BJP Junta’s control over Indian Media

India, on paper the world’s largest democracy, is a highly diverse society. India has a hyper-nationalist Hindu majority with multiple religious and ethnic minorities. This diversity not only brings strength but also poses certain obstacles, such as the way minorities are depicted in the media. It can be a double-edged sword, where misuse of its power can fuel the spread of stereotypical beliefs, prejudice, and even hatred against groups with fewer rights. Since 2014 with the BJP regime coming into power, India has seen a significant rise in hate crimes against its minorities.

Ahmed Ali

The roots of these crimes can be traced back to the ideology of RSS. RSS, a far-right extremist organization, was founded in 1925 and drives its inspiration from Nazi Germany and fascist Mussolini. BJP is a political wing of RSS and has the same ideological foundation. The BJP is one of several organizations through which the RSS promotes the idea of a Hindu Rashtra (nation). The BJP was formed to advance the political ambitions of some RSS members and has acquired access to power at the national level through its coalition strategy. With the BJP coming into power, especially after 2019’s landslide victory, RSS’ ideology of hatred and cleansing all the minorities off the face of India has come into full swing. Media has been an integral part of and tool in this strategy.

Factors Influencing Media Bias:

Several factors contribute to the biased portrayal of minorities in Indian media Ownership and Editorial Control: When media outlets are owned by individuals who have political affiliations or biases, the content often reflects their personal interests. Sensationalism and Clickbait: In their pursuit of higher viewership and readership, media outlets often sacrifice balanced reporting by sensationalizing news stories.

Political Agendas: The media can be manipulated to advance political agendas, resulting in the spread of narratives that deliberately target minority groups.Lack of Diversity in Newsrooms: When newsrooms lack diversity among their journalists and editors, it can lead to a distorted perspective that fails to depict the lived experiences of minority communities accurately.

Top-to-bottom and Bottom-up approach

Media propaganda and framing can be understood well through two approaches

Top to bottom

If a country is led by a fascist regime, the extremist mindset and ideologies go down in a trigger-down effect. The rulers and elite inspired by such ideologies propagate and indoctrinate their beliefs in the government and social institutions as well as in the masses. The regime uses its financial and structural influences to suppress the opposite belief and give benefits to the partners in crime. There media outlets critical to the junta face censorship while propagators of the government’s agenda enjoy tax payer’s money ads.

Bottom Up

At the end of the day, media channels are commercial businesses of the media owners. The viewers are basically the customers. Therefore what sells in the markets also plays an important role in determining the direction of media channels. TV channels use rating mechanisms to observe the general mood and tilt of the masses. The reason that India’s media industry is now globally recognized as a tool for warmongering against other countries and hate preachers at home is that both approaches are effective in India simultaneously. The RSS-inspired regime has cracked down on critical journalists: In one of the recent events, Irfan Mehraj, a human rights defender and journalist got arrested on baseless charges of terror. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recognized the reason for Irfan’s detainment being his human rights work and documenting freedom violations.

In a similar incident Khurram Parvez, a Muslim human rights advocate has been since November 22, 2021, because of his Human Rights Work for Religious Communities and critical of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). Jailed Parvez has won the Martin Ennals Award, one of the world’s most prestigious human rights prizes, with the jury hailing his “courage and determination to bring the voice of the voiceless to the international arena, despite the ongoing, sometimes life-threatening, challenges”.

While business partners of the government have bought mainstream media outlets for instance Mukesh Ambani, considered a close ally of PM Modi, has bought 16% shares of India Today news channel. On the other hand through RSS and its political wing BJP, the masses of India are indoctrinated with hate, thus hate is what sells in India today.

Minorities Look Upon The International Community

After dissecting and understanding the journey India, a nation of more than 1.4 billion people, has embarked on, one can conclude that challenging times wait for the region and the world ahead. One strange thing is certain about extremism and hatred one can turn the tap on but it is not in one’s control to turn it off, while generations to come pay the price through their blood. Policies of hate, superiority, and violence, like the proverbial Frankenstein monster, invariably outgrow their creators, often turning on them: it happened in Turkey with President Erdogan and the Gulenists, and it happened with US and Afghan Mujahideen who later morphed into Taliban and it has happened many times in Pakistan.

The people of all sorts of minorities from Christians, and Hindu Dalits to Kashmiris look upon the international community to ensure their fundamental rights endowed in international law. Therefore it is high time that the world community should overcome its policies of appeasing a market of one billion people and should talk some sense in the ruling BJP regime. The world should realize the extent of the threat, arch-rivals equipped with nuclear weapons and unresolved conflicts cannot afford to have extremist ideologies ruling them.

The writer is a student of Peace and Conflict Studies at the National Defense University, Islamabad, and is currently serving as an intern at the Kashmir Institute of International Relations.

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