The venerable Time magazine, the doyen among global newsweeklies, has done the unthinkable — without so much as batting an eyelid. It has changed political colours in a way that could put a chameleon out of business.
A couple of weeks ago, in a controversial article, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on the cover of the magazine’s international edition and described in none-too-flattering terms as India’s ‘Divider in Chief’. Modi’s ascension in 2014, claimed the article, showed that “beneath the surface of what the elite had believed was a liberal syncretic culture, India was indeed a cauldron of religious nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment and deep-seated caste bigotry”.
The article, typically, had given ammunition to the opposition who went to town quoting Time, to prove their point that the prime minister was a divisive figure. Now, a few weeks down the line, Time has labelled the leader of the saffron party as the ‘Great Unifier’.
In the new issue of the magazine, London-based media organisation, India Inc Group founder and chief executive, Manoj Ladwa, has written an article titled ‘Modi Has United India Like No Prime Minister in Decades’. Wrote Ladwa — unknown in India until he penned this masterpiece: “In spite of the harsh and often inappropriate criticism of Modi’s policies during the first tenure of Modi and this marathon election, no Prime Minister has so much united the Indian voters in nearly five decades”.
The double-take by Time begs the question: How seriously should we take the foreign media whose understanding of India and its vast populace is - to describe it best — superficial. Even the controversial ‘Divider in Chief’ piece came from a writer who wrote three varyingly different pieces before the final one describing Modi as the villainous politician.
Most of these journalists serving their own masters’ interests, which also include their parent nations sometimes, choose to paint our people, our leaders and our country with a wide brush that is quite often entirely off the mark.
While tonnes of newsprint and hours of airtime has been used up locally to dissect Narendra Modi without raising so much as a howl, but come the day Time does an assessment of the Indian prime minister and it becomes the benchmark for all media.
Foreign media houses have been itching to lay their hands on the Indian audience through one way or another, but if they are really to impress Indian readers, they will have to make a serious investment in understanding the Indian psyche before deciding to make wide assumptions and then fall flat on their faces. Sitting in Delhi, in their air-conditioned offices and listening in to the echo chambers of social media is not going to help their case. They will have to be part of this soil in case they really want to reach out to the soul of India.