Anti-Hindu propaganda appears to have become the flavour of the day. While there are many left liberals in India who indulge in this, they have the backing of the likes of the New York Times and Al Jazeera.
Just a week back, Al Jazeera, the Qatar-funded news outlet, accused The Hindu American Foundation of being a propaganda of the Narendra Modi Government. Now, an article in the anti-Hindu New York Times has become a subject of debate as it eulogises anti-Hindu Delhi riots accused Umar Khalid.
The article titled Four Years in Jail Without Trial: The Price of Dissent in Modi’s India tries to evoke sympathy for Khalid. It also goes on and on about Muslim rights in India and how the Muslim man is just an angry young man who is fighting the system.
New York Times and its obsession against Hindus:
This is not the first time that the New York Times has published articles that are brazenly anti-Hindu. It has programmed itself in such a way that it chooses to bash Hindus and always ends up taking up for the Muslims, portraying them as victims in India and how bad their lives have become since the Modi Government came to power.
Bangladesh has been on the boil since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina as Prime Minister. Following this, the Muslim radicals unleashed violence on the minority Hindus in Bangladesh. While speaking about the plight of the Hindus, the New York Times went on to term these acts as those relating to political revenge. The New York Times would do well to do a thorough case study of what is happening to the Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan before passing brazen judgments.
The fact is that there is a clear agenda by the radical Islamists to ethnically cleanse the Hindus from these countries. The message to the Hindus and other minorities in these countries is that they embrace Islam or be killed.
Further, the New York Times had allowed Anuradha Bhasin, the executive editor of The Kashmir Times, to write an op-ed in March 2023. She went on to criticise PM Modi and even made false claims that the Government had shut down the newspaper’s office in Srinagar in an illegal manner. Little did the New York Times know that The Kashmir Times had been allocated two offices. The Government asked them to vacate office following the death of Ved Bhasin, the founder of the publication.
Considering the size of Bharath and the population, the country did a commendable job in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Be it social distancing or the vaccination drive, all these were handled successfully, and India beat the pandemic much better when compared to several countries which were smaller in size and population. However, the New York Times gave space to the so-called comedian Kunal Karma to blame the Government for the surge in cases. It also published an article stating that the dead bodies were floating in the Ganga and this was done to deliberately undercount the death toll. Immersing the dead in the Ganga and also burying them along the shores is a very old practice.
Misreading CAA:
The New York Times had been relentless in its coverage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The New York Times also has several partners in crime when it comes to this subject, the main one being Al Jazeera.
Constantly, the New York Times has projected the CAA to be anti-Muslim. Even during the debate on the NRC, it gave the impression that the exercise was being implemented to snatch away citizenship from Muslims. Both these are untrue. The CAA was implemented to grant citizenship to the Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Sikhs in the Islamic nations of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The sole intention was to give these people hope that they have a country to rely on, considering the fact that for decades together, they have been persecuted by radical Islamists.
The anti-CAA protests witnessed several protests across the country. Investigations have shown that the now-banned Popular Front of India was behind most of these riots in which even Umar Khalid took part. The New York Times has constantly reported the protests leaning more towards the anti-Hindus and those who were fuelling the violence. These foreign publications have lost complete sight of the fact that the CAA in no way tries to snatch away the citizenship of Indian Muslims. It only offers a country for the persecuted minorities in the neighbouring Islamic nations.
The case against Umar Khalid:
Umar Khalid was arrested by the Delhi police for his role in the anti-CAA riots in September 2020. He is accused of spreading anti-India propaganda and also taking part in the riots. He had moved to the trial court for bail, but the trial court rejected the same. In fact his plea was rejected twice.
“When the Delhi High Court has already dismissed the criminal appeal of the applicant (Khalid) vide order dated October 18, 2022, and thereafter, the applicant approached the Supreme Court and withdrew his petition, the order of this court as passed on March 24, 2022 (on the first bail plea), has attained finality and now, in no stretch of imagination this court can make analysis of the facts of the case as desired by the applicant and consider the relief as prayed by him,” the trial court had said.
On October 18, 2022, the High Court upheld the dismissal of the first bail plea and said that the allegations against Khalid by the police were prima facie true. The High Court went on to say that the anti-CAA protests ‘metamorphosed’ into violent riots, which prima facie seemed to be orchestrated at the conspiratorial meetings and the statement of the witnesses indicate that Khalid had played an active role in the protests.
