On November 6th, News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) received a complaint regarding the ‘Conversion Jihad’ show aired by News Nation TV. On the 15th of November, NBDSA passed an inexplicable order where it urged the broadcaster to ensure that their anchor was “impartial”. The NBDSA directed the channel to take remedial action and even train their anchors in the appropriate “manner” to conduct the program.
Further, the NBDSA directed that all videos of the program should be taken down from all platforms within 7 days. If the videos were still up, the channel is supposed to inform the NBDSA in 7 days in writing. It is pertinent to note that News Nation TV had issued an unconditional apology for the show “Conversion Jihad” that they had broadcasted on their channel.
The NBDSA Chairperson Justice (retired) AK Sikri, observed that whenever any news story is telecast by the broadcaster, the Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards, Principles of Self-Regulations, Fundamental Principles and Specific Guidelines Covering Reportage relating to Impartiality, Neutrality and Fairness as also the Specific Guidelines Covering Reportage- Guideline No 9 relating to Racial & Religious Harmony, must be adhered to.
The NBDSA further took umbrage to certain statements made during the show by the anchor Deepak Chaurasia.
Some of the statements that NBDSA took offence to were:
- “Memchand zinda hai Jamaat sharminda hai”
- “500- Hindu kaise banaye Muslim?”
- “Kya Mewat Pakistan ban gaya?”
Retired Justice AK Sikri said that such statements violated the guidelines, principles and guidelines.
On YouTube, the video by NewsNation is now “private” and has been taken off air for common public.
What was the complaint against News Nation TV and their show ‘Conversion Jihad’
An NGO called CJP (Citizens for Justice and Peace) had lodged a complaint with NBSDA taking umbrage to the “Conversion Jihad” show by News Nation TV, anchored by Deepak Chaurasia. The complaint said that the anchor called one Maulana Syed Ul Qadri a ‘factory of lies’ and made him apologise on behalf of the entire Muslim community.
The complaint had also said that there was an “attempt” to promote “Islamophobic” ideas during the show saying that there is an attempt to promote anti-religious and anti-national activities by the Jamaat and that some clips on Twitter, that received thousands of likes and retweets promoted hate against the Muslim community. The NGO claimed that such programs must not be aired as they may hurt the “composite and diverse” culture of India and that it may lead to violence.
News Nation TV had in turn said that the channel or the anchor cannot be held responsible for statements made by the guests in the program, but, had tendered an unconditional apology if the statements had hurt anyone.
The NBDSA had ordered for the show to be deleted upholding the notion that any harsh reality being discussed in the media amounts to “Islamophobia”.
Is Conversion Jihad a figment of the imagination and a product of Islamophobia?
Conversion Jihad is a reality that the mainstream media, the organisations that govern the media and the political class, on the whole, wants to push under the rug. There are hundreds of cases where Hindu women were forcefully converted to Islam either by deceit or force. There are other cases where Hindu women were even brutally murdered and/or raped when they found out the real identity of the perpetrator and refused to convert to Islam. For example, there was a recent case in Surat when a Muslim man pretended to be a Hindu man. Thereafter, he abducted and raped Hindu women. Hundreds of such cases where Muslim men have pretended to be Hindu just to entrap Hindu women have been recorded.
Not just individual cases, which run in the thousands, but there have also been entire conversion rackets which have been unearthed by the security agencies.
The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh police investigating religious conversion scam by Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui and others have claimed to have detected the flow of foreign funds worth Rs 150 crore for the racket. While the investigation is underway, the above fund detected so far was invested in the illegal religious conversion activities in India. The fund mainly originated from Gulf countries Bahrain, Britain, Turkey and others.
The ATS has partially disclosed foreign funding in a charge sheet submitted before the court of the chief judicial magistrate of Lucknow against Rameshwar Kawade, Kausal Alam, Bhupriyo Bando alias Arslan and Faraz Shah of Maharashtra. They are among 10 accused arrested by ATS for carrying illegal conversion to Islam in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and other parts of the country. ATS alleged accused were working in a syndicate for a systematic conversion to alter the demographic structure and to create communal ill-will.
According to a report, the fund was sent to Kaleem Siddiqui, Maulana Umar Gautam and Salahuddin Zainuddin Sheikh. All three were arrested by ATS during the course of the investigation. Now the ATS is investigating background of organizations that provided funds to them.
Three organizations namely Islamic Dawah Centre, Fatima Charitable Trust and Al Hasan Educational & Welfare Foundation being run by Umar Gautam were used as fronts to receive foreign funds. In the last five years, Umar Gautam is accused to have received Rs 57 crore as foreign funds, out of which 60 per cent was used to run the conversion racket. Most of the fund was transferred by Britain based Britain-based Al Falah Trust. ATS said Kawade’s wife Maihasan Ali who is an Egyptian is a key foreign link of Umar Gautam.
In a 1860 page chargesheet filed by the Vadodara police recently, the police said that the key accused converted “100 to 200 Hindu girls to Islam and married them off” using the money, according to a charge-sheet filed by the police in a Gujarat court. CNN News 18 reported that, “The Vadodara police on Tuesday submitted the charge-sheet in the case wherein the managing trustee of a charitable trust and his aides had acquired foreign funds and illegally diverted them to covert people to Islam, build mosques and to provide legal help to anti-CAA protesters and rioters held in Delhi after the 2020 communal riots in the national capital”.
With such rampant forceful conversion of Hindu women to Islam, it is inexplicable why the NBDSA would consider a discussion on facts as “Islamophobia” just to maintain a modicum of political correctness.
