While The Hindu talks about two sides of a national story, its coverage on CAA presents only one side

The Director of Editorial Strategy (whatever that means) of The Hindu, Dr. Malini Parthasarathy was recently worried that the Government of India “doesn’t see two sides of the national story any more!” The “national story” she is referring to here refers to the CAA and NRC headlines. I read The Hindu daily, and reading her tweet immediately prompted me to think if Dr. Malini’s newspaper actually sees two sides of a national story?

For example, I felt that irony died a million deaths when a column titled “FACTWISE” was written by Srinivasan Ramani. Srinivasan Ramani is no stranger to spreading lies, fake numbers and analysis under the garb of “facts”. In his article, “A tale of two demands”, he boldly proclaims that, “Dr. Singh and the CPI(M) demanded citizenship for Bangla refugees, but not on the basis of their religion”

The treachery is simply astounding.  In 2003, Dr. Manmohan Singh stood up in the Rajya Sabha and said that “the minorities in countries like Bangladesh have faced persecution”. The CPI(M) party resolution in 2012 reads – “the CPI(M)] demands a suitable amendment in Clause 2 (i)(b) of the said Citizenship Act in relation to the Bangladesh minority community refugees”

The full statements are widely available on the internet. I copied the above lines from the very article that The Hindu published. Both Dr. Singh and the CPI(M) are very clear that minorities in Bangladesh need help. Yet, Srinivasan Ramani had the courage to lie openly that the demands were “not on the basis of religion”! Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country. Islam is the state religion of Bangladesh. In this context, what does “minorities in Bangladesh” mean? Except for alleged journalists, it is crystal clear to everyone that the reference is based on religion because the persecution is based on religion!

Can you imagine the lies this newspaper would have spread in days when social media wasn’t active? Do you shudder at this thought? In case you think this is a one-off case, let’s look at more examples.

On December 10^th, The Hindu publishes a news article that says “1000 signatories express concern”.

On December 21^st, more than 1000 academicians signed a letter in support of the CAA. Guess what, there was not a single reference to this letter in the newspaper on December 22^nd. Don’t believe me – here is a snap of their national news section on December 22^nd.

Or you can even search in their online section here. However, The Hindu published the PTI version of this story on their website. Now, take a look at the accompanying image that The Hindu chose to publish for this particular news item.

What explains the publication of an anti-CAA image in a pro-CAA story? If an anti-CAA letter merits a publication in the newspaper, why doesn’t a pro-CAA letter merit the same? What kind of treacherous mentality aids The Hindu to squash one side of the story completely?

Around the same time that The Hindu published a “viral photo” of a girl giving a rose to policemen, Farhan Akhtar’s video of him not knowing what he is protesting against also went viral. Just one video from Rahul Kaushik that was RT’ed by Smriti Irani had a whopping 4,40,000 views!. If this is not the definition of viral, then I don’t know what is! Why is this important video, that exposes the utter callousness of popular folks, not an important news item to cover?

Let’s now see how carefully The Hindu has attempted to downplay the violence. Here is an image The Hindu has published on December 14^th.

We can very clearly see that the “students” in this image are resorting to violence. Yet, The Hindu, in their caption tells us that this image is of “JMU students protesting against CAA and the NRC”! Is this not treachery that The Hindu choses to mask violence in the garb of “protests”?

An infographic was presented by The Hindu, with the title “Rising restrictions”. This was in reference to the ban on Internet in areas where violence was happening. Please take some time to study this infographic.

Once you are done with it, can you please point out how is the 2019 data in anyway indicative of “rising restrictions”? 137 instances in 2018 versus 106 in 2019! If we remove J&K, then we are looking at 59 instances in 2018 versus 31 instances in 2019! Barring the problematic J&K, 31 instances in the entire country for an entire year, in various states (including West Bengal, the liberal group’s favorite state) – is that a number we really need to be alarmed about? If we are to be alarmed about them, then here is an open challenge to the Director of Editorial Strategy, The Hindu – can you please share with us 31 editorials and op-eds in The Hindu denouncing these instances as and when they occurred?

Read- The New Worry of Depleting Journalistic Ethics: Suhasini Haidar lies in her The Hindu oped about India’s diplomatic ties

On December 18^th, The Hindu front paged the following – “21 hurt as protestors clash with police in Delhi”. Somewhere in the article we are told that 15 out of these 21 are police personnel only! No information on how police personnel were getting hurt.

On December 20^th though, The Hindu’s headline was crystal clear – 2 die in police firing!

We are also then told that “Anti-CAA protests rock the country”. This was around the same time many pro-CAA rallies were also taken out in the country. No prizes for guessing if The Hindu covered them with the same vigor or not.

The Lok Sabha passed the CAB on December 9^th. Since December 10^th, in addition to all of the above news published in the guise of views, following are the headlines of just some of the views that were published as Editorials & Op-eds:

1. Dec 10^th: Editorial titled “Unequal, unsecular: On Citizenship Amendment Bill”
2. Dec 11^th: Congress and Partition (“The idea of religious identity being the basis for Partition has less to do with the Congress…”)
3. 11^th: A patently unconstitutional piece of legislation (“The CAB, 2019 has a sinister political logic — the first de jure attempt towards a Hindu Rashtra”. Although I wonder how does giving refuge to Christians make us a Hindu Rashtra!)
4. 11^th: Wholly subordinated to the majoritarian nation
5. Dec 12^th: A law not based on religion (about the 1950 act)
6. Dec 13^th: In the name of a majority
7. Dec 16^th: Editorial titled “Many mutinies”
8. Dec 17^th: CAA isn’t a Hindu-Muslim issue
9. Dec 18^th : Left to the whims of the executive
10. Dec 18^th: Time to defend India’s secularism (This one was by the CM of Kerala!)
11. Dec 19^th: Are fears over the CAA misplaced?
12. Dec 19^th: The last bastions of Secular India
13. Dec 19^th: Jairam Ramesh Interview – NRC places an intolerable burden on the poor and vulnerable sections
14. Dec 20^th: In thrall to its own violence
15. Dec 20^th: A tale of two demands
16. Dec 23^rd: Mixed Signals on NRC
17. Dec 23^rd: The three-step communal game plan
18. Dec 23^rd: A Hindu critique of Hindutva
19. Dec 24^th: North East in Turmoil
20. Dec 26^th: Dangerous Doublespeak
21. Dec 26^th: An Act that fails the Constitution
22. Dec 26^th: The return of the Secular
23. Dec 27^th: What are the amendments that the CAA needs
24. Dec 28^th: In CAA narrative, finding the judiciary’s lost voice (Virtually bullying the SC!)
25. Dec 28^th: Fuel to the fire: On Cabinet announcement on NPR
26. 30^th: Arms and the man: On Gen Rawat’s comments
27. 30^th: A dangerous new low in state-sponsored hate
28. 31^st: Uncovering the CAA’s larger stratagem
29. Jan 1^st: An anatomy of anti-CAA protests
30. Jan 1^st: It is everybody’s constitution
31. Jan 2^nd: The abiding power of protest
32. Jan 4^th: Defying the legalisation of the unjustifiable
33. Jan 4^th: Missing the wood: On anti-CAA resolution in Kerala Assembly

Dear reader, do you want to know how many pro-CAA articles were published by The Hindu in this period? A grand total of One. Yes, ONE. An article by Subramaniam Swamy on Dec 21^st – “A premature denouncement of the Citizenship Act”

What I have presented to you in this article is perhaps 50% of what The Hindu has done during the past one month. The myriad news articles trying to cover-up for the violence and the myriad views trying to spread falsehood, create fear would take an eternity to cover. However, it was imperative that this documentation was done – to showcase to the world how lopsided and one-sided coverage of this issue is being perpetrated by The Hindu. It has been proven time and again, that the last entity on earth to lecture about “two sides” is The Hindu.