindu groups killing Christians- IndiaToday”.
The media which always rushes in to expose the identity of Hindus when they commit violence was trying to protect the identity of Muslims during the Mumbai riots.

To Summarize, Indian main Stream Media has completely lost its integrity during Assam riots. They tried portraying themselves as Secular but in fact were proved pseudo-secular who are always busy in finding fault only with Hindus.They tried to show themselves as sensible by not exposing the identity of Muslims in Assam riots, but the same media did not show the same sensibility while reporting Gujrat or Kandhamal riots where they passionately lashed out against Hindus.The media tried to show solidarity toward State Government of Assam by showing difficult ground conditions to control the riots; but the same solidarity was missing for Narendra Modi or Naveen Patnaik, who indeed had to face a much more intense bloodshed for some of the most provocative incidents like Godhra Train Burning.The Main Stream Media kept mum when Muslims burns their Vans in Mumbai but shouted aloud when some Hindu groups do a comparatively smaller incident like ‘Manglore Pub Attack’.In essence, the credibility of already sub-standard Indian media industry has taken a big hit in its sincerity and trust-worthiness after the Assam riots.



References:



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