Thomas Jackson, a Research Fellow at the India Foundation and former President of the Oxford University Conservative Association, recently penned an article for the Open Magazine on the twisted perception of the Indian ‘Rightwing’ the western academia appears to have.
In his article, Jackson claims that he was led to believe by his acquaintances in the academia and western media outlets that the Indian Right is too extreme with one of them even saying that working for an Indian rightwing think tank was akin to working for an organization supportive of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany. He admits that the opinions of those around him led to him having many preconceptions about Indian conservatives, all of which turned out to be false. It also confirmed to him how out of touch the western academia and the media were with the realities of India.
Jackson also criticizes ‘Indian thought leaders’ who are creating a false narrative about the country in the west. He writes, “More shockingly, though, is the fact that Indian thought leaders, who I suspect is perhaps still bitter that Congress is out of power, are creating such a false narrative of their own country for us in the West.”
He concludes his piece with the words, “The idea that Indian liberalism and tolerance are dead if they did in fact ever exist, is firmly planted in the mind of the Western media and academics. My experience suggests that this cannot be further from the truth, and I’ve even heard many people I work with make the claim that Hinduism and the Indian way of life encourage liberalism, pluralism and tolerance. I am inclined to believe this.”
We have, on multiple occasions, reported on how western journalists and academia have spread fake news about India which exposed their own bias. Propagandist C.J. Werlemen has on several occasions spread false narratives about rising Islamophobia in India and was even berated by the Police for his tweet. Very recently, the BBC was forced to retract its report claiming that the Sikh cop who had allegedly saved a Muslim man from a Hindu mob was receiving death threats after we exposed their lies. The New York Times as well has peddled false narratives on several occasions to malign Hindus and target the BJP government.
