In the typical Islamo-leftist propaganda peddling, facts go for a toss when a mendacious narrative has to be created in favour of one of their own. In an article written with deep chagrin in heart, the New York Times dedicated a eulogy to the Delhi anti-Hindu riots case accused Umar Khalid on 22nd October 2024. The New York Times has a penchant for hailing anti-Hindu and anti-India elements as ‘heroes’, ‘fearless dissenters’ and ‘defenders’ of democracy while projecting the Modi government as a ‘fascist’ Hindu ‘hardliner’ regime.
In a propaganda piece titled Four Years in Jail Without Trial: The Price of Dissent in Modi’s India, the New York Times blended all the usual ingredients the leftist propagandists use to evoke sympathy for the likes of Umar Khalid; victimhood, Muslim minority card, projecting the Muslim accused as an angry young man ‘fighting’ the system, the unending wait for trial, the family emotions and so on.
While the New York Times reporter Suhasini Raj lamented that ‘political activist’ Umar Khalid has been languishing in jail since his arrest on 14th September 2020 for his alleged involvement in anti-Hindu Delhi riots that broke out on 24th of February that year, she did not delve into why there has been an inordinate delay in his hearings. Contrary to the narrative NYT and its propaganda allies in India have been weaving that Umar Khalid’s hearing is being deliberately delayed, the judiciary is inherently biased against ‘Muslim’ activists and even that the Modi government somehow is not letting Khalid get bail, it is solely due to the accused himself that he is languishing in jail since the past 4 years.
It was only in April 2023 that he approached the Supreme Court. Before that, Umar Khalid had got a 1-week reprieve to attend his sister’s marriage in December 2022. If NYT is so concerned about Umar Khalid rotting in jail without trial, they should ask why Umar Khalid waited 6 months before moving the Supreme Court for bail, after the rejection by the High Court. Also, while there were screeches about the delay in the hearing, there were several times when his lawyer Kapil Sibal himself wanted the case to be adjourned. Notably, OpIndia found that out of the 14 adjournments in 2023 and 2024, 7 delays and adjournments were sought by Umar Khalid himself. It therefore becomes evident that the withdrawal was certainly not because of the famed “delay” in hearing. While the Islamo-leftist ecosystem continues to cry ‘injustice’, it is the alleged failed forum shopping attempts of the accused’s lawyer that has Khalid rotting in jail for so long.
Unsurprisingly, a person booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA and relative provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for being the masterminds of the anti-Hindu riots is a “symbol of the wide-ranging suppression of dissent under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”
The NYT article goes on to loathe the stringent UAPA saying that it was invoked earlier and used only to quell violent insurgencies. The propaganda piece continues to establish that somehow Umar Khalid did not incite violence but is only an activist and dissenter. Moving forward, the article claims that somehow the Modi government is bending the judicial system to its will, to back its assertion, NYT linked an article about Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s conviction and two-year prison sentence in the 2019 criminal defamation case regarding defaming the “Modi” surname. It, however, failed to explain how come the Modi government be blamed for a court verdict. Was PM Modi the judge? Also, if the judicial system was indeed biased against the adversaries of PM Modi and the BJP, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have stayed Gandhi’s conviction.
Alongside garnering sympathy for the anti-Modi political leaders, the New York Times article goes on to claim that since Umar Khalid is a Muslim, the government is extra harsh towards him. Again, the author failed to elaborate as to is the government is responsible for the situation Khalid has landed himself in, did the Modi government ask him to incite riots? Did the Modi government ask him to oppose a law that had nothing to do with Indian Muslims?
The NYT went on to blatantly blame the Hindus for the 2020 Anti-Hindu Delhi Riots saying that Hindu mobs killed Muslims. NYT, however, does not find IB officer Ankit Sharma’s brutal murder or that of police officer Ratan Lal or that of the Hindu youth Dilbar Negi during the 2020 anti-Hindu Delhi Riots, horrific enough to be talked about since they were not Muslim.
Continuing the anti-Modi rant, the NYT piece claims that after the historic win in the 2019 elections, Prime Minister Modi “moved swiftly on a slate of divisive policies advancing the longtime wishes of his Hindu-nationalist support base.”
While it has been a few years since Article 370 and Article 35a were revoked discontinuing Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, the agony of Islamo-leftists is yet to subside. The NYT opined that the Modi government’s decision to revoke Kashmir’s special status was a move to fulfil the wishes of its ‘Hindu nationalist’ supporters, none but Kashmiri people have benefitted the most from it as the region once marred in Islamic terrorism, stone-pelting and anti-India protests is now witnessing an unprecedented wave of economic development.
An average leftist’s anti-Modi rant is complete without lamenting PM Modi doing the pran-pratishtha of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. The NYT for reasons best known to them, did not care to mention that it was the Supreme Court that allowed the Hindu side to build a grand temple at the rightful birthplace of Lord Ram. It further perpetuated the falsehood that somehow the National Register of Citizens (NRC) would strip Indian Muslims of their citizenship even though, the provisions of the NRC were not even announced when anti-CAA-NRC protests by leftists and Islamists erupted. OpIndia reported how opposition parties, left-liberals and propagandists were instrumental in establishing the apocryphal narrative against CAA and NRC and fear-mongering among the Muslim community.
The NYT also suggested that even the Citizenship Amendment Act was somehow a step taken to appease the Hindu support base and was discriminatory against Muslims as “Muslims were pointedly excluded”. However, NYT does not want its readers to know why Muslims were ‘pointedly excluded’. Notably, Pakistan’s persecuted Shias and Ahmadiyas identify as Muslims, thus their persecution is the Islamic Republic’s law and order issue. Meanwhile, Rohingyas persecuted in Myanmar come to India via Bangladesh, they enter India for material benefits and no longer remain a persecuted group, thus, they are excluded from CAA, not due to any anti-Muslim agenda or hatred.
The New York Times went on to glorify Umar Khalid as a ‘Gandhian’ activist fighting against the Hindu ‘fascists’ and blamed the BJP leaders and Hindus for making ‘provocative’ statements against the anti-CAA protestors even as it was found that elements like the then AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and other Islamists not only incited but also participated in the anti-Hindu Riots in 2020. The NYT concluded its eulogy for Umar Khalid by calling his bail hearings as “empty exercises” and that his family is forced to endure a “torturous wait” for Khalid. However, for all the obvious reasons, the NYT does not care about the torturous and unending wait IB officer Ankit Sharma, police officer Ratan Lal and the families of other Hindus killed in the riots endure.
Indian leftists using NYT propaganda piece to mock CJI Chandrachud
Unsurprisingly, the Indian leftists are widely circulating the NYT’s full-page propaganda piece dedicated to Umar Khalid. In this vein, Sushant Singh, the Consulting Editor of Caravan India, a leftist propaganda outlet, mocked Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and said: “Here is the actual legacy of “talking to God” CJI DY Chandrachud, on a full page of the New York Times.”
Here is the actual legacy of "talking to God" CJI DY Chandrachud, on a full page of the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/vosV2SuZNp
— Sushant Singh (@SushantSin) October 24, 2024
Meanwhile, lamenting over the Umar Khalid ‘zakham’, Islamo-leftist propaganda portal TheWire’s Arfa Khanum Sherwani said: “Wish CJI had asked for a divine intervention on Umar Khalid too. Would he have been a free man now ? Four Years in Jail Without a Trial: The Price of Dissent in Modi’s India. A full page on Umar Khalid in The New York Times.”
Wish CJI had asked for a divine intervention on Umar Khalid too.
— Arfa Khanum Sherwani (@khanumarfa) October 24, 2024
Would he have been a free man now ?
Four Years in Jail Without a Trial: The Price of Dissent in Modi's India
A full page on Umar Khalid in The NewYork Times pic.twitter.com/FmQnV3VsTV
Notably, this ‘divine intervention’ jibe stems from CJI Chandrachud’s recent statement wherein he said that he sat before the God and prayed for a solution to the Ayodhya Ram Janmabhoomi dispute. Even while criticising the CJI, the leftists do not fail to mock his religiosity.
New York Times and its anti-Hindu propaganda
The New York Times has a pathological obsession with targeting Hindus and whitewashing the crimes of Islamists. A recent demonstration of the same was seen in its coverage of anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh. The New York Times shamelessly attempted to pass off the violence against Hindus unleashed by Islamists as “political revenge attacks”. Contextualising the Islamist onslaught, NYT claimed that Hindus were not being attacked because of their religious identity but because they were traditionally the supporters of ousted PM Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League. NYT’s cruel lies came even as Hindu temples were being vandalised and idols were being broken by Islamists who were also collecting Jizya in exchange for sparing the lives of Hindus.
Earlier this year, NYT blamed Hindus for ‘attacking’ Muslim sites after Islamist mobs went on a rampage following the demolition of a madrassa and a mosque in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani, which was built on encroached lands.
In October 2023, the New York Times targeted the Akshardham Mahamandir in Robbinsville in the New Jersey State of United States to further already debunked caste ‘discrimination’ allegations.
While NYT talks about ‘dissent’ and ‘freedom of expression, democracy and whatnot, OpIndia reported last year how its own journalists could not tolerate three people who confronted them on their censorship of Seymour Hersh, Uhuru, Julian Assange, Tucker Carlson, Russiagate. The “dissenters” here were pushed to the ground and silenced while the NYT’s executive editor joined by some other journalists silently watched.
NYT’s hatred for the Modi government is also not new. It regularly platforms anti-Modi elements to further its propaganda even if that means peddling blatant lies. Back in March 2023, Anuradha Bhasin, the Executive Editor of The Kashmir Times, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing PM Modi’s stance against the Indian media and its freedom of expression. The NYT allowed Bhasin to make false claims that the Modi government had ‘locked down’ the newspaper’s office in Srinagar in an illegal manner. The truth, however, was that The Kashmir Times was allocated two offices by the government, one of which she was required to vacate after the demise of Ved Bhasin, the publication’s founder.
The NYT earlier platformed alleged comedian Kunal Kamra to blame the Modi government for the surge in Covid cases even as the country succeeded in suppressing the ferocious wave of resurgent coronavirus. It also used covid pandemic to spread Hinduphobia.
During the covid pandemic, NYT had published an article insinuating that the dead bodies floating in the river Ganga and buried on its shores reflect the deaths that happened due to COVID-19 that had gone undetected and undercounted by the state government. However, OpIndia reported that immersing the dead in the Ganga and burying them along its shores is an age-old practice that Indians living along the banks of the Ganga have been practising for years.
The Modi and Hindu blaming of the NYT for the anti-CAA protests and the 2020 anti-Hindu riots has been ongoing for years. Even during the Farmers’ Protest, the NYT was at the forefront of villainising PM Modi and the Indian government and defended the rabble-rousers. The New York Times had in 2017 published an anti-Modi rant because his government instituted stern rules to stop the foreign-based NGOs from compromising India’s national interest. The opinion column titled “Narendra Modi’s Crackdown on Civil Society in India” extrapolated the muzzling of funds to foreign NGOs as an attack against the Civil Society in India. In 2017, the NYT carried an article that claimed saree to be a symbol of Hindu nationalism. A detailed OpIndia report on NYT’s anti-Hindu and anti-India propaganda over the years can be read here.
The New York Times and the brown sepoys it has deployed have over the years been and will continue to defend and glorify Islamists, riot-enablers and anti-Hindu/anti-India elements. The Western media has been playing a sinister role in maligning the image of India worldwide and painting Hindus as the cruel oppressors of poor and meek Muslim minorities. The Western media publications furthering Islamo-leftist propaganda not only ideologically but also monetarily beneficial for them. However, OpIndia is here to dismantle the propaganda of anti-Hindu and anti-India elements.
