It has been seen for a while, especially after the Pulwama terror attack and India’s retaliatory Balakot airstrikes that our enemy nation Pakistan says the similar things that many politicians of the opposition parties, especially Congress say about India. After the Balakot airstrikes, Pakistan’s official channels were even seen using the statements of Congress leaders to further their claims.
NDTV has almost been playing the role of an opposition party in India after 2014. Its news anchors have received praise from top Pakistani terrorists like Hafiz Saeed. Recently, NDTV seems to have achieved another major milestone at being Pakistan’s voice and the propagator of Pakistani ideas.
Pakistan’s ruling party PTI has endorsed NDTV by sharing a video clip from one of their shows where they claim the people of Kashmir are waiting for the curfew to lift so they can ‘show’ India what they feel, hinting violence and riots.
https://twitter.com/PTIofficial/status/1159573230052683793?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In the video clip from NDTV that PTI shared, a reporter, apparently reporting from Srinagar, claims that he and his team had met an old, blind man earlier that day. According to the reporter, the old man was being helped to cross the road and he expressed his desire to speak about the current situation.
The reporter further states that the old man said, “New Delhi is saying everybody in Kashmir is happy about making Jammu and Kashmir a UT. Let them lift the curfew and they will know how happy we are”.
Curiously, the journalist, who obviously has had access to camera and communication, did not show the said old man. He just claims that an old man has said so.
https://twitter.com/iAnkurSingh/status/1159665977761492992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/vivekagnihotri/status/1159698597950025728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The video clip is from Sreenivasan Jain’s show on NDTV ‘Reality Check’. The show was run with the headline “Kashmiri view: Silenced by fear”. In a 25 minute show that is remarkably high on propaganda and very low on facts, NDTV fails to show the old man who said the “Let them lift the curfew” bit. The reporter Nazeer Masoodi takes the viewers to a hospital that is bustling with activity. In the hospital, patients’ attendants complain about the difficulties they are facing because of the checkpoints and communications restrictions. Anchor Sreenivasan Jain opens the show by quoting imaginary characters declaring imaginary fears.
Jain claims some nameless journalist is afraid to ‘speak up’ because his family is in Kashmir. Other nameless people and their generalised fear-mongering is read out with ominous music in the background.
The show calls NSA Ajit Doval’s tour in the valley a photo op and goes to great lengths to establish that everyone in Kashmir is really really unhappy because of the stripping of Article 370 and subsequent bifurcation into two UTs.
NDTV finding support in Pakistan is nothing new. Earlier in March, NDTV’s star anchor Raveesh Kumar had urged media that they should not report the post-Pulwama India-Pakistan conflict, because it will ‘help BJP in the elections’. Raveesh’ statements were soon used by Pakistani media to further their anti-India narrative.
Recently, radical Islamist Zaid Hamid had used ex-NDTV anchor Barkha Dutt’s tweets to spew venom against India.
NDTV seems to fan its ‘Kashmir is in fear’ narrative so much that they are now bordering on an open call for violence. The clip by NDTV reporter that claimed an old Kashmiri man allegedly challenged India to ‘lift the curfew’ to see the real sentiment of Kashmiri people is nothing but another attempt to further their baseless fearmongering. The way NDTV, and for that matter, many media portals are going on about the issue, it seems as if they are just waiting, rather hoping for a riot to happen and people to die, just so they can claim that the central government has failed and thus help Pakistan further its narrative.