By Ranjona Banerji
A young man is brutally killed. His girlfriend says that he has been killed by her family because the man was a Hindu, she is a Muslim and her family disapproved. These are commonly referred to as “honour” killings because the murderers claim they have killed for clan or tribe or community honour. Obviously, there is nothing honourable about murder no matter what excuses the murderer makes.
Nor was there much honour in the way the media covered the death of Ankit Saxena. Given the fact that a Hindu had been killed by Muslims, and coming on the heels of unprofessional news channels being showed up in their skewed coverage of the events at Kasganj on Republic Day, Saxena’s death was treated almost like a bonanza for some news outlets. One can understand pro-Hindutva forces jumping with excitement. And the cynical may well ask, why should one be surprised by their lapdog news outlets following suit?
Instead of treating Saxena’s murder as a news event, it immediately became a chance to inflame communal hatred which seems to be the main purpose of some journalists. It reached a situation where Ankit’s father, while dealing with his grief, had to beg the media not to communalise his son’s death. The young man’s family and friends have also implored people not to forward photographs of Ankit’s body.
As usual, all our pro-Hindutva tweeters, columnists, commentators on social media used the murder to target liberals, because what else is the best way to mourn a cruel death? This scoring of brownie points has two immediate reasons. On the whole in India, in current times at least, Muslims and Dalits have been on the receiving end of violence perpetrated in the name of Hindus, usually by affiliates of the ruling BJP. This has upset BJP supporters within the media, not because Hindus have killed or lynched or beaten people, but because of the media focus on these incidents by evil secular liberal anti-national journalists.
The events at Kasganj, where several media outlets from Aajtak to Mail Today, tried to blame the violence on a local Muslim community backfired when other reporters filed contrary reports, video evidence surfaced of quite a different story from the Hindutva-BJP narrative and local officials set the record straight. Abhisar Sharma of ABP News wrote this impassioned article on the behaviour of pro-BJP elements within the media:
https://thewire.in/220897/kasganj-hindu-muslim-riot-tv-anchor-channels/
Should one suggest the practice of BJP’s favourite word “introspection” for our dear communal friends in the media?
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Rajdeep Sardesai, senior journalist and anchor of a show on India Today TV has filed a police complaint against lawyer Prashant Patel for his “blatantly fake inciting tweets”. Patel is a serial offender but like such offenders has some sort of divine protection from social media owners like Twitter and Facebook, which remove or silence people for writing about Indian history but will take little action against those inciting murder and genocide.
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Given that the stock markets have not reacted well to the Union Budget’s re-imposition of the Long-term Capital Gains Tax and that experts have panned the new National Healthcare scheme, life is difficult for some of news channels and anchors. So what else could Anand Narasimhan on Times Now and Pallavi Ghosh on News18 (amongst others) do but get really angry that the Congress has made a joke of the prime minister’s latest little cutesy acronym? Narendra Modi said Tomatoes Onions Potatoes were his TOP priority – get it? Divya Spandana, head of the Congress IT Cell asked in a tweet, “Is this what happens when you are on POT?”.
That’s it. Modi has been insulted, will Rahul Gandhi apologise, how dare blah blah and who cares about any other real news that happened that day?
Vegetable acronyms flew thick and fast on Twitter thus proving that the PM and his Acronym Cell are not the only ones who can be creative with kanda-batata.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal