International Understanding: Foreign Students Need Help in Adjusting to Campus Life

The article appeared in The Journal Gazette, Saturday, November 25, 2023

Link to the original article: https://www.journalgazette.net/opinion/columnists/foreign-students-need-help-in-adjusting-to-campus-life/article_cc0667b8-8ad3-11ee-a6c0-c7c86722616e.html 

Bullshitting: Can you tell what's wrong with this picture?

Can you identify what is wrong with the above picture that is taken from the Twitter feed of The Indian Express? Several things actually, but you will probably not be able to identify them until you click on the news article (written by Shaju Philip, dated June 26, 2018) and read it completely.

If you only read the headline of this news article on some social media platform--which is a very common practice these days--you will most likely end up with the impression that five Hindu priests sexually abused and blackmailed a woman. After all India is a Hindu majority nation, so the usage of the term "priests" in the headline should most likely mean Hindu priests. Right? Even the sketch accompanying the news headline and article has been (perhaps deliberately) made in saffron color, a color most strongly associated with Hinduism. So why would you be wrong to assume that the culprits here were Hindu priests? It's only when you read the article, do you realize that priests referred to in this article were actually Christians. 

It is not just the Indian Express that is guilty of providing misleading anti-Hindu headlines. Many other mainstream newspapers do the same regularly. For example, take a look at the screenshot below from a DNA India news article dated May 23, 2018 (written by DNA Web Team):

If you only read the headline of this news story, you will be sure that this is a case of a Hindu priest raping a woman. After all, the term tantrik generally refers to a Hindu priest who practices the ancient Hindu tradition of tantra. After reading the first paragraph of the article, you will be damn sure that the article is referring to a Hindu priest, because it talks about the victims' belief in tankriks and babas, and how the culprit lived in an ashram. The term baba again typically refers to a Hindu ascetic, and ashram is a Hindu hermitage or monastery. So why would you suspect that the culprit in this case is not a Hindu priest? Only after you reach the second paragraph of the article and read the name of the rapist (Rahmat Ali Sheikh is a Muslim name) do you realize that the rapist is a Muslim priest.

Here are couple more recent examples: 

1. Headline from The Times of India, dated April 13, 2018 (written by Aamir Khan): Delhi: Tantrik gets 10 years in jail for rape and extortion
2. Headline from The Hindu, dated April 26, 2018 (written by Staff Reporter): Woman accuses tantrik of rape

In both these cases the actual culprits were Muslim priests, but you won't know that unless you carefully read through the news articles. You have to literally read these articles with the eye of a diligent researcher or a detective to notice the true religion of these rapists, because the authors made sure to hide that information deep within the text of articles. In The Times of India article, you realize that the rapist is a Muslim priest only after you reach the second paragraph when you find out that his name was Warsi (a Muslim surname). Similarly, in The Hindu article, you discern the rape accused to be a Muslim priest only after you have read about 60% of the article and come across the information that the accused was supposed to perform certain rituals for the victim at the Ajmer dargah (a Sufi shrine in Rajasthan).

I am neither anti-Christian nor anti-Muslim. Some of my closest friends are Christians and Muslims. However, I strongly oppose mainstream media's deliberate attempt to malign Hinduism. I had discussed this a few months ago in context of the Kathua rape case. And frankly, it doesn't give me pleasure to write about this issue again. However, the anti-Hindu onslaught of the media just seems to be getting stronger by the day. I don't fully understand why many media houses in India are so anti-Hindu. It seems like many of the media houses have been corrupted by either Marxist philosophies and/or are owned by people who are anti-Hindu. It is an irony (or perhaps a convenient deception) that some of the publications from these media houses have the word "Hindu" in their names (e.g., The Hindu or The Hindustan Times). 

Frankly, I don't mind some people harboring anti-Hindu sentiments, because there will always be some prejudiced individuals. It's difficult for people indoctrinated within dogmatic traditions to appreciate Hinduism, that is easily one of the least dogmatic and least tyrannical religions in the world. Not that Hinduism is perfect. It sure has certain practices that deserve to be critiqued. However, deliberately hiding truths and using blatant lies to denigrate Hinduism and demonize Hindus is something that is completely unacceptable.

The Illusory Truth Effect

The anti-Hindu and "Breaking India" forces are using the Goebbels principle of "manufacturing a lie so big and repeating it so often, that people start believing it as the truth." We know from research done in the field of Social Psychology by Fazio and her colleagues that such techniques do succeed in creating an "illusory truth effect," which refers to the finding that people do start believing false claims when they are exposed to them multiple times. The number of times media houses have been caught peddling bullshit is impossible to quantify here, but I am sure you must have come across many such instances.

What Can You Do?

So is there no way out of getting over the bullshit peddled by media houses? Yes there is, although it is not an easy task. Here are three things that all of us can do to counter anti-Hindu (or any other form of) bullshit:

1. Enhance your bullshit detector abilities: This is a skill that develops over time, but at the very basic do not believe everything that you read, especially news headlines. At least read through the articles that are of interest you to verify if the headline claims are in consonance with main text of the article.
2. Check for evidence and Crosscheck Other Sources: Sometimes even the main text of the article may not be truthful. So it is important that you critically evaluate the claims made in the article. Detecting bullshit in an author's argument is again a skill that is enhanced by training. But at basic level, ask "Do the authors provide any evidence for their claims?" If not, then it is a red flag. Sometimes authors may also provide incomplete evidence to mislead readers. So crosscheck facts from other sources by doing some web search.
3. When you detect bullshit, don't be afraid to point it out: The only way to counter bullshit is to bring it to the attention of others. In today's age of social media, you don't have to be a journalist or author to share your thoughts with others. When you detect any bullshit yourself or come across bullshit-detection made by others, share it generously on social media. It is true that sometimes rumors get spread on social media, but social media has also helped unravel important truths to the public.

Kathua Rape Case and 'Breaking India' Forces

A large part of my news and social media feed recently has been filled with reports and opinions related to the brutal rape and murder of an 8-year old girl named Asifa Bano in India. According to the reports:

The little girl, who came from a small village in the Jammu region of  the state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), was abducted by some Hindu miscreants. They locked her up inside a nearby temple, and raped her several times for a week before killing her by strangulation. Her battered body was found close to the temple a week after she had gone missing.

Even if you are not an Indian, you are likely to have come across this news, because it got huge international coverage.

The New York Times tweeted (@nytimes) April 11, 2018, "In India, the rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl has led to protests by Hindu nationalists — coming to the defense of the accused.

Barkha Dutt reported in the Washington Post, "Hindu ‘nationalists’ defend accused rapists and shame India."

The case in question had actually happened in early January, so why was the national and international media reporting it only in April? This was supposedly because the "Hindu nationalists" were trying to defend the rapists.

Like most people, I too was gullible to believe these reports. Rape is anyway one of the most heinous crimes possible. But hearing about a little kid getting raped is extremely distressing. The thought that people were defending the rapists of a little kid for reasons of common religious identity was downright sickening.

Media's Falsehoods

However, as I started researching more about the incident, I found that a large part of what the media  has been airing was misleading and even factually incorrect. I won't go into the details of all those inconsistencies, but below is is a quick brief of some of the important ones.

1. The "Hindu nationalists" who according to many media houses were "shamelessly defending the rapists" were actually demanding justice for the Asifa. In fact, in every interview that I have seen of these protesters, they always emphasized that they want the true rapists to be punished, and in the severest terms possible, irrespective of what religion they belonged to. Unfortunately, the partisan media houses continue to paint a different narrative.
2. The "Hindu nationalists" were simply demanding that the case be transferred from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the state government to the Central Bureau of Investigation (or CBI; this is the equivalent of FBI in USA). You can see this in the Bandh call given by the Hindu Ekta Manch in the first week of March. These "Hindu Nationalists" observed that SIT was not conducting a fair investigation, and was instead harassing all Hindus living in the vicinity, to the extent that many Hindu families had been forced to leave their villages. It certainly did not help that the SIT was also headed by a cop who had himself been accused of rape and murder in the past and had the reputation of being sympathetic to Kashmir separatists. CBI investigation has always been of much better quality than that of local police investigations, so how does demanding CBI investigation constitute to supporting rapists?
3. According to the charge sheet filed by the SIT, the accused kept and raped the kidnapped girl in a village temple. However, as can be seen in this report, this seems impossible, because the temple was a small one-room building that was common to three different villages. That is the reason it had three doors in three different directions to allow villagers from the different villages to visit it at anytime of the day. How could a girl have been kept captive for a week in a small temple that was frequented daily by Hindus from local villages? Also, as pointed out in this video, a few meters away from where the body of the girl was found started deep forests. Why would the culprits throw the body of the girl close to the temple when they could have safely dumped the body in deeper forest?
• For those who are not from India or are unfamiliar with Hindu traditions, it should be noted that Hindu temples aren't just visited on any one particular day of the week--as happens with Christian churches, for example. Since temples are frequented by devotees everyday of the week, it is difficult to imagine how no one noticed the poor girl if she had been locked up in this small temple. 

I stumbled on this picture while I was researching for this article. See how large parts of Kashmir (that occupied by Pakistan) have been cut off in this depiction of India's map? So have we Indians now given up our claim on POK? Picture Credit: https://www.newsbugz.com/kathua-rape-case/

Many authors have written before about the Breaking India forces that exist within certain sections of the Indian media. I too had observed the divisive reporting of of some media personalities, but I had always given them the benefit of doubt. For example, I reasoned may be these journalists were just overenthusiastic when they "inadvertently" reported on the locations of our soldiers during the Kargil War on live television, thereby endangering the lives of our soldiers. Similarly, may be the Lutyen's media was supporting the leftist JNU students' slogan of "Bharat Tere Tukde Honge (India, may you be broken into fragments)" because they genuinely believed in the freedom of speech. I even thought that they never deliberately intended to denigrate Hinduism when they started using the revered word  of Bhakt (a Hindu devotee) derogatorily. However, given the deliberately misleading way that some media houses and personalities have covered the Kathua rape case, now I have no doubt in my mind that the Breaking India and Shaming Hindu forces are real. Sadly, this partisan media is also winning, at least going by the sentiments expressed on Social Media by some of my friends. People are generally gullible, so easily fall prey to the manipulative tactics used by these media powerhouses. But more on that in the next post.

...To be continued.

Atrocities on the SC/ST population: What does data say?

If you are an Indian or follow Indian news, you must have seen the horrifying videos of the riots that happened in India yesterday. Thousands of rioteers armed with clubs, swords, guns and petrol bombs rampaged cities across the country, vandalizing public and private property, burning shops, cars and buses, and causing at least 9 deaths and thousands of injuries.

I think there is a tragedy even bigger than the destruction trail of the riots, and that is the polarization of the population that happens because of such events. This can be estimated from the hundreds of inane comments that we daily see on social media. So the purpose of my post is to present certain facts that should potentially help people see things in the right perspective.

The Cause of the Riots

The rioters were supposedly unhappy about a recent Supreme Court's decision that scrapped an automatic arrest provision that was there in the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989. I am saying "supposedly unhappy" because a large section of the rioters had absolutely no clue about what they were protesting against. When asked by TV journalists, they couldn't even identify the cause they were fighting for. Of course, that's simply because they had no cause to begin with. They were just paid goons of those political parties that have ruled the country by dividing people on the lines of caste and religion.

The Rationale Behind Supreme Court's Decision

The Supreme Court of India removed the automatic arrest provision from the SC/ST Act because it found evidence that this provision was being abused by unscrupulous individuals. In other words, it found evidence that many people were filing false cases under the SC/ST Act to harass and blackmail good citizens.

This was also not the first time that the Supreme Court took such a decision. A few years ago the Supreme Court of India had also scrapped the automatic arrest provision for dowry and domestic violence cases. It did so because it found that a large majority of these cases were false accusations made by women to blackmail their husbands into paying them large alimonies.

But What About the Atrocities on the SC/ST Population?

If you watched any of the debates on Indian television channels, you must have seen how the so called "defenders of the dalits (oppressed)" justified the violence of the riots by citing statistics about the crimes committed on the dalits. For example, you can see in this debate on Republic TV, how the dalit leader Rahul Sonpimple justifies the riots with these statements: "The government data says that every 18 minutes there is a crime against dalit. Everyday three dalit womens get raped, two murders and two house get robbed [sic]."

The statistics provided by this person were generally correct (Check here for more details), and it was also acknowledged by the anchor and the debaters from the opposite side. That still does not justify the riots, but let's also take a deeper look at those crime statistics. Do the presented crime statistics provide a complete picture? Okay, I accept that every 18 minutes a crime is committed against a dalit, but how does it compare to the crime rate of the overall population? Unfortunately, this was a question that nobody asked. So I did a quick analysis of the publicly accessible NCRB data, which was also the basis of both the Supreme Court's decision and the dalit leader's ire.

Table 1 provides information on the number of murders and rapes that occured in India in 2015 (the latest year for which data is available). Both the murder rate and rape rate for the Scheduled Castes  (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) groups are significantly lower than what is for the overall population of India. 

Table 1: # of Murders and Rapes in India (2015)

	# of Murder Victims	Murder Rate	# of Rape Victims	Rape Rate
Total for India	33082	2.6	34771	5.7
Scheduled Castes	729	0.4	2332	1.2
Scheduled Tribes	149	0.1	959	0.9
Note: Crime Rate is Cases Reported of Crime per 1,00,000 of population

Table 2: Population Distribution of India (Based on NCRB Data)

	Population (in Lakhs)
India Population	12591.1
Scheduled Caste Population	2013.8
Scheduled Tribe Population	1042.8

To get a clearer picture, I also compared the number of murders and rapes within each groups to their respective population proportions within the country. This analysis is summarized in three pie charts that I prepared using the above data.

As can be seen in Figure 1, SC and ST combined constitute about 25% of India's population. However, as noted in Figure 2, less than 10% of rape victims are from SC and ST communities. Further, it can be seen in Figure 3 that less than 3% of murder victims are from SC and ST communities. These figures clearly show that the dalits are not greater victims of crimes, as claimed by some and believed by most people. In other words, the claim that greater amount of atrocities are being committed against the dalits is false. This is not to say that the dalits do not suffer any disadvantages. However, it is certainly not true that dalits suffer a disproportionately higher number of crimes. The data, in fact, shows the opposite. They suffer far fewer crimes than the general population. So let's not hold erroneous beliefs. And let's not allow ourselves to get swayed by people's comments without evaluating them critically.

The use and misuse of "creative license" in movies

Today's post is a continuation of the discussion that I started on the incident of filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali being slapped by some members of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena for the suspected inappropriate portrayal of Rani Padmini in his upcoming film Padmavati. While the last post focused on the question of whether that incident could be consider terrorism, today's post attempts to explore the limits of artistic license. More specifically, I share my thoughts on what forms of artistic license are appropriate and not appropriate.

Artists have high levels of artistic license when they are working on projects that are completely fictional. For example, no one cares much if the hero in a fictional movie defies all laws of gravity and common sense. Artistic license helps bring interesting variety to characters. For example, aliens in movies have been conceptualized in wide variety of forms from tripods to octapods to shape shifting creatures and machines. They have been conceptualized from being malevolent to completely benign. They have been thought of as super-intelligent creatures to ones with more like reptilian-brains. The point is that all of these different forms of aliens are valid, because after all they are products of creative imagination and have no basis in reality. It is only when a certain filmmaker starts adding elements into the aliens that have parallels in reality that the ethics of artistic license comes to play. Let's take a hypothetical example of a Sci-Fi filmmaker who always depicts his his malevolent aliens as black in color and his benign aliens in lighter shades. Let's also say that his malevolent aliens always (or mostly) speak with African-American accents while his good aliens always (or mostly) speak with English accents. This would make us suspect that our Sci-Fi filmmaker is a racist. We would then say that the filmmaker is mis-utilizing the creative freedom given to artists. The filmmaker may still get away with it from a legal point of view, but would still be considered a racist.

Now things become more complicated for projects that are based on historical or real-life cases. My friends know that I am fond of such movies. That of course, doesn't meant that such movies get their facts right. In fact, almost all such movies get something or the other wrong. But that is not necessarily a bad thing, because movie makers often have to take some creative liberties to fit complex events into the format of a 2-hour feature film. For example, in the recent movie Patriots Day, the character of Sgt. Tommy Saunders played by Mark Wahlberg wasn't a real person but a composite of several police officers who had immediately responded to or investigated the bombings that happened at the Boston Marathon of 2013. You overlook such inaccuracies in the movie because you understand that such artistic liberties need to be taken to simplify a complicated investigation process. Peter Berg, the director of Patriots Day, was still criticized for not crediting a brave Black cop named Dennis 'DJ' Simmonds who suffered brain injury when one of the terrorists hurled a bomb towards him; DJ died a year later, and his death was linked to the injuries he had suffered during the blast.

The point is that artists can take less creative liberties when it comes to projects that they claim to be based on real historical cases. Again, it does not mean that they cannot take any creative liberties, but that their choices will be evaluated with more critical lenses. For example, the movie 300 which was based on the "historically inspired" comic book by the same name had many factual inaccuracies. Frank Miller, the creator of the comic said this about some these inaccuracies:

The inaccuracies, almost all of them, are intentional. I took those chest plates and leather skirts off of them for a reason. I wanted these guys to move and I wanted ’em to look good. I knocked their helmets off a fair amount, partly so you can recognize who the characters are. Spartans, in full regalia, were almost indistinguishable except at a very close angle. Another liberty I took was, they all had plumes, but I only gave a plume to Leonidas, to make him stand out and identify him as a king.

I think any reasonable person wouldn't mind these inaccuracies. However, some of the other "creative liberties" taken by the makers of 300 generated valid criticism. For example, some historians criticized that the Spartans were actually a slave-owning society, although they were projected as a culture that valued freedom the most. Similarly, the Persians are shown as an "incarnation of every Orientalist stereotype imaginable: decadent, oversexed, craven, weak, spineless," which naturally wasn't taken positively by people from Iran.

Coming back to the case of Bhansali's Padmavati, I don't know the kind of artistic liberties that he has taken, simply becauAse I haven't read his script. But given Bhansali's history with mangling historical facts, is it not natural for the Rajasthanis and all Indians to be apprehensive about the way their beloved legends have been depicted in the movie? By the way, before I proceed further, I must say that I have loved many of Bhansali's movies. I think some of his initial movies, such as Khamoshi: The Musical and Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. I never saw Devdas, primarily because I am not fond of the idea of glorifying a depressed drunkard. I did watch Black, a movie that was praised to the skies because of its novelty and sensitive portrayal of different forms of disability. But frankly I was heavily disappointed by Black, not because it was a badly made film--it was actually very well made--but I abhor it when filmmakers plagiarize a movie and don't give credit to their source of "inspiration." I had seen and loved the 1962 Oscar-winning movie, The Miracle Worker, from which Black had been copied (including frame-by-frame reproduction of some scenes), so couldn't appreciate what was touted as an "original" movie.

People--including many of my friends--went gaga over Bhansali's last movie Bajirao Mastani, but I hated the fact that Bhansali reduced the story of the great warrior Bajirao I to that of a lunatic love story. Bajirao I, the man who challenged the reign of Mughals and never lost a single battle in his military career of 20 years, was shown dying a depressed and delirious lover. The warrior whom the British Army Field Marshal, Bernard Montgomery, had described as "possibly the finest cavalry general ever produced by India" was shown to be a man who easily gave up his fight against the "discriminations" that he received within his own society for having taken a second wife who happened to be partly Muslim. Instead of celebrating the Hindu culture that helped let a Brahmin (priest) emerge into the role of a Kshatriya (warrior), the movie took a lot of pains to show the Marathi culture of the 1700s in poor light. The mother of the great Peshwa was shown as an evil person who was ready to sacrifice her own son for the pride of her Hindu-Maratha culture. By the way, I am not claiming that the Hindu and Marathi culture of those times were all perfect, but I would have appreciated it if Bhansali had at least put in a little effort to highlight the reasons behind the Maratha's antagonism towards the Muslims. The Marathas after all had been the strongest resistors of the Mughals for over a century. It is well known that the Mughals, especially during the reign of Aurangzeb, had not only demolished countless temples but had also committed immense atrocities on the Hindus and Sikhs of India, literally killing, raping and forcibly converting millions of the population.

In summary, I have two points with respect to artistic liberties. First, artistic or creative license is not a license to falsify facts and depict historical characters and cultures based on our own whims and fancies. Second, creative license is not the same as not having any responsibilities towards one's society.  For example, creative license does not mean we should be including an item number (that objectify women) in all our movies just to titillate the audience. Hollywood makes tons of movies based on real life but almost all of them celebrate the inherent goodness of the American society and the American military. America is always saving the world in Hollywood, be it in works of pure fiction or movies based on some real incidents. Yet, in India, filmmakers seem to take immense pride in showing only the dark sides of the country. Again, I am not saying that India doesn't have any dark side or that those dark sides should not be shown, but no society becomes great by only pointing out faults in it. For a society to become great, you have to celebrate it, and you have to take pride in it. If filmmakers want to become instrumental in the building of a great India, they should make at least one positive film on India for every negative film that they make. Always pooh-poohing the society may make you appear liberal and cool, but you effectively do a great disservice to the society. To be fair, Bhansali is not the greatest offenders of the misuse of creative license--in fact, his offenses are pretty tame in comparison to others--but I hope and wish that the quality filmmakers of India also make historical movies that fill the people with a sense of pride about being Indian.

I will end this post with a recent video by poet-turned-politician Dr. Kumar Vishwas where he recites a poem by Pt. Narendra Mishra on Rani Padmini. The spirit that this poem evokes should be what the filmmakers of India should aspire to evoke in their movies. Jai Hind!

Disclaimer: Although I shared the video of Kumar Vishwas here, I am not a supporter of Aam Aadmi Party. Rather I am very critical of it, especially its leader, Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.

P.S.: Please share your thoughts on the ideas expressed in the article in the comments section below. Thank you!

Was Slapping Bhansali an Act of Terrorism?

It's been a while since you have seen regular posts from me on my blog, and that's simply because I had set my priorities elsewhere. I did miss blogging though, and I wanted to blog regularly again but had to focus on some other aspects of my life.

A few of my friends even wrote to me inquiring why I haven't been posting anything on my blog, and expressed that they missed my posts. To all those kind friends and my general readers, I thank you for your generous support. I also want you to know that I am back now, and intend to write more regularly on my blog.

Today's post is in response to a message that I received today from a friend who wanted my opinion on the recent incident of filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali being slapped by some members of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena for the alleged inappropriate portrayal of Rani Padmini in his upcoming film Padmavati.

The first thing that I would like to state about this incident is that I strongly condemn the violence inflicted on Mr. Bhansali. Yes, slapping and breaking parts of a movie set are all expressions of violence, and should not be condoned! As a general rule of thumb, the only violence that can be condoned is the one committed in self-defense. The incident described above clearly doesn't fit that category.

That said, I won't go to the extent of calling this incident an act of terrorism. The reason I bring this up is because the filmmaker Anurag Kashyap called it so in his tweet: "Hindu extremists have stepped out of twitter into the real world now.. and  Hindu terrorism is not a myth anymore." 

There is no universally agreed upon definition of terrorism. According to Wikipedia, "The international community has never succeeded in developing an accepted comprehensive definition of terrorism." So, I will attempt to analyze this incident from what we commonly understand as acts of terrorism. Examples of terrorist attacks are the 9/11 attacks of US in 2001, the 26/11 attacks of Mumbai in 2008, or the more recent Uri attack and Baramulla attack in India. The list of terrorist attacks in recent history is endless, but there is a common thread across all these attacks. It's not that they involved the loss of human lives, although that was true in the majority of the cases. But there have also been terrorist attacks that thankfully didn't result in any deaths, such as the 2012 Pune bombings. The common thread in terrorist attacks is that is that they are all carefully planned and orchestrated to create horror and terror among the common populace. The Bhansali-slapping incident clearly doesn't fit this representation. At most it could be described as an incident of rioting, which is a form of civil disorder characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property or people.

Again, I don't condone rioting, but a riot is not the same as terrorism. Riots are more a spontaneous reaction to a perceived grievance. Sometimes they may even be an expression of hatred against a race or community, but still they are characterized by impulsive, chaotic and herd-like behavior by a group of individuals. The difference between terrorism and rioting is the same as the one that exists between a cold-blooded murder and a crime of passion. So calling the Bhansali-slapping incident an act of terrorism is completely inappropriate.

And it is even more inappropriate because Kashyap and his pseudo-secular companions in the entertainment industry, media and politics never use the term "Islamic terrorism" in their vocabulary. In fact, sometimes they go all out to even avoid using the term "terrorism" when they are perpetrated by Muslims. Below is an example of the sanitized coverage by Hindustan Times of the terrorist attack that happened at the Louvre museum in Paris two days ago.

Again, lest I be accused of Islamophobia, I must say that I have nothing against Muslims. Muslims are human beings like any other person on this world, and deserve to live without fear of any form of persecution. In fact, some of my best friends are Muslims, and not just any Muslim but Muslims from Pakistan, the purported archrival of India. Sure, I have come across a few fanatic Muslims in my life, but I have also known a few fundamentalist Hindus.

So what I am essentially against is the double standards used by the so called "intellectuals" of our society in describing different acts of violence. It saddens me when one of the prominent media personalities like Rajdeep Sardesai refuses to cover the recent Dhulagarh riots in West Bengal where Muslim mobs attacked and looted Hindu shops and houses and set them on fire. It pains me when the same "liberal and secular intellectuals" who speak for the 'right of speech' of people who shout slogans in favor of terrorists--like Afzal Guru, for instance--don't speak in support of authors such as Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen and Tarek Fateh, and even actively oppose their participation at literary festivals.

To be continued...: I will share my thoughts on the issue of "artistic liberty" in my next post.

The Point of View that Really Matters

There is an old commercial for the UK newspaper The Guardian which starts with a skinhead racing up a street. In the next scene, we see him dashing towards a businessman in suit carrying a briefcase, and attacking him. The businessman on noticing the hooligan's attack at the last moment, raises his briefcase to protect himself from the attack. The film runs again, this time from a wider angle. And it is only this time that we notice that the skinhead was no hooligan but trying to save the businessman from a full load of construction material falling on him from a builder's pallet above him. The audio of this commercial narrates, "An event seen from one point of view gives one impression; seen from another point of view gives quite a different impression, but it's only when you get the whole picture do you understand what's going on."

I was reminded of this old commercial as I was watching and reading the news coverage on the Rohit Vemula suicide, the JNU row and the terrorist attack in Pampore. It was really sad to see the opportunists way many of our politicians were behaving to get political mileage out of these events, with scan regard for the ill effects their statements was having on our nation's integrity. But what was even more depression was to see the half-truths and even complete falsehoods perpetuated by some news channels and newspapers (read NDTV, AajTak, Hindustan Times, The Times of India, Economic Times, etc.).

Certain amount of bias is inevitable in news reporting and analysis. After all the news reporters and editors are also human beings, so their reporting and analysis is bound to be influenced by their own implicit biases. We may view ourselves as completely unbiased individuals, but the fact of the matter is that we rarely see things as they really are. Our perception is usually colored by our own belief systems and life experiences. However, this does not mean that we cannot strive to be objective in our lives. And it is definitely the duty of journalists to continuously strive for this objectivity. Yet, what we see today in news coverage is a deliberate attempt by some agencies to obfuscate facts. It is as if these agencies repeatedly run the portion of the video that gives us the impression that the redhead is trying to rob a businessman. They deliberately withhold the wider view that would have given the true picture, and in the process, propagate falsehoods.

Indian mass media has become completely corrupt. Many of the news channels and newspapers are either owned or headed by political leaders and their relatives. In such a system, how do you expect to find the truth of events? It may seem like a hopeless situation, but it isn't. With the reach of internet, and more specifically the social media, we can now easily confront these channels, newspapers and their editors. It is imperative though that we do these confrontations in a logical and respectful manner. Argue but do so with facts and figures. Unfortunately, we see a lot of name calling on social media websites. Calling names--be it Bhakts or Sickulars--is only going to polarize views in a way that will fail us to come closer to truth. Lastly, when you argue with someone, don't do it to win the argument; do it to gain perspectives and come closer to truth.