Indian academics, writers and secularists abroad enthusiastically join the Western media in their rants against Modi and the BJP.
The Western media has been pushing an anti Modi agenda for years. However over the last year it has gone in an overdrive. Along with the media, the evangelical lobby, the NGOs and institutions funded by wealthy Americans and the US government departments all tried desperately to discredit Narendra Modi and the BJP. Even though the flow of money into the country for anti-India activities has been tightened, a colossal amount of money still comes through. The new BJP government will have to somehow stifle the flow of money coming into India.
The Western media concentrated on a list of targets to demonise and discredit PM Modi and the BJP. Their first target was to accuse PM Modi and the BJP of being anti-Muslim. Adjectives like Hindu mobs and Hindu nationalists were used to demonise Hindus. They were hoping for a religious conflict to derail the elections. Modi was called a Hindu strongman who facilitated the building of a Ram temple over a destroyed mosque. This was a blatant effort to misinform and misguide the world in the hope that it would create an international outcry against PM Modi.
The second was that the Modi government had declared a war on free media. Yet the Guardian correspondent in Delhi was writing the most awful language to discredit Modi and the Hindus almost every week. Writing in the Times Amrit Dhillon claimed that according to Pew Research Centre (a privately funded US based NGO) two thirds of Indians back an autocracy rather than a democracy. The inference is that PM Modi cannot be trusted as a democratic leader. Pew Research methodology is biased and agenda driven.
Meanwhile Simon Tisdall of the Guardian was deeply worried about the credibility of Indian elections well before they took place. He was afraid of the country’s future as a cohesive unitary state. In other words he was predicting a break up of India. In this context Christophe Jaffrelot, a professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s College has long had wishful thinking. He thinks that the southern states would not want anything to do with the northern Hindi belt and go their own way. The election results have shown India is very much united.
The other charge that the Western media made was that the Modi government had weaponised the film industry. They gave the example of the highly acclaimed Kashmir Files. For the Western media the ethnic cleansing of Hindus from Kashmir never happened.
Indian academics, writers and secularists abroad enthusiastically join the Western media in their rants against Modi and the BJP. Salil Tripathi, a US based writer accused Modi of the 2002 Gujarat violence even though he knows that Modi was cleared of all charges. He also complained that the Modi government abolished the Muslim practice of instant divorce. Salil also indulged in trying to create a North-South divide by claiming the South was being short changed.
The last desperate move of the Western media was to accuse PM Modi of pursuing crony capitalism. Modi they said had favoured oligarchs like Ambani and Adani. These so called oligarchs have created millions of jobs in the country. In fact they are the engine that has made India the fastest growing economy in the world. An organization called, “World Inequality Lab” based in US and France claimed that the inequality in India is greater now than during the British Raj. This is a preposterous allegation which in a way justifies the British Raj. The British Raj was responsible for deaths of 100 million Indians and it benefited to the tune of 45 trillion dollars from the colonisation of the country. It really beggars belief that these institutions shamelessly pursue their anti-India agenda with impunity. Ironically, the crony capitalism that the Western media is accusing Modi of is very much present in all capitalist countries. In the UK 10% of people have 50% of wealth and the lords and dukes own most of the land. Meanwhile, millions of people rely on free food and tens of thousands of children have free school meals as the parents cannot afford to pay for them.
India has completed the world’s largest exercise in democracy. 28 states and 8 federal territories made up of 900 million people who took part in this carnival of freedom. Just one state of Uttar Pradesh has a population of 200 million, equivalent to the population of Brazil. There has been no violence and not a single death. 15 million government employees travelled by boat, foot or even horseback to reach the remotest voter. A voting booth was available every 2 kilometers. All this was nothing short of a miracle but the Western media has not been able to utter a single word of praise.
The people of India have exposed their hypocrisy. The new BJP government must urgently look at the vested interests bent on destabilising India. It has to be done on a war footing.
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