Damage caused by western media to India is enormous: Francois Gautier

Guwahati: Hinduism is the only religion today that accepts and
respects all the other religions and Hindus are descendants an
ancient civilization in human history, but there are many western
journalists and correspondents who are still biased against Hindustan
(Bharat or India).

So said Francois Gautier, an India based senior French journalist,
during an interactive session with Guwahati based scribes on 26
October 2019 through video-conferencing and asserted that the western
media should at least respect the country with a wisest past and still
gives birth to humans with wonderful qualities.

“But most of the western correspondents posted in New Delhi take
little notice about the uniqueness of India paying almost no respect
to the billion-plus nation even after 70 years of its independence.
They are supposed to report honestly about India so that their
readers, many of whom are ignorant about the great nation, get
enlightened,” said Gautier.

Himself a regular contributor to various international publications
including few from France, Gautier argued that the foreign
correspondents are normally assigned for four to five years in India
and that is not enough for understanding a country which is so vast,
diverse and also contradictory. More precisely, Delhi is very far
from southern or eastern India.

Shockingly, the Indian journalists who regularly write for western
media outlets normally follow the guidelines of their editors and very
often they don’t hesitate to paint a negative image of their own
country exclaimed Gautier. However, he feels that the alternate media
has provided space for many Indians, including qualified journalists,
to speak on various issues they deem fit for exposures.

“India is never in the news in the West unless there is some major
catastrophe or huge elections. Thus, if anyone wants to write for
those publications, he or she has to find stories that might often
border on the sensational, marginal and even misleading,” commented
the outspoken journalist, who is living in India for many decades now.
Speaking about Hindu tolerance, Gautier opined that it has been an
one-way traffic for the Hindus as they experienced cruel genocides in
the sad history of humanity. But Hindus have shown extreme tolerance
and Hinduism is the only religion that never tried to convert others.
However many Indian intellectuals claim that Hindus are intolerant,
fanatic or fundamentalists.

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was a great admirer of
English socialism and he adopted British constitutional, judicial and
even education systems without considering the exceptional Indian
socio-cultural and traditional values. Nehru had to nurture the
sentient of a sizable Muslim population that did not join Pakistan
(west or east) and continued to live in India.

“For these reasons, Nehru asked historians to show esteem to
Muslim rulers like Akbar or Aurangzeb and ignore the greatness of
Hindu warriors like Chatrapati Shivaji, Maharana Pratap, Rani
Lakshmibai etc knowing that Hindus would not react not to speak of
protesting,” commented the contributor to Journal de Geneve, Le
Figaro, La Revue de l’Inde along with various Indian newspapers.
Hence Gautier believes that the Indian history should be rewritten and
he has reasons to explain. For over seven decades, the Indian
establishment comprising people from Nehruvian-Marxist and
pseudo-secular ideology used to influence everything from school
curriculum to public policy to history writing.

It has built up a false narrative that systematically condemned
India’s civilizational journey. Since the overwhelming majority of the
people here remain Hindus, the establishment tried its best to turn
itself as anti-Hindu. It encouraged people to negate anything
associated with Hinduism. The tendency extended up to reproving the
Vedas, Upanisad, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharata along with
Ayurveda and Sanskrit.

Bringing the reference to Hebrew, the ancient language of Israel,
Gautier pointed out that Israeli people after getting a part of
their holy land in 1948 started welcoming Jews from various parts of
the world. As they came back to live in Israel a major problem was
aroused because they spoke different languages. The Israeli authority
asked their scholars to revive Hebrew, which had fallen in
decrepitude so that everybody can speak Hebrew.

“Today the Hebrew language has unified Israel like nothing else, which
should inspire India to revive Sanskrit. The government should invite
some dedicated linguists to sit down with Sanskrit scholars for
devising a way of simplifying and modernizing the mother all Indian
languages. I am sure, it would energize and revitalize the whole
Indian culture” stated the author of ‘India’s Self Denial’, ‘Sri Sri
Ravi Shankar, a Guru of Joy’, ‘A New History of India’, ‘A History of
India as it Happened’ etc

Married to an Indian woman, Gautier also argued that India and Israel
share so much in common and both can learn a lot from each other!
Hindus and Jews, far from being the persecutors of minorities have
been persecuted for nearly two thousand years and have been the
victims of worst genocides in history. While the German dictator
Hitler murdered six million Jews in his gas chambers, Gautier revealed
eighty million Hindus had to die at the hands of Muslim invaders.