Shivam Vij, employee at Shekhar Gupta’s The Print, has authored an article that has been published on a Pakistani news outlet where he has emphatically claimed that ‘Upper Caste’ men rape Dali women because they believe they have the right to rape them. The article, titled ‘India’s Dalit women often face sexual violence because of, yes, their caste’, was published on Dawn three days earlier.
The article on Dawn appears tailor-made to further Pakistani propaganda against India. Until now, such ‘journalists’ had limited themselves to peddling anti-India propaganda in Indian or Western media outlets. Now, it appears, their services are employed to cater to the needs of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as well.
It is pertinent to note here that Pakistan has often tried in recent times to foment caste wars in India and tensions along the lines of caste. Following the Pulwama terror attack, Pakistan had actually highlighted the caste of the martyrs in the hope that it will cause disruption in India. And now, we have Indian journalists who argue that the ‘Upper Caste’ in India believe that they can rape Dalit women and have their article appear on Pakistani outlets. It is directly playing into Pakistan’s agenda.
‘Journalists’ such as Shivam Vij are also extremely careful to not highlight the possible causes that prompt Muslim men to rape Hindu women. All their speculations are reserved only for the occasions when Hindus can be made to fight against each other in order to benefit certain factions politically. Vij, in particular, does not even hesitate to say that. Prior to the 2019 General Elections, he argued that the caste divide among Hindus should be exploited to break the Hindutva consolidation for the sake of ‘Secularism’.
None of them have anything to say when the rapist happens to be a Muslim of course. The sexual slavery that is still prevalent across certain territories held by Islamic terrorists, the continued persecution of Hindus and other minority communities in Pakistan and other Islamic countries, the manner in which girls of other faiths are kidnapped and married off to their Muslim abductors in Pakistan, all of this does not prompt them to question the religious roots of such sexual violence. Such critique is reserved for Hindus alone.
Imagine the depth of moral depravity one has to sink to claim that ‘Upper Caste’ men believe they have the right to rape Dalit women. Would such vulgar demonisation of any other section of the population find space in media? Could any of us imagine any media outlet publishing an article that said, ‘Christians rape children because they believe they have the right to do so’ or ‘Arabs rape camels because they believe they have the right to do so’? Of course not, not only because it is incorrect but also because it is foul to demonise any community in such a fashion.
It is unclear whether Shivam Vij wrote that article to undermine the BJP or Indian national interests. Given the history of his articles, the reasonable conclusion to draw is that it is a combination of both. Or it could very well be that Vij actually hates people from the ‘Upper Caste’ from the bottom of his heart and the situation in the media is such that anti-Upper Caste bigotry is not only tolerated but even encouraged.
It is pertinent to mention here that the article was originally published on The Print and was reproduced by Dawn with due permission. A media outlet run by the chief of the Editors’ Guild of India, Shekhar Gupta, actually saw it fit to publish an article that Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of.
