While interviewing the former Governor of Jammu and Kashmir Satyapal Malik, Karan Thapar from the leftist propaganda portal The Wire brazenly made some false accusations against PM Narendra Modi and HM Amit Shah to project them as anti-Muslims. The interview was shared by The Wire on Friday, April 14.

At around 54 minutes into the interview, Karan Thapar assailed the BJP government by asking the former governor of Jammu and Kashmir Satyapal Malik about the alleged anti-Muslim rhetorics peddled by BJP ministers and Chief Ministers.

He questioned Satyapal Malik, “I want to talk to you about three-four more thing about the Prime Minister. Let’s first talk about the fact that his ministers, his chief ministers are constantly taunting Muslims. Muslims ko Babur ki aulaad bulaya jaata hain (Muslims are referred to as Babur’s children), Yogi ji jab unki zikar karte hain toh abba jaan abba jaan kehete hain (Whenever Yogi talks about them he refers to them as Abba Jaan). Amit Shah ek zamaane main unhe dimak bulate the, termites bulate the (Amit Shah once called them termites) and have asked them to go back to Pakistan, aur hakikat yeh bhi hain ki Prime Minister sahab bhi aksar raise lafaz istemaal karte hai (the fact is that even the PM has often used such derogatory terms for the Muslims). Unhone kahan that ‘kapde se pehchan sakte ho,’ unhone kahan tha ‘kabristan aur shamshan ghat.’ (he has said that they are recognised by their clothing and made remarks on Muslim graveyards and Hindu cemeteries) Is it proper for the PM? he questioned.

Amit Shah’s ‘termite’ remark

Karan Thapar, the ‘journalist’ associated with the leftist propaganda website The Wire, who has an obvious bias against the current administration, selected some old statements from BJP leaders and deftly used them out of context to portray the BJP leadership as anti-Muslim, but here is how he lied blatantly in an attempt to paint the BJP leadership as anti-Muslim. Let’s expose each of his lies one at a time.

While castigating the Modi government for its bias against Muslims, Thapar claimed that HM Amit Shah had previously referred to Muslims as ‘termites.’ This, however, is a flagrant lie that was solely said to paint the Modi government as the enemy of Muslims. The truth is that Amit Shah did not refer to members of the Muslim community as termites; rather, he did so in reference to illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security.

Amit Shah made the aforementioned remark in support of the National Register of Citizens (NCR) in September 2018, which The Wire journalist brought up five years later to discreetly incite Muslims against the current administration. Replying to a question on NRC, Shah had then said, that illegal immigrants should be identified first and their names should be deleted from the electoral roll. 

Karan Thapar rakes Yogi Adityanath’s old statement to portray BJP as anti-Muslim

In order to further support his claim that the BJP party’s members despise Muslims, Karan Thapar also dug up an old statement made by Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. He claimed that Yogi often mocks India’s Muslim populace by referring to them as ‘Abba Jaan.’

Contrary to Thapar’s claim, Yogi Adityanath has used the ‘Abba Jaan’ jibe not to mock Muslims but to target opposition parties for engaging in appeasement politics in the state. In 2021, Yogi Adityanath in an address at Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh took a jibe at opposition parties for engaging in appeasement politics in the state. The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh said that during previous governments, the ration used to be usurped by those who say ‘Abba jaan’.

He asked the gathering whether they received rations before 2017. When the crowd answered no, he said, “…because then, those who say ‘abba jaan’ used to usurp the rations.

Again in November last year, Yogi Adityanath used the term “abba jaan” as a jibe, threatening strict action against those who incite passion over the Citizenship Amendment Act. His main target was AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi who demanded the withdrawal of the law.

CM Yogi said, “I want to warn that person who is provoking people in the name of the Citizen Amendment Act. I want to warn the followers of Chacha Jaan and Abba Jaan to listen carefully. If you try to spoil the atmosphere by inciting the feelings of the people of Uttar Pradesh, the state government knows how to deal strictly with you.”

Modi’s Kabristan/Shamshan remark

Karan Thapar went on to say that Modi also targeted Muslims with the ‘kabristan-shamshan’ remark he made in 2017. As was to be expected, Thapar followed in the footsteps of Rahul Gandhi, the blue-eyed boy of the Congress party, who had previously twisted this remark to promote his anti-Modi narrative prior to the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

For the uninitiated, while addressing a poll rally at Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in 2017 accused the Akhilesh Yadav government of indulging in discrimination on the basis of religion.

Modi said, “Gaon me kabristan banta hai to shamshaan bhi banna chahiye. Ramzan me bijli aati hai to Diwali me bhi aani chahiye. Bhedbhav nhi hona chahiye (If land is given for cemetery in a village, it should be given for cremation ground also. If electricity is supplied during Ramazan, it should be supplied during Diwali also. There should not be discrimination.”Modi further said, “There should not be any discrimination on the basis of religion and caste.”

Anyone with normal intelligence would understand that Modi was targeting the Samajwadi Party in his statement for playing appeasement politics rather than Muslims. However, out of their insane hatred for Modi, Rahul Gandhi and his accomplices in the media have been continuously attempting to twist and distort the statement in order to disseminate lies.

Besides, the false accusations meted out at the BJP government, another interesting aspect of the interview was Karan Thapar and Satyapal Malik’s apparent admiration for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, both of whom asserted that his popularity has skyrocketed after the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

To cut the long story short, the entire 1 hour and 10-minute interview hosted by Karan Thapar was either filled with gushing over the Congress or allegations and condemnation of the Modi administration. It appeared like just another rant against PM Modi and his government, which the media house he associates himself with performs on a daily basis.

The Wire’s purposeful attempt to discredit Modi and his party is no secret, whether it is through its malicious article published to defame Modi’s ambitious BharatNet project in 2018, or be it the media house’s not-so-long-ago manufactured story about Meta and BJP leader Amit Malviya or its invented imaginary app ‘tek fog‘ to target the BJP.