Western media uses incidents like the killings of hardened criminals Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf to project Indian democracy in a bad light.
NEW DELHI: In crime records, one can find a number of incidents of criminals’ rivalry and killings or encounters with police. The recent incident of killings of Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf by other criminals is under investigation and judiciary inquiry. It also created political controversies not only in India but in Western media too and exposed their bias against India and the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Western media headlined and covered the killing of a dreaded Uttar Pradesh gangster and his brother. “Atiq Ahmed, Former Indian MP, and brother shot dead live on TV,” screamed the BBC headline. Others followed suit. Al Jazeera, and Washington Post: “A former member of India’s Parliament convicted of kidnapping has been shot dead on live TV along with his brother while in police custody in the northern city of Prayagraj, raising questions about the rule of law in the state of Uttar Pradesh.” “Former Indian MP Atiq Ahmed and his brother, former state legislator Ashraf Ahmed, were shot dead on live TV while in police custody.” Instead of mentioning them as hardened criminals, they projected their political or religious communal background.
For, the BBC soon came up with another report, and projected Atiq as “Robin Hood” and “a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde type of character” who would help the poor, provide them with school fees, assist them during family weddings, and also give them money during Eid. “But this persona,” the BBC Editor emphasised, “unravelled with mounting accusations of heinous crimes.” Interestingly, while the BBC used the term “accusations” while listing out Atiq’s heinous crimes, thus putting in an air of ambiguity in the matter, no such operative words were used while mentioning his “social works”. Other foreign newspapers like Daily Telegraph to The Washington Post almost took the same twisted line, turning the murder of a dreaded gangster into the dastardly killing of a lawmaker, thus putting a question mark on the democratic credentials of the country. The New York Times, for instance, used the opportunity to project “India’s Slide Towards Extrajudicial Violence”. It’s in a way fascinating to see all these newspapers, from different countries with contrasting worldviews, having a common stand on killing in faraway Uttar Pradesh. In other Western countries also, police shoot criminals in some difficult situations. But you will never see any report in Western media projecting criminals and giving the colour of race or religion.
Western media tends to use such incidents to project Indian democracy in a bad light, the fact of the matter is these are isolated cases of law and order violations, just the same way the US is facing the epidemic of gun violence. In just four months of 2023, there have been at least 160 mass shootings across the US, leading to the death of 11,523 people which on average means about 115 deaths per day. Do we ever question America’s democratic credentials based on these shootings?
Police officers in the US shoot and kill hundreds of people each year, according to the FBI’s very limited data—far more than in other developed countries. Leading Western magazine The Economist published a detailed report about the killings of suspected people by a policeman. According to such reports, the disparities indicate that it’s not just greater rates of gun ownership and violent crime that explain the higher number of police shootings in the US. Perhaps it’s the lax legal standards that allow cops to justify deadly force against suspects who pose no danger, and sometimes are only perceived to pose a threat to officers because cops hold racial biases that are endemic in the criminal justice system. In other Western countries also police shoot criminals in some difficult situations. But you will never see any report in Western media projecting criminals and giving the colour of race or religion.
In 1970, the BBC broadcast two documentary films–Calcutta and Phantom India which caused outrage amongst the Indian diaspora and with the Indian government for prejudicial and negative depictions of India and were dispelled from India in 1972. It depicted only poverty and despair though India had come a long way from when the British left India in poverty and despair in 1947. In 1995, when the Charar-e-Sharif shrine was burnt down in Kashmir valley by terrorists, BBC aired footage of Russian tanks in Chechnya in its reportage, which created the impression that it was the Indian Army’s use of tanks that had damaged the shrine. Imagine BBC getting away with this kind of deception. In fact, the BBC has consistently reported several such totally fabricated stories from Kashmir. When one connects the dots of even these few cases among hundreds of false reporting done in India by the BBC, one realizes how far down the journalism ladder this institution has gone. Since the BBC has a relationship with the UK government, it should not be allowed to get away with this kind of yellow journalism. It is certainly bad for diplomacy and worse for journalism of the BBC kind.
Earlier, in the action the civic body of Prayagraj, Al Jazeera directly attacked the Indian Prime Minister: “Politics of ruin: Why Modi wants to demolish India’s mosques. A historic 16th-century mosque, Shahi Masjid, in Prayagraj city in India’s Uttar Pradesh state was demolished by bulldozers under a road-widening project. The rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is increasingly marked by a destructive urgency.” Is foreign media not aware that in India, hundreds of mosques, temples and other worship places and illegal construction are demolished by local authorities? In Ujjain, Jabalpur and Varanasi, local civil bodies took action on the illegal construction of temples or for widening roads.
The writer is editorial director of ITV Network—India News and Dainik Aaj Samaj.