Ranjona Banerji: Hatred against Muslims and women

Of the many issues that the mainstream media in India cannot cover – and we have touched upon most of them here, if not all – two stand out in the current scenario. Women’s issues and attacks on Muslims.

Can we assume for both that it is because forces within the media are unwilling to face the truth? No matter how much noise and anger was created by the MeToo movement a few years ago, the media has failed to clean its own house. Again and again, the story of exploitation, harassment and assault of female journalists continues. The perpetrators are usually powerful media men and therefore progress is slower than mud climbing uphill.

And then there are the attacks on Muslims, which have increased alarmingly since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister 10 years ago. Here we see the role of the media as very disturbing. Various top channels are constantly running campaigns about how Hindus are in danger, which only serves to increase hatred against Muslims. This is of course what they want, and what they are doing to keep in line with the general RSS agenda.

This anti-Muslim attitude has been relentless over the last 10 years and nothing has stopped them. The vitriolic rhetoric in the TV studios and the sly whistle blowing from BJP politicians including Modi are in perfect sync. The result has been catastrophic. The lynchings of Muslims that began with Mohsin Sheikh in Pune in June 2014 are consistent. The reasons are also tied to the Hindutva narrative – primarily with regard to cow slaughter and the idea of ​​travelling with beef to preserving beef at home, as with Mohammed Akhlak in 2015, the most publicised case.

However, nothing has stopped the lynchers. Worse still, in recent weeks, there has been an increase in the number of attacks on Muslims and cases of rape. The mainstream media and television coverage are geared to serve the rulers and men.

The courts have been slow to pick up on these murders. And soon the lynchings were lumped together with the illegal demolition of Muslim homes on equally flimsy charges. The Supreme Court has now initiated legal action, years after the UP government began this inhuman and illegal form of “justice”.

Regardless of the election results and the BJP’s losses, some of these channels continue to operate. What drives them to do so? Why are News18 and Times Now, to name two of the worst, so determined to destroy India’s social fabric? It is hard to fathom why two responsible companies would allow their TV anchors to act in this manner. Nothing you read in the Times of India correlates with the vicious Islamophobia and pro-BJP stance of Times Now. Why would an Ambani-owned channel like News18, which has business ties with Arab states, continually attack Indian Muslims?

Is the degradation of media complete, if it cannot wake up from its dangerous strategies even after Modi’s narrow victory in 2024? The fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh was only presented as anti-Hindu, even though there are several other implications for India and much of what TV showed later turned out to be fake and misinformation. The same kind of misinformation is happening in Bengal, after the rape and murder of the doctor in RG Kar hospital. Here the agenda is being framed in such a way that the BJP can politically benefit from the death of the doctor. The issue of women’s safety, which has rocked the nation, has been sacrificed by our TV channels to topple Mamata Banerjee and support the local BJP.

The Assam Chief Minister who has been targeting Muslims since switching from Congress to BJP is not criticised by the mainstream media for his Islamophobia, just as the UP Chief Minister was practically praised by the same media for his bulldozer injustice. Several TV anchors, if you recall, happily jumped into excavators to experience first-hand what it feels like to demolish someone’s house.

On women’s issues, acclaimed actor Mohanlal’s undisputed “plea” that the Kerala film industry should not be “destroyed” by women demanding justice and an end to sexual exploitation shows how low women are on the list of priorities.

In such circumstances, it may be impossible to imagine that women in the media will get any justice at all, whether it be hard-core bigotry or slick predators.

Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views expressed here are personal.