Most foreign publications have no love lost for Prime Minister Modi. Often, one reads opinion pieces that tarnish his image for the simple fact that he refuses to toe the line that the Left wants him to. While criticism of any public figure, especially of democratically elected leaders, is the right of the media, as is desirable, the trouble arises when that criticism comes from a place of malice and absolute misinformation. Nikkei Asian Review on the 11th of March published a similar article that had several lies, distortions and opinions based on nothing but fantasy.

The Nikkei-Asian Review article headlined, “How Modi won India’s elections but paralyzed the economy” was laden with blatant misrepresentations and lies upon which, the opinions about Prime Minister Modi and his reign in India were based. The opening of the article itself starts with a hilarious lie.

In the brilliant idea, Asia-Nikkei says that the sale of Godrej Safes have gone down because the economy is supposedly down. They further allege that after the Modi government extended plan to expand financial services to rural consumers, Godrej Safe business should have been booming but it has not. One is not sure how Asia-Nikkei came up with that conclusion.

Further in the article, NAR alleges that the central government, by its persistent efforts, has marginalised and disenfranchised the Muslim community of India.

Twitter user @WordsSlay pointed out that in the same article, further down, NAR mentions that Amanatullah Khan, the AAP leader, won in Okhla with a huge margin of over 70,000 votes. It is pertinent to mention here that while NAR claims that Muslims have been disenfranchised, a Muslim ruler, who wears his identity on his sleeve, won in the Assembly Elections with a whopping majority.

In the article, NAR writes, “What Modi did carry over from his time in Gujarat, though, was inter-community violence. In 2002, while Modi ran the state, at least 1,000 people died in clashes between Hindus and Muslims. Moreover, instead of using its mandate to tackle the mounting economic challenges, Modi’s government has doubled down on Hindutva, its populist, Hindu nationalist agenda. Backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu ultranationalist group seen as an ideological driving force behind Hindutva, it has revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomous status, changed the country’s citizenship laws to deny recognition to Muslim immigrants from neighbouring countries and tried to enforce Hinduism as central to India’s values and identity. Almost all of the government’s political capital has been thrown into this massive social project. Economic reform has fallen by the wayside”.

What NAR in this portion claims is that the revocation of Article 370, that integrated Kashmir fully with the rest of the country, was a part of the “Hindutva agenda”. Firstly, the integration of Jammu and Kashmir was on the national agenda and interest for decades. To allege that internal security decisions are a part of the “Hindutva agenda” are simply ill-informed. What perhaps the NAR is doing is peddling the Islamist agenda alleging that the Modi government is trying to alter the demography of the only state with a Muslim majority. If that his what the NAR is saying, then it really has no right to talk about the ‘communal strife’ between Hindus and Muslims since it is essentially saying Muslims are incapable of living with Hindus in harmony.

Further, NAR says that Modi has “changed the citizenship laws to deny recognition to Muslim immigrants from neighbouring countries and tried to enforce Hinduism as central to India’s values and identity”. Firstly, the Citizenship Amendment Act does not “deny” citizenship. It is a one-time amnesty scheme that provides citizenship to persecuted minorities who are already in India as refugees. Secondly, the Muslims from neighbouring countries who wish to take Indian citizenship can do so by the process of naturalisation or by proving that they are individually persecuted. Perhaps NAR should research a bit. If they had, they would know that Home Minister Amit Shah had explicitly given Rajya Sabha the information that 566 Muslims from neighbouring countries were given citizenship under the Modi government.

While NAR alleges that the Indian Economy has tanked, the publication fails to mention that India is actually the fifth largest economy in the world.

There are several other discrepancies in the article. NAR says that the Modi government has not spent enough on infrastructure. What the article fails to take into account is that fact that Modi-led NDA government has spent over Rs 50 lakh crore on infrastructure in the past 6 years. Rs 100 trillion to be further spent on infrastructure creation and approximately Rs 1.5 crore homes provided under PMAY.

In one part of the article, NAR claims that, “Modi regularly borrowed Adani’s private plane to fly to election rallies before becoming prime minister”. This, however, is an absolute lie that was denied by Adani himself.

Gautam Adani had categorically said that his planes were not used for free by Narendra Modi who was yet to become the Prime Minister then. Yet, NAR, which is meant to be known for its research lies blatantly simply to tarnish the image of a democratically elected leader.

NAR also alleges that Prime Minister Modi is adverse to any form of criticism, interestingly, in a piece that criticises him to the hilt often with lies and baseless allegations. The fact that NAR could do that only means that they know the Indian Govt will not take any adverse action against them for basing their article on downright lies. In fact, the Modi govt is perhaps the most scrutinised government in the history of India. Many of Modi’s supporters are disgruntled because they believe that the Modi govt refuses to take stern action against those who have an axe to grind against the PM and in the process, end up spreading lies and propaganda which only go against the interest of the nation. It is evident that this inclusion in the article is a figment of imagination of the author based on the lies that are spread by his comrades in the Left.

The article that is based purely on vindictive conjecture also blames Prime Minister Modi for the auto sector slump, when the truth is that globally, the auto sector has taken a hit.

There are several other lies in the article as pointed out by Twitter user @WordsSlay.

The lies include the fact that the article claimed wrongly that India’s credit rating is only a margin above “junk” and the fact that the article mentions Deepak Parekh’s initial criticism of the Modi govt but conveniently omits the time when he heaped praises on the Modi govt lauding the transformational reforms.

The sheer audacity of the lies in the article was such that even Minister Prakash Javadekar lashed out at the portal.

The bulk of leftist controlled international media has always been hell-bent on projecting India as a land of backward, poor, snake charmers. The fact that the world has been changing under their wrinkled-up noses while they keep pontificating from ivory towers has somehow not registered with most of leftist, colonialist media, be it in India or abroad.

The New York Times, in particular, has been constantly, incessantly indulging in anti-India bashing. As a BJP government, which they term as a ‘Hindu nationalist’ government had taken charge in 2014, NYT had just upped their hate India quotient by several notches. From fake narratives about ‘Muslims in fear’ to dismissive, hateful articles on India’s culture, traditions and customs, they have done all they could to further their narrative against our country.

For the international media, a tax department raid on the promoters of NDTV and an editorial titled ‘India’s Battered Free Press’ is published. Then to malign India, NYT writes an op-ed on how the Saree, India’s widely popular female attire is in fact, a ‘Tool of Hindu Nationalist Campaign’. Mahindra and Mahindra opens a manufacturing plant in the US and the international media starts the same old condescension, totally ignoring the fact that Mahindra has a significant presence in their country already.

The international media has almost vowed to ensure that the narrative that is peddled is one that demonises PM Modi with no basis in facts. The conjectures have long been anti-Hindu and anti-Modi as far as the international media is concerned. And while they peddle these lies to malign Hindus and PM Modi, they whine, rather consistently about the Indian govt does not “allow criticism”. Irony much?