Nupur Sharma’s comment and the subsequent outrage by the Islamic community, which led to calls for beheading and gang rape, has opened Pandora’s box. Since PM Modi came to power, Hindus managed to shift the Overton Window substantially, with taboo subjects being spoken about in the open – whether it was the Hindu genocide, the Islamic invasion, distortion of history or reclamation of cultural heritage. However, almost as a live demonstration of Nassim Taleb’s theory of how the “most intolerant wins”, the criticism of Islam seems to be leaving public discourse even before it started becoming “mainstream”.
After the Islamist community, including Taliban and Al Qaeda, in unison screamed “Gustakh-e-Rasool ki saza, sar tan se juda”, media houses seem to be getting scared enough to pull down interviews they thought might offend the Islamists.
India TV, which portends to be the voice of the masses, has pulled down a video where it had interviewed ex-Muslims and why they left the Islamic faith.
The video on Youtube has gone missing and on their website, it says that the video interview of ex-Muslims has been made private.
An archive copy of their website page, where this video was supposed to be there can be viewed here.
The India TV interview, according to the headline on their website, was a debate between ex-Muslims and Maulanas. After the Nupur Sharma episode, where Islamic nations came out to condemn comments on Islam, Al Qaeda and Taliban issued threats and several Islamic organisations issued a bounty on Nupur Sharma’s head, the show seems to have been pulled down.
Sources in several news channels have stated that after the Nupur Sharma episode, there has been immense pressure that is being exerted by the top bosses on the anchors and editors to remove content that may be seen as offensive to the Islamic community.
The feelers, one such TV journalist said, have come mostly from the owners of the channels. “We were sent subtle messages, feelers, to ensure that shows that may offend Muslims are not done given that the atmosphere is not right after the Nupur Sharma incident. There was also indirect pressure to remove certain shows that may be deemed offensive”.
“The barrage of threats and just how much this issue snowballed has spooked the owners of these channels. They think that the slightest provocation can end up with them getting threats”, he added.
In the past 10 years and especially in the past 8 years, Hindus have managed to shift the Overton Window considerably.
The Overton Window is a set of ideas and policies which are acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. The spectrum of acceptability ranges from what the society deems “unacceptable” to what set of ideas eventually becomes a government policy acceptable to the mainstream population.
Joshua Treviño has postulated that the six degrees of acceptance of public ideas are roughly:
- Unthinkable
- Radical
- Acceptable
- Sensible
- Popular
- Policy
The Overton Window, simply put, shifts when an acceptable idea becomes popular and then translates to policy. Or better yet, when a radical idea journeys its way through being considered ‘sensible’ to ‘popular’ and then translates into policy.
While Hindus with the help of the government in power, made massive strides in the past few years in shifting the Overton Window, with Media houses cowering to Islamic pressure, Hindus run the risk of the Overton Window shrinking yet again.
With the Nupur Sharma fiasco, one has to imagine that just like India TV, several individuals would also think that if a national spokesperson of the largest political party in the world can be hounded and endangered in this manner, they will be silenced if they tread the same path. While there is a vast difference between a media house cowering to pressure and deleting their content and average citizens who firstly have no might back them when they fall into trouble and also, are not in the profession of standing up to pressure to speak the truth, the shrinking of the Overton Window seems to affect opinions across the board.
It was only recently that Hindus started talking openly about a religion that has historically subjugated, tortured, murdered and raped the Hindu community. It was only recently that we could openly start demanding that our faith gets accorded the same level of respect that other religions demand and that just because we don’t assert our street power, our Gods and Goddesses are not up for insult. It is only recently that Hindus started realising that the “All religions are equal” trope is just that – a trope. While Hindus believe in plurality, Islamists believe that India is Dar-ul-Harb that needs to be converted into Dar-ul-Islam and that for them, Hindus will continue to be Kafirs no matter how many concessions the community makes for them.
Hindus have been abused for aeons, however, in the internet age, the fact that social media can be used to organise an international campaign to demand a woman’s head is a reality that Hindus are trying to come to terms with. In the process, the gains made in opening up the conversation to the masses have taken a severe hit.
As India TV gives in to Islamic pressure, on the other hand, we had India News. Their anchor Pradeep Bhandari had conducted a program where ex-Muslims had exposed the radical Muslims on television, which is still live, for now.
While one expects average citizens to think about their own safety and protection first, media houses are supposed to stand up to pressures from murderous elements. One does not truly expect a media house, one as powerful as India TV, to cower to pressure even before it is exerted upon them. They essentially got vicariously scared of the threats being given to Nupur Sharma and instead of standing up to and calling out the Islamists who were threatening her, they crawled when the Islamists had not yet asked them even to bend.
