Is Modi Really the Divider In Chief of India?
Even Narendra Modi felt the need to respond to TIME magazine’s zealous ‘Divider-in-chief’ cover story, a story designed to usurp his premiership at a critical juncture in India’s general election.
It was a hit piece with the backing of the supine, spineless Indian left-wing intelligentsia who busy themselves telling any NGO and western press outlet who will listen what a deceiving, duplicitous Muslim hating scoundrel Modi is.
But the real India has not been listening and has been ignoring the media as they play up stories of hate crimes, preferring to concentrate on the real issues of the day — agriculture, the economy, taxation. It may come as a disappointment to these media echo chambers that Narendra Modi does not sit in an office, wringing his hands in perfidious glee, concocting new methods to alienate the population of Muslims in the country he leads (the third largest Muslim population in the world).
The toothless opposition party-the party of acrid corruption and questionable moral foundations-as well as the media organisations who are its ideological bedfellows, despise the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre, and along with TIME magazine, are certain that there is a pernicious and grotesque pan-Indian plot to attack Muslims.
According to this narrative, Muslims across India are being lynched by Hindus for their dietary choices or, at times, just for being Muslims. The cause apparently is ‘Hindutva’ or an ‘alt-right’ version of Hindu nationalism that sees secularism as a threat to its very existence.
Despite what the limousine liberals at TIME magazine and their cadres think, this narrative has always rested on shaky foundations-there is no data to support this, but what there is are inflated statistics and disproportionate coverage, and plenty of media echo chambers to parrot such canards.
Of course there are right-wing groups in India who do quite enjoy hating, and hurting, Muslims, but they have been around well before the BJP existed and in 2019 have nothing to do with the Prime Minister himself.
When it comes to the concept of belief, Muslims are not being treated in any more a derogatory manner than are Hindus. If Islamists hurt, maim, defame and suppress Hindu life and ideology, the media will conveniently ignore it, turning a blind eye to any form of aggression meted out towards a BJP or Modi supporter.
What we have now is normalisation of hatred towards Hindus and its attack is propagated through the misconstrued chimera that it is really Hindutva that they are attacking. Like Trump, Modi and his ideological foundation, deserves destruction, and professional journalists are leading the way with their poison pens since actual murders of Hindus just for being BJP supports does not seem to worry them in the least.
This casual indifference is complemented by the tactic of hate crime hoaxes, genuine ‘fake news’. Muslims have spun false tales, crying wolf to claim victimhood status, knowing full well that the spineless mandarins in Indian left wing media classes and opposition opportunists will use each and any instance of perceived aggression as irrefutable proof of Modi abetted intolerance.
This hate-hoax tactic started early with the case of Misbah Qadri, a Muslim woman. A year after the BJP formed the government in 2014, 25-year-old Qadri told a publication that she was being pressured to leave her flat by a property broker for being a Muslim.
The story was not vetted by the left-wing who leaped onto this opportunity with unabashed glee, ensuring that they heard the story straight for the source-they then roundly concluded that there was’growing discrimination against Muslims’ and the BJP had aided and abetted such ‘othering’ fostering a deeply held anti-Muslim sentiment not that the top Muslim hater of India was in charge.
The broker, a Hindu, was painted as a religious bigot and was forced to go underground for several days fearing backlash from Islamists.
But when the facts came out the narrative was obliterated, showing that the broker had been asking Qadri to leave the flat as she had been staying without correct paperwork. It turned out that a month before her claim, the broker had submitted a police complaint against her.
The broker was not concerned with her religion and her apartment housed several other Muslims. After a police probe, and a lack of affirmative evidence from roommates or other apartment occupants, it was found that her accusations were flawed in every sense. But the lying Qadri did not suffer any consequences as a result of her deceit.
It was telling that the popular media was untroubled by the truth and the fact that she had weaved an intricate web of mistruths to give her initial claim some semblance of reality about it. There was no hate, no othering due to her religion and the press were loath to deliver a well deserved apology to their readers or the broker in question-that would be conceding points to their enemy, the BJP and its voter base of Hindus.
Muslim victimhood has wings in today’s India and it was not long before a law college student in Uttar Pradesh brought a fake case of molestation, saying that Hindus had assaulted her for being a Muslim and for refusing to wear a BJP cap.
The easy use of Muslim victimhood did not lose currency.
“…This is what bjp has done to us…so much of hatred for muslims out there…,” she lamented on social media as the attack dogs in the media came sniffing at her door.
A day earlier, she, along with about 50 other students, had gone on a day-long tour to Agra. They all went in a private bus and were accompanied by two men and two women teachers.
In a series of tweets, the student said that in the bus, some students got drunk, bought BJP caps and when she refused, started misbehaving with her. She said they tried to touch her in an indecent manner but the teachers did not intervene. They started pulling her and forcing her to dance to seemingly vulgar songs. They ruined her entire bus journey and, when her friends came forward to support her, the drunk students misbehaved with them too. She was singled out for the harassment as she was the only Muslim girl in the group and had refused to wear the BJP cap.
The viral tweets were picked up by a large number of publications. It’s safe to assume that it wasn’t the alleged molestation but its association with ‘BJP’ and her identity as a ‘Muslim’ that found prompt favour with the media, as is evident from the headlines. ‘Youth harass Muslim girl for refusing to wear BJP cap’, said one. ‘Lone Muslim on college trip says she was abused for refusing BJP cap’, said another.
Turned out it was just another hate hoax. 35 out of the 50 students on the bus had given a written statement to the college authorities the very next day of her written complaint, refuting her allegations. She did not even bother to attend the internal inquiry committee meeting at her own college, leading the inquiry being closed due to her inaction.
Instead the truth emerged, atypical of the modern day hater of BJP, Modi and Hindutva. Several of her classmates ventured forth details that made clear she was a Muslim zealot who, on several instances, showed signs of religious intolerance, fanaticism and rabid hate against the BJP.
They talked of her hate towards the BJP and BJP supporters, whom she calls ‘bhakts’ and detests to an extent that she wishes death on them.
Her social media posts showed that she wished for the lynching of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and uses the choices expletives for Twitter users for merely being BJP supporters, sometimes telling them to “go die”.
It’s not the first case of hate hoax and Muslim victimhood in India and it won’t be the last. What we want from a responsible media is for it not to be gullible, so incompetent, to not desist from offering a contrarian response.
Those who report hate crimes definitely deserve to be heard and supported, with each incident evaluated according to the evidence.
Hate crime hoaxes must not be taken lightly. The use of the Muslim victimhood card — or any other victimhood card — with impunity, casts a doubt on real claims of attacks based on religion and race. They also have a negative impact on community relations.
Each time the media drives attention to a fake story, it makes it that much more likely for people to doubt a genuine one.
