Wednesday, December 4, 2024
HomeMediaHow media dragged in 'caste' in a rape-cum-murder case, almost following 'Pakistan doctrine'

How media dragged in ‘caste’ in a rape-cum-murder case, almost following ‘Pakistan doctrine’

The horrific gangrape and murder of a young woman in Rohtak raises, yet again, chilling questions about the security of women in our country. It goes without saying that the BJP government of Haryana has a lot to answer for. And comparisons with the case of  ‘Nirbhaya’ are quite justified. Rape cannot be a partisan issue.

Both the accused were arrested and I hope they get the punishment Nirbhaya’s rapists and murderers got. Further investigations reveal that the main accused was harassing the victim for long for marrying him, which further underscores the fact that the signs of such behaviour have to be nipped in bud.

I wish these issues were debated in the media and people sensitized about it. But as always, the media had its own agenda to push.

Let’s start with the Huffington Post.

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How could NDTV be far behind?

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And, like peas in a pod, elite media organizations all kept bringing up the fact that the victim was a Dalit. Here’s The Hindu.

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And of course, the Hindustan Times. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

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We have seen in the recent past how this kind of “monkey-see-monkey-do” style chain reporting has led to embarrassing situations for big name media houses. But there is absolutely nothing funny about this story. It’s a brutal gangrape and murder. And irresponsible reporting that drags caste into the crime is no joke at all.

So, is there a caste angle?

The Hindustan Times lets slip this fact later in their article.

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Pathetic.

If at all any caste angle has to come into play in this incident, it should have been about administration’s approach if it was found lackadaisical. But our liberals are too lazy in following their own agenda. They just inserted ‘Dalit’ the moment they found an ‘opportunity’.

The perpetrator is also a Dalit, so what purpose the insertion of caste in the news reports was achieving? Subconsciously, it was feeding into the mind of the readers that the perpetrator was from higher caste.

For god’s sake, you don’t need to invent things about atrocities on Dalits when there are real incidents of the same. Have the journalists not heard about the boy who cried wolf? This lesson was not part of Maths or Science, so the journalists shouldn’t have missed it. Yet, they indulge in such behaviour.

However, the real disturbing question here is whether liberal media outlets are consciously and deliberately using what should now be called the “Pakistan line” on India’s Dalits.

Last year, the Pakistani senate had created a policy document with guidelines on how to deal with India. One of the most disturbing recommendations made in the document, which was analysed here, ran as follows:

India’s own fault-lines in their alienated Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Dalits as well as the growing Maoist insurgency be highlighted.

While liberals have been practising this approach before on their own (please see here for a particularly egregious example of media inventing a caste atrocity), the appearance of such a policy in an official Pakistani government document is frightening.

Now take a look at how Shivam Vij, Deputy Editor of The Huffington Post India, codifies the new liberal agenda  in his Facebook post.

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Here is an observation. Try going over this passage again, replacing “left-liberals” with “Pakistan”. You will see that it reads eerily similar to the policy document from the Senate of Pakistan.

Possibly enthused by the response to his Facebook post, Shivam Vij went on to describe the new agenda in greater detail.  This he did in an article on the Huffington Post, which is even more disturbing in its content.

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Just so you know, this article above was written in the context of the fracas involving Sonu Nigam and a thuggish fatwa wielding Maulvi from Kolkata. It should have been a simple matter for “liberals” to support Sonu Nigam’s right to free speech. But for Indian liberals, nothing is about principles any more. It is all about a battle between left and right. They lost on the tiny issue of Sonu Nigam’s tweets. For revenge, they want to burn this nation again in the fires of Mandal!

This Huffington Post article (policy document?) was received very warmly by other liberals and Shekhar Gupta himself shared it for wider dissemination. Here is a report on the same.

Now please think about it carefully. Who gains from burning India in the fires of Mandal? Who would have such a diabolical agenda?

It is clear that there has been a shift in the way liberals think about their political adversaries. The new rhetoric suggests they think that they are at war with us. Much like Pakistan.

Has there been a meeting of minds at some level between these two forces based on the twin principles of “Enemy of enemy is my friend” and “Everything is fair in love and war“?

We don’t know. But it is important to find out.

I have heard these words before. “Everything is fair in love and war“. Little surprise that Pakistan would openly embrace this principle. Now it seems that liberals are going down the same path. But is everything really fair in love and war?

The other day, I happened to catch the movie Jolly LLB 2. One of the most powerful punchlines from that movie translates as follows:  “If everything is fair in love and war, then those who chop off the heads of jawans on the border are also in the right and so are those who throw acid bulbs on the faces of women for turning them down.”

This Rohtak gangrape story was also about one such “lover”. It was gruesome. That “lover” needs to go to the gallows.

But what about the war that the “liberal” media has declared against their imagined enemies? Will they continue to use the “Pakistan doctrine”? Can our journalists introspect a little?

Everything is not fair in love and war.

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Abhishek Banerjee
Abhishek Banerjeehttps://dynastycrooks.wordpress.com/
Abhishek Banerjee is a columnist and author.  

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