A clip of a BBC interview of Twitter owner Elon Musk went viral recently. The BBC interviewer confronted Musk with what he called the rise of hateful content on Twitter since its takeover. When Musk asked the BBC journalist to give specific examples of hateful content, the unprepared but pretentious journalist started blubbering and waffling. He was unable to give a single instance in support of what he was asserting.
In that brief 2-minute clip, Musk effortlessly demolished the virtue-signalling, woke journalism that has captured and captivated Western ‘liberal’ (actually it is utterly ill-liberal and ignorant) media. In the process, Musk exposed the pernicious stereotypes that (ill)liberal Western media peddles, and the fallacious, agenda driven narratives it manufactures. This takedown of BBC resonated in India which has been facing a relentless campaign of demonisation of the Modi government based mostly on half-truths, insinuations and innuendos.
Since 2014, the (ill)liberal ecosystem in the West has portrayed India as a country where there has been a backsliding of democracy, increase in authoritarianism, attack on civil liberties, where the media has been chained and muzzled, the Opposition has been victimised and marginalised and where minorities are under siege.
The Western media went into an overdrive after a court-convicted Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on charges of defamation. The conviction led to an automatic disqualification under the prevailing law. But in the narrative peddled by the Western ill-liberal media, Rahul Gandhi was convicted and disqualified by the Indian Prime Minister, and not by a court of law. That Rahul Gandhi got relief from the same court a few days later was conveniently ignored by the same Western media that had gone ballistic over the conviction. None of the reporters filing stories in Western media outfits bothered to go into the details of the case and the fact that it was taken rather lightly by Rahul Gandhi and his legal team.
This was hardly surprising. In 2019 the Western media outfits went berserk after Parliament passed the CAA law fast-tracking Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The narrative that these Western Goebbelsian ‘journalists’ manufactured was that it was a law depriving Indian Muslims of their citizenship. Hardly anyone of these self-proclaimed journalists had read the law, much less understood it. And yet, they held forth on it and painted India in lurid colours, lamenting the death of secular India, the rise of majoritarianism, the marginalisation of minorities, blah blah blah.
That many Western countries had similar laws was completely glossed over. That non-Muslim religious minorities were subjected to horrific and systematic state sponsored persecution forcing them to flee to India was also ignored. The focus was only on targeting the Modi government and portraying it as the undertaker of Indian democracy and secularism. In a way the Western media coverage of India since 2014 is the 21st century equivalent of the old adage of the Wild West — give a dog a bad name and hang it. This is exactly what much of the (ill)liberal Western media has been assiduously trying to do since Modi became Prime Minister of India.
The Western (ill)liberals have a visceral dislike, even hatred, for the Modi government which is reflected in how they write about it and cover it in the media. There is of course the usual stereotyping by unfailingly adding the appellation ‘Right Wing Hindu nationalist’ every time they write about the Modi government. On the face of it, such a label is a tool for dumbing down things for Western audiences. But there is also a sinister design at play.
Such dumbed down labels are an excellent propaganda tool because these are easily digested by the target audiences. The fact is that when the Western media uses the label of Right-wing Hindu nationalist, it is as a pejorative to demonise not just Indian nationalism but also the Hindu community. This despite the fact that Indian nationalism is vastly different from Western nationalism. Even what goes for Right-wing in India has absolutely nothing in common with the traditional Right-wing in the West. But since it is a dumbed down description for dumb audiences for purposes of creating a negative perception, it is serving its purpose.
Of course, such labelling is reserved for countries like India or for political groups and movements that the Western media has picked up as a hate object. Similar parties or leaders in Western countries are not labelled similarly — the LDP isn’t called Right-wing Shinto Nationalist, the CDU in Germany isn’t called Right-wing Christian nationalist. But when it is India, then even popularity of a dress like sari becomes a sign of growing ‘Hindu nationalism’; an article on the massive impact of digital payments has to have a reference to ‘Hindu Nationalist government’; a report on infrastructure development is not complete until ‘Hindu nationalist government’ is not mentioned; a piece on food choices and changing tastes must refer to ‘Hindu nationalist’ government.
That things have reached rather ridiculous levels is apparent. Part of the problem is of course the rather dumb and clueless Western journalists who parachute into India and write about it without ever understanding the place, its complexities, the nuances, its layers. Compounding their ignorance is the fact that much of their information and understanding of India comes from an echo chamber which feeds into the stereotypes they have pre-formed in their small and jaundiced minds. The Indian writers they commission also conform to the world view of their paymasters. In such a setting, any and every alternate view point is immediately cancelled. Things have become so ludicrous that it is fine for the New York Times to carry a piece written by an UN-designated international terrorist but heavens fall and the op-ed editor can lose her job because the same newspaper carries an article by a US Congressman who had been cancelled by the newsroom lynch mob.
An arrest of a politician in India is the death of democracy and snuffing out of all Opposition, but the arrest of a former president who is the main challenger in the presidential elections is perfectly legitimate; crackdown on a protest in Canada by imposing emergency and seizing/freezing accounts of protestors is kosher, but a crackdown on a similar protest in India is the crushing of dissent and death of democracy; arrests of meme makers in the US is justified because they spread fake news, but arrests of ‘journalists’ and social media ‘influencers’ in India on the same charges is a miscarriage of justice, the suppression of free speech, etc; a police crackdown on protestors in France will never raise cries of democracy in peril, but a similar crackdown in India is always use of brute force by a fascist government; the Indian media is dismissed as being pliable and compromised to the government, but the Western (ill)liberal media that covers up politically inconvenient stories or spins news in favour of the government of the day is free and independent and not susceptible to any pressure. The moment these things are pointed out, the response is standard: don’t indulge in whataboutery. This word is the only defence of the ill-liberal liberals when their hypocrisy is pointed out.
The anti-India, anti-Hindu tirade in Western media is primarily driven by the sanctimonious ill-liberal liberals whose latent racism is reflected in their desire to keep bearing the white man’s burden. What is galling is their sneering arrogance and superciliousness where they think they know how Indians should live their lives, vote, dress, what cultural and social mores they should follow, how the judicial system should work, etc. Their racist minds cannot fathom that Indians have their own agency and can decide things for themselves. They can’t handle the fact that India doesn’t need woke Westerners who are still trying to figure out their genders to tell Indians what is good for them. They cannot deal with dark-skinned Indians pushing back and not swallowing everything that is being fed to them by the West.
Paradoxically, the so-called liberal white folk are also utterly intolerant of ideas that conflict with theirs. These are the people who have legitimised the cancel culture to shut down alternate viewpoints. Perhaps what these liberal White folk want to see is an India that is a dark-skinned clone of the West, albeit one that is servile and subservient. But India is not the West. Indians are not Americans or British or French or Germans. Indians have their own history, culture, civilisation (a wounded and battered one which has survived and is now rediscovering, rejuvenating, even reasserting, itself). While Indians are and always have been open to absorbing influences from abroad, what Indians will never become is clones of the West.
Apart from the racist angle, there is the religious angle driving the anti-India campaign. In the West, right-wing Christian groups — the evangelicals in particular — are trying to harvest souls in India. Any push back leads to cries of religious intolerance which are then amplified by the ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ media houses. Making an alliance with them are the Islamists — organisations like the IAMC — which carry out their own propaganda campaigns to sully India’s image.
These outfits are linked to countries like Pakistan and Turkey which are in the forefront of drumming up support against India. Another dimension of India being in the cross-hairs is that it is part of the ideological battles being fought in Western societies between the loony left ‘liberals’ and the conservatives. Since this is seen as a global conflict for ideological dominance, any government or political party/movement that is on the other side of this ideological divide is fair game and subject to a campaign of calumny.
Finally, there is also good, old fashioned geo-politics at work. At a time when the Western world is in a conflict with Russia, and is on the verge of a new Cold War with China, it wants its partners to be on the same page on every move it makes against its adversaries. India however has taken a more balanced stand on Russia. While India has not endorsed Russian aggression, she has also not stopped from engaging Russia. The fact that India has ramped up purchases of Russian oil has been used by the Western media to beat up India. But the reality is that India has brought some semblance of stability in global oil prices and supplies by picking up Russian oil, some of which it is selling in Western markets that have imposed an embargo on direct purchases from Russia.
The biased and jaundiced portrayal of India in the Western media has started to raise serious questions on its credibility and reliability as a source of information. After all, if coverage of India is so inaccurate, patently biased and flawed and agenda-driven, surely the same must be happening on Western media coverage of Russia, Middle-East, Africa and even China. In any case, Western preachiness and hectoring is getting increasingly tiresome. It is both annoying and offensive especially since there is a huge gap in what the West preaches and what it practises.
The thing is that if the Western media wants to only focus on what they perceive as negative trends in India then the same sort of negativity can be spread about the West in India. To be sure, India is not perfect. But then neither is the West which is so quick to pass judgement and sermonise to others. Just like there are huge problems and issues in India, there are serious problems in the West where public discourse, public spaces and even universities have become hotbeds of toxic narratives which are also reflected in their politics and policies. India has a lot in common with the West and it is a mutually beneficial relationship. But this relationship cannot be sustained without mutual respect and understanding. Nor can it be strengthened without appreciating cultural and other differences and learning to move forward despite them. But it seems that the Western media is hell bent on alienating India and making it an enemy.
The writer is Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation. Views expressed are personal.
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