On July 14, Bihar Police arrested two individuals identified as Mohammad Jallaluddin and Athar Parvez. While Jallaludin is a former Police officer, Athar Parvez is a member of the Popular Front of India (PFI) and its political arm Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). Both Jallaluddin and Athar trained a large group of locals on how to use swords and knives under the pretext of martial arts training. They also instigated the crowd with religiously violent statements.
During the investigation, the Police got hold of an 8-page document that underlines the PFI plan for the years ahead. In the document titled ‘India Vision 2047’, they aim to completely dominate the ‘coward Hindus’ and subjugate them, and this goal will be achievable even with 10% of Muslims rallying behind PFI. The document was circulated by PFI internally among its cadre.
‘Only NDTV, The Wire, and BBC allowed’
Blogger and Swayamsewak Ravi Ranjan shared a photograph of the place where they allegedly trained the locals on how to use swords and knives. One particular handwritten poster showed how media might have been playing an unsaid or behind-the-drapes role in whitewashing the criminal acts of these organizations and individuals.
In the current situation situation government knocking all the mediums of extremism and conspiracy against India in this scenario Patna police investigating popular front of India and their political front SDPI 1/2 pic.twitter.com/nsyX9Fn8L0
— Ravi Ranjan (@RaviRanjanIn) July 17, 2022
The poster read, “Only Allowed NDTV, The Wire and BBC.” It is noteworthy that these media houses have been repeatedly accused of whitewashing the crimes of Islamists. They often project them as someone who picked the arms because they were oppressed or show the “other” side of the individuals by painting them as “son of a headmaster,” “an engineer,” “shy boy,” or “someone who loves cricket” and more.
How BBC publish misleading reports to whitewash anti-Hindu and Islamist crimes
First, let’s discuss some of the instances where the BBC whitewashed criminal acts in a very non-subtle way. In 2019, BBC published an article in which they painted the convicted former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt as the whistleblower in Gujarat 2002 case. Furthermore, they bluntly lied about the 59 Karsewaks who lost their lives in the attack by Islamists.
When Bhatt was arrested in 2019, BBC tried to project as if it was related to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. In reality, it was about the custodial death that happened much before the 2002 riots. In the same article, they claimed that the reason for the fire that killed 59 Karsewaks was not clear. However, in 2011, BBC itself reported that the train was attacked by a Muslim mob.
In March this year, BBC published a report on the film The Kashmir Files. In the report, they took interviews of selective people who were not only opposed to the current regime, but some of them were linked to other political parties. BBC conveniently forgot to mention the political affiliation of the interviewees and showcased them as general Kashmiri Pandits. When caught, BBC issued a clarification suggesting they did not know or sought to know if they were affiliated to any political party and gave themselves clean chit.
NDTV tries hard not to ‘blame’ Islamists for any crime
The most recent example where NDTV openly attempted to save Islamists was a TV debate that aired last month. Channel journalist Vishnu Som recently courted controversy after he claimed that speaking about Islamic terrorism can hurt the sentiments of common Muslims.
During a debate hosted by Som on the ongoing Nupur Sharma saga, lawyer and co-panelist Desh Ratan Nigam alleged, “95% of the declared terrorists are from Islam. And 95% of terrorist organizations are from Islam.” He had cited the United Nations to bolster his claims.
“So do we, therefore, typecast everybody who is Muslims (billions of them exist around the world)?” the NDTV journalist defended. “So it is not the BJP that is creating the facts,” Nigam pointed out.
In another incident, while reporting about the anti-Hindu Delhi Riots of 2020, NDTV bluntly whitewashed how a Muslim-owned school was used as an attack base by Islamists. They had painted the Hindus as the aggressors while the ground reality was completely different. Rajdhani school, which was owned by a Muslim, Faisal Farukh, had supplies including stones, petrol bombs, acid packets, and even country-made grenades on its rooftop.
The Wire’s role in whitewashing Islamist crimes
NDTV was not the only one to whitewash Islamist crimes during the anti-Hindu riots of 2020 in Delhi. In a report, The Wire claimed that the school that was gutted during riots was owned by Muslims, and Hindus were the aggressors. This, however, was a lie. The Rajdhani school was a Muslim-owned school that was used as a base to launch attacks, and it was the DRP school, owned by a Hindu, which was completely gutted by the Muslim mob.
In 2019, The Wire interviewed now-jailed Umar Khalid to whitewash the murder of Kamlesh Tiwari. Umar Khalid, while pontificating about how Muslims are peaceful victims being vilified by Hindus after the Kamlesh Tiwari murder, categorically said during the interview that the Muslim community could not ignore an insult against the Prophet of Islam just because the insult did not result in physical harm. To him, an insult to the Prophet of Islam is the same as a physical attack. He further said that Muslims need to fight for their self-respect because an insult against the Prophet of Islam is an attack on Muslim self-respect, and while today it is just an insult, tomorrow it will turn into a physical assault on Muslims.
On multiple occasions, The Wire’s owner Siddharth Varadarajan has tried to whitewash the crimes of Islamists who burnt the train in Godhra, resulting in the death of innocent Hindu Karsewaks. He has been doing this since the riots happened in 2002. A detailed analysis of his write-ups can be seen here.
The media is always biased
If ethics of journalism are to be followed, media should never be biased. The journalists cannot take sides. But the scenario in real life is different. There are many media houses, including the three preferred by the arrested Islamists, who often try to whitewash their crimes and paint them as oppressed and weak. In reality, the vested interests of these media houses and the way they had control over the governments make them do things that are deemed against the ethics of journalism. After all, who can forget the famous interview of Barkha Dutt where she expressed her pain that media personalities and journalists no longer have access to the inside news of the government. Of course, they have to run their propaganda to get hold of the positions that they have lost.
