Koenraad Elst on Media bias in South Asia

“The mechanics of the presence or absence of status is as follows: the Indian Left jealously guards its power position in academe and decides who gets status within the Humanities, or who is blacklisted and kept out. Then the politicians select their sources of authority or their interlocutors by the status they “have” (i.e. which the Left has conferred on them), which is turn enhances their status. And then the India-watching circles abroad go by the status which individuals turn out to have acquired in India, and further increase their “eminence”... The focus on status is a long-standing practice of the Indian Left, and for a good reason. As Sita Ram Goel already remarked in his anti-Communist days, the Indian Communists made sure to create status for those loyal to them.... Indeed, the fabled Hindu moneybags will rather sponsor an enemy with status than a friend without it. The BJP will rather nominate a “secularist” with status than a proven Hindu loyalist without it. So, in the case of our Communist writer, they will honour him for his status, not realizing that this status has purposely been created for him by their declared enemies. And they will shun a pro-Hindu writer because he has no status, ignoring or disregarding the fact that he has been denied any avenue that might have led to status. The last thing they think of is to make an effort and create status for people who are perceived as belonging to the Hindu camp... This was but an extreme case of a general phenomenon: papers get easy acceptance from peers if they support the dominant view, but are held to far more demanding standards if they are at odds with it. In India, just imagine what it would take for a history paper with “communal” conclusions to be accepted by a Leftist-controlled review panel...”

“But the negationists are not satisfied with seeing their own version of the facts being repeated in more and more books and papers. They also want to prevent other versions from reaching the public. Therefore, in 1982 the National Council of Educational Research and Training issued a directive for the rewriting of schoolbooks. Among other things, it stipulated that: "Characterization of the medieval period as a time of conflict between Hindus and Muslims is forbidden." Under Marxist pressure, negationism has become India's official policy. (...) India has its own full-fledged brand of negationism: a movement to deny the large-scale and long-term crimes against humanity committed by Islam. This movement is led by Islamic apologists and Marxist academics, and followed by all the politicians, journalists and intellectuals who call themselves secularists. In contrast to the European negationism regarding the Nazi acts of genocide, but similar to the Turkish negationism regarding the Armenian genocide, the Indian negationism regarding the terrible record of Islam is fully supported by the establishment. It has nearly full control of the media and dictates all state and government parlance concerning the communal problem. ... *Negationism and history-distortion require a large-scale effort and a very strong grip on the media of information and education. As soon as the grip loosens, at least the most blatant of the negationist concoctions are bound to be exposed, and its propounders lose all credibility. In 1988, the schools in the Soviet Union decided to suspend the history exams because "the history books are full of lies anyway". The great lies and distortions of Soviet historiography are now items in the gallery of ridicule.... Just like the Russians have thrown Soviet historiography into the dustbin, Indian negationism will also be thrown out in the near future.”

“The United Minorities are waging a no-holds-barred campaign against Narendra Modi or against whomever is or can be pictured as a pro-Hindu power-wielder. One of their lines of attack is the blackening of the ruling party, the BJP, in the eyes of public opinion and of the world. An impression is being created that the Hindu activists are out to oppress the minorities ruthlessly, and are already doing so to some extent. Thus, though the frequent rapes of Hindu women in Pakistan and Bangladesh are never worth a single line, I learned of the recent rape of a Catholic nun in the news programme of state television in distant Belgium. While a newspaper may contain hundreds of news items, the TV news has only a few, so they select what is truly important. Journalists normally use the “dead man per mile” rule: they treat an item as more newsworthy if it is closer to home or if the victimization is more dramatic. That means a “mere” rape in distant India only makes headlines if some circumstance makes the event extremely important. So, it seems that the anti-Hindu forces in India are strong enough to position their poster girl for “resistance against oppressive majoritarianism” as exceedingly important. The missionaries and secularists exploited the rape all they could to accuse the Hindus of terrorizing the minorities and demonize the Modi government across the world. Yet, from the beginning, the rape was known to be an extension of a burglary, suspicions of a “hate crime” were doubtful and nothing indicated the involvement of Hindu activism. When the investigation progressed and led to the arrest of some Bangladeshi illegal immigrants “belonging to a particular community”, most commentators fell silent. When pressed, they suddenly insisted that this was a common human crime with no connection to religion. It was but one example in a long line of false accusations levelled against Hindu nationalism, and this poisonous disinformation in turn is only one battlefield in a multi-pronged war.”