On Thursday (14th March), controversial news anchor Sreenivasan Jain shared information about his association with Al Jazeera English. Sreenivasan Jain, who dubbed the plot to kill PM Modi as a ‘chota mota bomb blast’, had called it quits after a 3-decade stint at the leftist propaganda news outlet NDTV on 28th January 2023.
In his X post, Sreenivasan Jain shared a video snippet from his upcoming show on the Al Jazeera English channel. He wrote in the caption, “Thrilled to announce that starting this week, I’ll be presenting The India Report, a new four-part series produced by Meenakshi Ravi on Al Jazeera English that looks ahead to the elections. Here’s a teaser for episode 1, on the dramatic rise of Hindutva.”
Thrilled to announce that starting this week, I'll be presenting The India Report, a new four-part series produced by @meenakshirv on @AJEnglish that looks ahead to the elections.
— Sreenivasan Jain (@SreenivasanJain) March 14, 2024
Here's a teaser for episode 1, on the dramatic rise of Hindutva: pic.twitter.com/8NcXuYPbNV
In this video, he said, “I am in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. It is January, the start of an election year, where a grand ceremony that is as religious as it is political is underway. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is front and centre at the opening – a grand opening – of a temple to the Hindu God Ram. Not long ago, the presence of the Prime Minister at a mega-religious event would have been seen as controversial – a break from India’s secular traditions.”
He further said, “All the more because the temple is coming up on the ruins of a 400-year-old mosque demolished 3 decades ago by Hindu activists sparking Hindu-Muslim riots across India. But the event today, marked by celebratory media coverage and these cheering crowds embodies a dramatic shift for India from a secular nation to a majoritarian state.”
He added, “In this episode of the India report, I’ll be examining the rise of Hindutva the Hindu supremacist ideology espoused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP. We will explore the factors that have propelled Hinduism to the centre of India’s national identity and how it has also given rise to bigotry and sectarian violence. And more fundamentally could India’s Hindu revivalism ensure an election win and a third successive term for Narendra Modi?”
It is pertinent to note that nowhere in the video or the tweets by Sreenivasan Jain was it mentioned that the disputed structure which was claimed to be a mosque itself stood at the site of a Ram Temple demolished and desecrated thousands of years ago.
Anti-Modi anti-Hindu history sheet of Sreenivasan Jain
Sreenivasan Jain had been mired in controversies throughout his career as a news anchor. In July 2022, he furnished a surety bond of ₹50,000 to secure bail for dubious fact-checker Mohammed Zubair, whom he described as a ‘close friend.’
In August 2021, he cast aspersions about India’s indigenously developed Covid-19 vaccine, Covaxin. He made a startling claim that Dr N K Arora, Chairperson of the National Vaccine Advisory Group, said that the initial batches of Covaxin ‘were not of the right quality’. He later deleted his tweet.
However, the true highlight of his career was his attempt to downplay a vicious plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Ishrat Jahan. He had claimed that terrorists such as Ishrat Jahan, gunned down by the Gujarat Police during an encounter, did not come to kill the then Gujarat Chief Minister but to do a ‘chota-mota‘ (small-time) bomb blast.
Under the garb of informing the viewers about the CBI investigation into the encounter, the former NDTV journalist had insinuated that since Ishrat Jahan had come to only execute a small-time terror attack, she ought to have been treated well by the Gujarat police. While conveying that the terrorist deserved a ‘fair trial’, he tried to paint terrorism as a ‘no-big-deal’ issue. His vicious attempt to provide intellectual coverfire to a slain terrorist has been the key highlight of his stint at NDTV.
It is further worthy to note that Sreenivasan Jain had recently co-authored a book which attempted to “debunk” the plight of Hindu women who were being exploited and tortured in the name of Love Jihad. OpIndia has documented several such cases where Muslim men had pretended to be Hindu to trap Hindu women and then later force them to convert to Islam once their identity was revealed. There have also been several cases where Muslim men had exploited, raped, and tortured Hindu women in a relationship to pressurise them into converting to Islam.
In a case documented by OpIndia, on 16th July 2023, a 22-year-old Hindu girl filed a police complaint saying that she was brutally tortured by her ‘husband’ Amin Sheikh and mother-in-law Reshma Sheikh. The girl said that she was physically and sexually assaulted and forcefully converted to Islam after which she filed a police complaint against the duo under sections 37692)(n), 366, 323, 506, 504, and 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.
As per the FIR copy obtained by OpIndia, this case seems to be a pure instance of Grooming Jihad. The victim in the year 2022 was introduced to the accused by a mutual friend named Shahbaz in a computer class. Soon the victim and the accused became good friends and in February 2022, Amin proposed to the girl. However, the girl refused to accept the proposal after which she was threatened to accept the relationship. The accused said that he would commit suicide and blame the girl for it if his proposal was not accepted.
The accused then introduced the girl to his family and one day deceptively called her at his home when he was all alone. The girl was not willing to stay in the relationship however, she was threatened to cooperate. On arrival, the accused closed the doors and sexually assaulted the victim. He also shot derogatory videos of her to use them to blackmail her further.
After a few days, the accused called the girl and said that he was going to Dubai. He also expressed his will to marry her. He threatened the girl saying that he had derogatory photos and videos of her and that he would viral the videos from Dubai if she refused to marry.
The girl got scared but could not utter a word as she was threatened to keep her mouth shut. After a month or so, the accused came back from Dubai and asked the girl to meet. He then forced the girl to send a text message to her parents informing them that she was now married to Amin. He then sexually assaulted the victim.
The next day, the accused took the girl to a Masjid and forcefully converted her religion to Islam. He also married the girl and asked her to follow the traditions of Islam hereinafter. He forced her to eat cow beef, and consume drugs while his mother, Reshma Sheikh abused and physically assaulted the girl. She also forced the girl to offer Namaz and said that soon she would be sent to Dubai.
The victim then also learned that the accused was already married and had a daughter. She realized that she was being pushed into human trafficking. The accused however shifted the victim to a separate apartment and locked her from outside. As per the copy, the victim yelled for help and screamed from the windows of the building after which the neighbours called the police. The girl was safely recovered and later filed a complaint against the accused, his mother, Kazi Mufti Ismail who converted the girl to Islam, and two other associates of the primary accused who did the job of threatening the victim.
She demanded strict action against the accused and his mother and said that the video of her torture had been recorded in the residential CCTV footage. She asked the Police to seize the CCTV footage and provide her justice.
Despite hundreds of cases such as these, Jain, in his book, had essentially called the plight of Hindu women a figment of the imagination.
Islamist propaganda news outlet Al Jazeera
Sreenivasan Jain collaborated with the Islamist propaganda news outlet Al Jazeera which has a notorious history of anti-India anti-Hindutva stands. Recently, Al Jazeera claimed that the CAA is anti-Muslim. A day after Al Jazeera falsely claimed that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) notified by the Modi government was somehow anti-Muslim, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) debunked the lies of the Qatari State-owned propaganda outlet.
On Monday (11th March), Al Jazeera posted one of its dubious articles on CAA titled ‘India implements ‘anti-Muslim’ 2019 citizenship law weeks before election’ on its X (formerly Twitter) handle. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), a nodal agency of the Government of India under the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry, pointed out on Tuesday (12th March) that the claims made by Al Jazeera were misleading.
In January 2024, a Yemini-British journalist named Adnan Al-Ameri revealed how Al Jazeera carries out the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood at the behest of the Qatari government. Al Jazeera also led the anti-India reporting campaign during the anti-Hindu riots in Delhi that took place in February 2020. Al Jazeera attempted to present Muslims as victims in the anti-Hindu riots.
Given Al Jazeera’s pronounced bias against India and specifically Hindus, one can only imagine the Hinduphobia and hate that the 4 part series, hosted by Sreenivasan Jain, would spread.
