A lot of people might be surprised to know that the principal sponsor of the two topmost prime-time shows on English television ie The Newshour hosted by Arnab Goswami on Times Now and India @ 9 hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN is one single entity ie Amity University. The interesting thing over here is that this is the same university which was founded by Mr Ashok Chauhan and he continues till date as the President of Amity Group of Institutions.
Besides being a successful educationist, Mr Chauhan is also involved in Indian politics as he is the chairperson of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s European Central Committee. VHP is an orthodox religio-political organization which is a part of the Sangh Parivar and an ally of the BJP. In the past, it led the highly divisive Ram Janmabhoomi Movement which brought about a significant change in the direction of Indian politics.
The fact that two leading shows capable of opinion-building are being sponsored by a university being controlled by a VHP man, speaks volumes of the nexus between the Hindu Right of India and the electronic English media industry. But still the Hindutva brigade would overlook this tie-up and accuse the English electronic media of being a stooge of the ‘Khan-gress’ ie Congress, the former title being a mockery of Congress’s supposed Muslim appeasement policies which keep angering the Sangh Parivar and which has forced them to take up the job of saving ‘Bharat’.
We are all aware of how monumental an influence sponsors have on editorial policy and content. Very often they call the shots and gag or censor what ought to be gagged or censored because of the kind of inconvenience associated with it. However, the Hindutva brigade would conveniently overlook all these inconvenient truths and paint all channels, specifically English channels, with the same brush of being either ‘pseudo-secular’ or ‘sickular’.
The internet and the social media is flooded with volatile, abusive and hateful comments of the Internet Hindus, for those who consider this statement to be blasphemous, please realize that an internet Hindu is quite different from a Hindu or a pious Hindu in the classical sense of the term. The pervert brazenness of the internet Hindu is something which I’ve not only been personally subjected to on various blogs and comments of mine on the internet but have also witnessed it professionally during my month-long internship with the online division of the Indian Express. During this month-long affair, I worked upon several stories (running into hundreds) but the most successful story which I worked upon was the one relating to the introduction of two child policy for Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/myanmar-introduces-child-limit-for-rohingya-muslims/1120532/)
The kind of ecstasy which these internet Hindus showed towards this highly racist story (evident from 1.5k likes which it garnered, which by the way no story of mine ever came close to) just shows how deeply these people hate Muslims and approve of the idea of their state-sponsored subjugation. In one of his articles titled ‘Who’s the real Hindu?’ (http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsKaranThapar/Who-s-the-real-Hindu/Article1-334832.aspx) published as a part of his widely read column, ‘The Sunday Sentiments’, Karan Thapar wrote about the need for Hindus to challenge the kind of fanaticism which was being propagated by organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Just like the Muslim community world over is under pressure to condemn each and every act of shameless Islamist terror, the most recent being the gruesome murder of a British soldier on the streets of London, it is high time that liberal Hindus on the social media reject the kind of mad frenzy which is being pushed forth by Internet Hindus through their ideology of Hindutva extremism.
In my personal opinion, the Hindu intellectuals have been far more vocal of their condemnation of Hindutva extremism than Muslim intellectuals are of Islamist extremism but I am waiting to see the same kind of wisdom dawn upon the laymen of these religious communities who as of now are being supportive of vicious political campaigns and puritanical forms of faith, the latter employing more specifically to young Muslims.
Saif Ahmad Khan is presently a student of journalism at the University of Delhi.
