Just when one thought that western legacy media had already hit the nadir with its tendentious coverage of India and India’s majority community, in comes another report that is so mendacious in its interpretation of facts that it plumbs new depths of insensitivity and treads into the territory of religiophobia. We are talking about a new article from the famous—or infamous, seen from an Indian perspective—Time magazine, which has found the social media trend “Hindu Lives Matter” to be dangerous. The headline of the report written by a Kashmiri lady (according to her Twitter bio) blatantly says, “‘Hindu Lives Matter’ Emerges as Dangerous Slogan After Horrific Killing in India” (1 July 2022). It is as if the token use of “horrific” to describe the gruesome beheading of a Hindu tailor by two Islamist terrorists is enough lip service paid, and the main issue is the reaction to the incident on social media, inspired by the movement “Black Lives Matter”. Does one of the world’s best-known news weeklies realise that by publishing such a report it is essentially implying that the lives of people belonging to a particular religion—Hinduism—do not matter? That they could die like flies for all Time cared, as long as the mantle of victimhood stayed with a particular minority community in India. It is as if Hindu victimhood in the face of radical terrorism must be “cancelled”, as Time editors have pre-supposed that Hindus being in a majority in India are naturally oppressors. An Indian/Indian origin leftist commentator quoted in the article has this to say: “‘Hindu Lives Matter’ presumes those lives have been overlooked. Hindu lives have not been overlooked in a Hindu majoritarian state. This is a revisionist fabrication of history and the present.” This is a rather appalling and fabricated narrative where one community is the perpetual victim and another the oppressor, when in reality, India has had a history of conquest and subjugation of the majority community, and the resultant troubled inter-community relations. Even in the present, the situation is anything but black and white. There is nothing revisionist about a beheading on account of “blasphemy”. It is a reality. It happened, and no claims of victimhood by anyone can justify such an action. Instead of acknowledging this, the article normalises violence against Hindus. If this is not Hinduphobia, then what is? That one of the most well-known international news weeklies is providing a platform to such a phobia, and thus legitimising it, is extremely problematic.
In fact, it is the same Time that published another extremely problematic piece on the film, The Kashmir Files—The Kashmir Files: How a New Bollywood Film Marks India’s Further Descent Into Bigotry, 30 March 2022—where the Indian/Indian-origin author claimed the film to be a part of “Indian cinema’s revisionist trend, used to justify the brazen Hindu extremism of the present”. To say that a film on the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits is revisionist is itself a revisionist claim. Hence, one can argue that the trend is now for woke leftists to delegitimise all that India’s majority community has suffered as “revisionist history”.
In journalism, there is a practice of writing the headline before writing the story, where the story is tailored to fit the headline. The problem is that, in such cases, facts often get sacrificed at the altar of a pre-determined agenda or narrative. When it comes to western media’s coverage of India’s current government, and increasingly of the majority population—presumably because the western media sees them as supportive of the government—a template of bigotry and majoritarianism has been pre-decided. This confirmation bias has just to be fed by those who know how to do it, and are willing to do it. This antagonism of the western mainstream media could be because of actual ignorance or plain laziness to learn about the ground situation. It could be ideological, or may have elements of racism in it. It could also be inspired by forces inimical to India, who want to show this country as a cauldron of hatred and thus not a stable investment destination. It could be any of these reasons, or a combination of some or all of these, but the bottom line is that the demonisation of India sells with the western legacy media, resulting in a one-way street of negative coverage.
But the mistake these people make is not realising that India is too big a power to be felled by keyboard warriors. It may be dented, but not felled. It is just that it is sad to see institutions such as Time, instead of promoting “All Lives Matter”, should find “Hindu Lives Matter” to be a dangerous slogan. What a downfall.