Opinion

Media’s only ‘ploy and plot’ is against Muslims

By Haider Abbas

In a country which is more than a billion and battling with not even basic infrastructure for basic living, apart from the shameless and latest strike on global hunger index with 101/116 rank, there are full evidences as to how BJP led PM Narendra Modi is floundering state-finances on his rally, like what happened, on his visit to Bhopal Rani Kamlaparti Railway Station, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Azamgarh (UP) visit, hundreds of state-transport-run buses were deployed to bring into the sponsored crowds, while there were none, when millions  of labourers, were making a come-back from far-off-states, back to UP, during the first and second waves of COVID-19. Now the government in Delhi is faced with air-pollution, which has attained dangerous levels, and put on a lockdown, has shut down schools, stopped construction activity etc in Delhi and NCR region.

The government has been forced to take these drastic steps, but much to its wont that such steps are found napping, as to how television debates have been raging inside the country which is by far the greater pollution spread across untapped in the nation for a long time.  Things have reached such a stage that Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana said everyone has their own agenda and statements are taken out of context in these debates. “You want to use some issue, make us observe and then make it controversial, and then only blame games will remain,” observed the bench also comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant. “Debates on TV are creating more pollution than anybody. They don’t understand what is happening and what the issue is. Statements are taken out of context. Everyone has their own agenda. We can’t help and we can’t control. We are focussing on working out the solution,” it said. These oral remarks were made while hearing a petition that stubble burning was also contributing to air-pollution. It is ironic that SC has expressed the alarm in context to the air-pollution but what about the real-time pollution of minds, permanently featured against Muslims?

Media’s only maneuvering and its only ploy and plot is against Muslims. It is crafty, it makes Muslims with typical skull caps and beard, but without their minds or ideology, blurt out ‘for-or-against’ Muslims.  While, in most of the cases, the anchor/reporter and other panelists always remain firmly entrenched against Muslims.  If views from a Muslim are pro-Muslims, it communalizes the Hindu panelists and the Hindu audiences, if views of a Muslim are against Muslims, it embarrasses Muslim audiences and satiates the Hindu ego, and if nothing works the anchor becomes a Hindu pantheon to force the Muslim participant into submission. The next strategies are to invite participants from Kashmir and Pakistan, make them vent their anger against Hindu hegemony to further consolidate Hindus towards BJP etc.  All this is coupled with diversionist strategies to never question the Modi or other BJP run state governments in the country.

This media glare and permanent onslaught against Muslims is going unabated, more vociferously, since the turn of this century, as media in India too easily joined the international bandwagon of ‘reporting’ against Muslims at large as the twin-towers in NYC had been brought down in 2001. While Al Jazeera, punctured the CNN/BBC/Fox News gospel, when there was none in 1990 when US had invaded Iraq, in post 2001, when Afghanistan/Iraq were flattened, Al Jazeera became a permanent pain-in-the-neck of US and NATO establishments. It is interesting to also emphasize that in early 2002, India also woke-up to the first televised, most horrendous genocide against Muslims, during the BJP Gujarat CM Narendra Modi and AB Vajpayee government at the Center.  Though later, Al Jazeera played it to the US gallery in the ouster of Qadaffi in Libya.

Temples in Pakistan are vandalized, reconstructed by government there, or Hindus killed in Pakistan or in Bangladesh are televised at prime-time news, to add to communal fervor of Hindus which leads to the carnage of Muslims in Tripura, such is the nefarious scope of media today! The entire media machinations are trained against Muslims, and it is also worthy to mention, that when a SC panel of lawyers visit for a fact-finding report in Tripura, they are slapped by the most draconian provisions of UAPA, that the highest court of law had to intervene or else the lawyers were to have been thrown down the dungeons for the mercy of the dispensation.

No matter how much NCRB data puts, that there is a rise of 214% in fake news and rumors in India, as reported by The Indian Express last year, or The European Union (EU) based DisinfoLab unearthing one of the largest disinformation campaigns organized by Indian stakeholders in Europe, it fits only into the perpetuation of the government of Modi.   The DisinfoLab found out the ‘modus-operandi’ as to how millions of people are goaded to submit to Modi’s agenda, as a Srivastava Group, ran a dummy website EPToday, which published an Op-Ed by Ryszard Czarnecki, a member of the European parliament in support of the Indian surgical strikes against Pakistan. This was followed by Asian News International reproduce the same piece, ‘but with a crucial twist—it claimed this to be the EU’s official statement, announcing its support of Modi. This disinformation was then reported by other Indian outlets, such as the Economic Times, reaching millions of Indians reported The Caravan on December 9, 2020.  Will ever the hapless millions of Indians, ever have the objectivity, to decipher through the milieu of this huge ocean of web of lies? Perhaps never.

Muslims who are the second largest majority in the country and facing an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation campaigns, in practically all the languages, all across the country, apart from the general apathy of the government towards them. The only solution is to have at least a dozen 24X7 news channels, in around six-languages, not based on donations, but as a Private Limited Companies standing on share-holders etc to hold the Hindu media juggernaut in its heels. There ought to be news websites, news web-portals, web-channels etc, in their immediacy, and if Muslims are not able, then, be sure, that the social-media platforms have already undone the hype of all such Modi media houses, as it was learnt that despite Modi government having spent 713 Cr on its eulogies, yet it could not win West Bengal, the same which is very likely to happen in UP in 2022.

 

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