On Friday, in yet another incident reaffirming the persecution of minorities in Pakistan, an angry mob of Muslims had gathered around the Sikh shrine of Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and started pelting stones at it.
The mob of angry Muslims gheraoed the holy shrine on Friday afternoon, leaving many devotees stranded inside. The protesters threatened to destroy the gurdwara and build a mosque in its place. Hundreds of Muslims protestors swarmed the Gurudwara Nankana Sahib and raised inflammatory slogans against the Sikhs. “We will not let any Sikh live in Nankana Sahib and will its name to Ghulam-e-Mustafa,” one of the irate Muslim protestors exclaimed.
While the shocking videos of a Muslim mob baying for blood should shock the very conscience of any reporter and should get them to focus on the plight of minority Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis etc in the Islamic state of Pakistan, NDTV journalist Sreenivasan Jain was worried for a completely different reason.
Calling it “terrible news”, Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV was far more worried about the visuals being used for “pro-CAA propaganda” than the plight of the Sikhs who were living under the threat of life by Islamic mobs.
Terrible news. Let’s hope it’s not used for pro-CAA propaganda. The CAA cutoff is 2014, and so of little use to minorities presently in Pakistan or the other notified countries. https://t.co/ZGhbvg9xNF
— Sreenivasan Jain (@SreenivasanJain) January 4, 2020
Sreenivasan Jain, who is a veteran propagandist seemed to be exceedingly concerned about the shocking visuals of a Muslim mob pelting stones on a Sikh shrine in Pakistan being used for ‘pro-CAA propaganda’.
It is worthy to note here that the visuals which surfaced on Friday night have shocked the nation and several people were outraged and praying for the safety of the Sikhs of Pakistan. It is being reported that the Muslim mob dispersed only after police released Hassan, the man who had abducted Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, daughter of the Gurdwara’s panthi. The mob was being led by the family of Mohammad Hassan, the boy who allegedly abducted and converted Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur, who is the daughter of the gurdwara’s granthi.
In August 2019, Mohammad Hassan had abducted Jagjit Kaur, a daughter of a Sikh priest in Nankana Sahib, and forcibly married her after converting her into Islam. A video had gone viral showing one of the girl’s family members claiming that a group of men barged into their house, abducted Kaur, forcibly converted her to Islam and made her marry Hassan. However, Hassan denied having kidnapped the girl, claiming that she had married him out of her own volition. This resulted in clashes between the Sikh and Muslim community of Nankana Sahib.
The entire saga only points towards the abysmal living conditions of minorities of Pakistan. While these incidents of persecution should only strengthen the resolve of the Indian state and its opinion-makers to ensure justice to these minorities and make attempts that not a single minority member from Pakistan should go back to these living conditions, the NDTV journalist actually used it to deride Citizenship Amendment Act.
India has seen widespread riots by Muslim mobs following the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act. Muslims, spearheaded by political parties like the Congress and journalists like Sreenivasan Jain have opposed CAA claiming that it is anti-Muslim. While none of them has been able to explain exactly how it is anti-Muslim, the country has seen widespread riots, stone pelting, arson and violence.
As Sreenivasan Jain says, CAA is in all probability an act to give citizenship to those Pakistan minorities who have been living in India since 2014. However, even if that is the case, why Sreenivasan Jain would oppose the CAA is something that is baffling.
After watching the videos of Muslim mobs baying for Sikh blood, one would imagine that Sreenivasan Jain would express concern for those minorities of Pakistan and as a journalist pose questions to the terror state of Pakistan, however, Sreenivasan Jain was seen further propagating against CAA.
Earlier too, Sreenivasan Jain had made ridiculous claims in his opposition to CAA. During the debate in the Parliament on the introduction of the CAB, Union Home Minister said that the Bill wasn’t against minorities at all. Responding to it on Twitter, Sreenivasan Jain argued how could a Bill that specifically “excludes” a “minority community” not be against minorities.
It appeared that Jain was arguing that Muslims are minorities in the Islamic States of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. CAA seeks to provide citizenship to the persecuted religious minorities from these three countries. And Muslims, in the countries mentioned, are the majority community. Quite obviously, Muslims cannot be considered a persecuted religious minority in an Islamic State.
Sreenivasan Jain is known to misrepresent facts in order to peddle a certain narrative. He has done so on several occasions in the past. He has also edited interviews of his guests in order to favour his preordained narrative. He is also known for his false equivalences and equating online speech with actual violence.
