this may be a repeat but read on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti
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Category: Journalism
media Crooks
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Indian Media Watch…. Changing The Way You Consume News..
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Imported Garbage – From New York Times
September 19, 2013
This blog has always been dedicated to Indian news media as it was meant to be. However, considering multiple elections are looming and business abroad is not so great one can expect a lot of imported scumbags to fry their onions in the Indian heat. The American media is the inspiration behind the terribly corrupt anduntrustworthy media in India. They too have fake reports, fake awards and even bogus reports to encourage war. Even the Pulitzer Prize can be hoodwinked. Don’t believe me? Read the story of Janet Cooke in “Barkha – The Queen of Telly Trolls”. The common misconception in India is that the longest running media competition is KBC. Actually no! KBC had many breaks. The longest running media completion is “Abuse Narendra Modi and win a prize”.Unfortunately, there is hardly any media crook in India who hasn’t already won that prize so now there are imported contestants. Any Tom, Dick and Harris would do! So ‘Enter Gardiner Harris’ of the New York Times (NYT).
This is what Harris’ profile on Twitter says (pic on the left). Usually when you have a grand title like “South Asia” correspondent you can assume there will be a lot of stringers and side-kicks assisting the person. To put it politely, these people usually peddle “second-hand stuff”. You know, like selling used cars. If you ever met a used-car salesman he will make you believe it’s even better than a virgin car. But the Twitter profile doesn’t say much else, so a more honest introduction to Harris is mandatory. Here’s how one introduced him (edited excerpts):
“The Inconstant Gardiner: The New York Times’ Fervent Disconnect Between Drug and Vaccine Reporting: The film “The Constant Gardener”—starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz… from the book by John le Carré—is the story of sacrifice and moral constancy against the corruption of fictional corporate giant KVH, maker of pharmaceuticals and pesticides. It’s a beautiful film in many ways, and terrifying; a cross between reality check and forecast….. Isn’t tireless repetition of “emotional words” a technique of advertising and political propaganda? Or is Harris too bored with the issue to come up with fresher adjectives? I suppose that could explain the—cough— inconstant reporting. Inconstant: adjective; likely to change frequently without apparent or cogent reason— in•con•stant•ly adverb … Gardiner Harris—who just came out with his first novel involving a possible conspiracy in coalmining —likes to chastise vaccine injury claimants for being “misled by conspiracy theories”. It’s funny if you think about it. Harris’s conceit is that he himself would be in on such a conspiracy if it existed— when in reality, Harris doesn’t make decisions about what gets printed in the Times any more than a drug rep decides what to sell”.
Isn’t tireless repetition of “emotional words” a technique of advertising and political propaganda? Asks the article about Harris. Oh yes, terms like “divisive” “controversial” “fascist” “chauvinist” “polariser” are all propaganda words that fit very much with Harris’ style as it does with most of his Indian counterparts. I recommend you read the full introduction of Harris that I’ve linked so that there is no selective interpretation. What I’ve quoted is actually the nicer part. So on what basis he wrote this crap called “Campaign for Prime Minister in India Gets Off to Violent Start” about NaMo can only be described as mindless propaganda and nothing more. It’s his “first time” I suppose, so we will throw back just a couple of his moroneries back at him. Harris clearly tries to imply that the nomination of Modi as BJP’s PM candidatesparked off the Muzzafarnagar riots. Sounds a lot like our very own Diggy, doesn’t he? Here’s what he starts with:
“India’s most important election in a generation began in earnest this month the same way consequential elections nearly always start here — with a proclamation and a deadly riot. In New Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party announced last week that it had chosen Narendra Modi, one of the most divisive politicians in India’s history, as its candidate for prime minister in next spring’s national elections. Mr. Modi, the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, is an unapologetic Hindu chauvinist who has been accused of mass murder”.
So the “proclamation” is connected to a deadly riot – the Muzzafarnagar one. Of course, Harris doesn’t forget to state Modi has been “accused of mass murder”. Now who has accused Modi of this? Not a court and not even an FIR. It is scumbags like Harris in the Indian media who have done this; most prominently Vir Sanghvi and Rajdeep Sardesai. Bravo, second-hand crap is passed off as gospel. Here’s another one from Harris:
Okay, in the above para he links to an article about the Muzzafarnagar riots. This is from his own NYT barn. That linked article is “Fear and loathing in North India’s sugarcane town”. Nice! Very nice! Harris also states the riots were due to a “fake video” by a legislator from Modi’s party. See? This guy is a fast learner. Bad things it’s Modi’s Gujarat, Modi’s aide, Modi’s right-hand man. Good things? It’s Gujarat or Gujarat govt. I guess this guy must have attended classes at NDTV and CNN-IBN. Anyway, here’s what the article he linked says:
Oh, the fake video theory has been busted. But trust used-car salesmen to tell you how virgin the car is. So the riots, which actually started in August, escalated on September 7 as the NYT report says. Modi was nominated PM candidate on Friday the 13th. Yet, like the usual Indian liars in our own media Harris makes a fake connection. I hope the UPA awards him a Padma Shri before they exit. Then Harris proceeds to write the tripe that has been peddled over and over again in India. He’s just about some 10 years late, that’s all. Oh and then he quotes the great Sushil Kumar Shinde too:
“Sushil Kumar Shinde, India’s minister of Home Affairs, said that there had already been 451 cases of sectarian violence this year, surpassing last year’s total of 410. He warned that violence was likely to intensify as elections approached”.
451 cases of sectarian violence this year? What? Did you hear any of that? Did you see of any of that being reported by NDTV, CNN-IBN, TOI Group, Headlines Today or ABPNews all of whom are clones of NYT and American media? Oops! He reveals something else too. There were 410 last year. Did you hear most of that either? Thanks to Harris, at least he exposes the criminal cover-up artists in Indian media. But the Inconstant Gardiner misses something. None of the 451 or 410 happened in Gujarat or under Modi’s watch. So he will learn slowly those aren’t sectarian violence. The only communal clash ever in India was Gujarat 2002.
Harris also grandly states Modi rarely speaks to Western media. He is wrong. Modi rarely speaks to any mediabecause he knows how they are criminally ranged against him. He is smart and throws words in his speeches and lets them grovel for crumbs. But even here “second-hand” news peddler Harris is inaccurate. Modi gave an interview to Reuters just some weeks ago. Obviously, Harris is not a lover of Puppies or he would have heard of that. No?
But like I said those “South Asia” type specialists are usually assisted by local sidekicks. In this case there is one Hari Kumar from Ahmedabad and Nida Najar from Muzzafarnagar. In a tribute to John Lennon this is what Elton John wrote about the gardener he was:
What happened here
As the New York sunset disappeared
I found an empty garden among the flagstones there
Who lived here
He must have been a gardener that cared a lot
Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop
And now it all looks strange
It’s funny how one insect can damage so much grain.
It’s true; one insect can also damage the NYT as they know so well. “Reporter Judith Miller retired after criticisms that her reporting of the lead-up to the Iraq War was factually inaccurate and overly favorable to the Bush administration’s position, for which The New York Times later apologized. One of Miller’s prime sources was Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi expatriate who returned to Iraq after the U.S. invasion and held a number of governmental positions culminating in acting oil minister and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006”…. “In May 2003, Times reporter Jayson Blair was forced to resign from the newspaper after he was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of hisstories. Some critics contended that Blair’s race was a major factor in his hiring and in The New York Times’ initial reluctance to fire him”. The NYT has won a lot of awards and also has the experience of weeds. One hopes they don’t let an insect damage the good crop.
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“An History of India as it Happened (not as it was written)”:
“An History of India as it Happened (not as it was written)”:
CHAPTER 6 : NEGATIONISM AND THE MUSLIM CONQUESTS (Part II)
It is not only Indian historians, who are negationists, but also western historians and India-specialists. We know that the first historians of Indian – the Britishers – twisted India’s history to suit their theory that they had come to civilize a race which was not only inferior to them, but also was supposed to have been heavily influenced in its philosophies or arts by European invaders – read the Aryans or Alexander the Great. But what is less known is that today many western historians not only still cling to these old outdated theories, but also actually more or less will fully mislead the general European public, who is generally totally ignorant and takes these “knowledgeable” comments about India as the absolute truth. One example is France, which has a long tradition of Indianists, who devote their time and life to the study of India. The main school of historic research in France is called the CNRS (National Center of Social Research), which has a very important South Asia section, of which India, of course, is the main component. Unfortunately, many of these India-specialists are not only Left-leaning, that is they are very close to the ideas of the JNU historians, with whom they are anyway in constant contact, but are also specialists of the Mogul period of India history, which is to say that they are sympathetic to Islam’s point of view on India, while they often consider Hindus as fanatics…
Take for instance one of the recent Indian History books published in France “Histoire de l’Inde moderne” (1994 Fayard / Paris), the authors (there are seven of, all famous Indianists), having subscribed to the usual Aryan invasion theory, accuse Shiva “to incarnate obscure forces” (Introduction III) and of course use the word “fanatics” to describe the Hindus who brought down the Ayodhya mosque. Basically, the book does an apology of he moghol period in India; while keeping quiet about all their crimes. In the chapter dealing for instance with Vijaynagar, the last great empire of free India, which symbolized a Hindu Renaissance after nine centuries of savage Muslim conquests, one cannot but perceive the enmity of the authors for Hinduism. The two young princes, founder of Vijaynagar who were converted by force to Islam when in captivity, are accused of “duplicity”, because they reverted back to Hinduism as soon as they were free; then the French historians highlight the “ambition of Brahmins, who used these two young princes to reconquer the power that at been lost at the hands of the conquering Muslims” (page 54); the book then mentions “the unquenchable exigencies of the (Hindu) central power in Vijaynagar”, forgetting to say that that for the first time in centuries, Hindus could practice freely their faith, that they were not killed, their women raped, their children taken as slaves and converted to Islam. And all this to finally sum up in seven words the terrible end of Vijaynagar, which has left a wound in the Hindu psyche even up to today: “looting and massacres lasted for three days”…
But the authors of “Histoire de l’Inde moderne” do not only run down Hindus, they also glorify Muslims, particularly the Moghols. Babur for instance, this monster who killed hundreds of thousands of Hindus and razed thousands of temples becomes at their hands a gentle hero: “ Babur did not like India and preferred to isolate himself in the exquisite gardens he had devised, with their geometrical design, their crossed canals, which evoked to him the rivers of paradise”. Oh, God what a sensitive poet! And to make it sound even more glorious, the author adds: “there he translated a manual of Koranic law and a Sufi treaty of morals”. Oh, what a saint and lover of humanity… Aurangzeb, the cruelest of the Moghul emperors, has also the full sympathies of the authors: “Aurangzeb seems to have concentrated on himself the hatred of militant Hindus, who attribute to him systematic destruction of temples and massive conversion drives. But this Manichean impression has to be seriously countered (page 126)”… Unfortunately for the authors, as we have seen earlier, Aurangzeb was not only proud of what he was doing to the Hindus, but he had his scribes note each deed down for posterity… In 2006 the same authors published “L’Inde contemporaine”, with the same prejudices and bias against Hindus and their political parties.
These French Indianists have also a tradition of speaking against the BJP, which they have always labeled as “fundamentalist” and dangerous for the “secular” fabric of India, although the BJP has been in power for quite a few years and nothing dramatic has happened to the secular fabric of India. The problem is that these Indianists not only write lengthy and pompous articles in France’s main newspapers, such as Left-leaning Le Monde, explaining to the ignorant reader why is India on the point of exploding because of fanatic Hindus, or how the Harijans in India are still the most downtrodden people on earth (this is why when President Narayanan visited France in April 2000, all the French newspapers chose to only highlight that he was an untouchable and that religious minorities in India were persecuted, nearly provoking a diplomatic incident between France and India), but unfortunately they also advise the French government, who like his citizens, is often shamefully ignorant and uninterested by India. This is why, although there has been a lot of sympathy for the French in India because of their tolerant response to the Indian nuclear tests of 1998 (whereas the whole western world reacted hysterically by imposing absurd sanctions), France has not yet bothered to capitalize on this sympathy and has not managed to realize that India is the ideal economic alternative to a very volatile China.
It would be nice to say that Indian journalists are not blind to this influence of French Indianists and the adverse impact it has on Indo-French relations, but when Christophe Jaffrelot, for instance who wrote many a nasty books on Hindu fundamentalism and is most responsible for the bad image the BJP in France, comes to India to release the English translation of his book, he is feted by the Press corps and all kind of laudatory reviews are printed in the Indian Press. So much for secularism in India.
And, ultimately, it is a miracle that Hinduism survived the onslaught of Muslim savagery; it shows how deep was her faith, how profound her karma, how deeply ingrained her soul in the hearts of her faithfuls. We do not want to point a finger at Muslim atrocities, yet they should not be denied and their mistakes should not be repeated today. But the real question is: Can Islam ever accept Hinduism? We shall turn towards the Sage, the yogi, who fought for India’s independence, accepting the Gita’s message of karma of violence when necessary, yet who had a broad vision that softened his words: “You can live with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live peacefully with a religion whose principle is “I will not tolerate you? How are you going to have unity with these people?…The Hindu is ready to tolerate; he is open to new ideas and his culture and has got a wonderful capacity for assimilation, but always provided India’s central truth is recognised.. (Sri Aurobindo India’s Rebirth 161,173)
Or behold this, written on September 1909: “Every action for instance which may be objectionable to a number of Mahomedans, is now liable to be forbidden because it is likely to lead to a breach of peace. And one is dimly beginning to wonder whether worship in Hindu temples may be forbidden on that valid ground (India’s Rebirth p. 55). How prophetic! Sri Aurobindo could not have foreseen that so many Muslim countries would ban Rushdie’s book and that Hindu processions would often be forbidden in cities, for fear of offending the Muslims. Sri Aurobindo felt that sooner or later Hindus would have to assert again the greatness of Hinduism.
And here we must say a word about monotheism, for it is the key to the understanding of Islam. Christians and Muslims (and Jews) have always harped on the fact that their religions sprang-up as a reaction against the pagan polytheist creeds, which adored many Gods. « There is only one real God they said (ours), all the rest are just worthless idols ». This « monotheism versus polytheism business » has fuelled since then the deep, fanatic, violent and murderous zeal of Islam against polytheist religions, particularly against Hinduism, which is the most comprehensive, most widely practiced of all them. It even cemented an alliance of sorts between the two great monotheist religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, witness the Britishers’ attitude in India, who favoured Indian Muslims and Sikhs against the Hindus; or the King of Morocco who, even though he is one of the most moderate Muslim leaders in the world, recently said in an interview: « we have no fight with Christianity, our battle is against the Infidel who adores many gods ».
But as we have seen earlier, Hinduism is without any doubt the most monotheist religion in the World, for it recognises divine unity in multiplicity. It does not say: « there is only one God, which is Mohammed. If you do not believe in Him I will kill you ». It says instead: « Yes Mohammed is a manifestation of God, but so is Christ, or Buddha, or Krishna, or Confucius ». This philosophy, this way of seeing, which the Christians and Muslims call « impious », is actually the foundation for a true monotheist understanding of the world. It is because of this « If you do not recognize Allah (or Christ), I will kill you », that tens of millions of Hindus were slaughtered by Arabs and other millions of South Americans annihilated by the Christians. And ultimately the question is: Are the Muslims of today ready to accept Hinduism ? Unfortunately no. For Muslims all over the world, Hinduism is still the Infidel religion « par excellence ». This what their religion tell them, at every moment, at every verse, at the beginning of each prayer : « Only Allah is great ». And their mollahs still enjoin them to go on fight « jihad » to deliver the world of the infidels. And if the armies of Babar are not there any longer; and if it is not done any more to kill a 100.000 Hindus in a day, there is still the possibility of planting a few bombs in Coimbatore, Mumbai or Varanasi, of fuelling separatisms in the hated land and eventually to drop a nuclear device, which will settle the problem once and for all. As to the Indian Muslim, he might relate to his Hindu brother, for whatever he says, he remains an Indian, nay a Indu; but his religion will make sure that he does not forget that his duty is to hate the Infidel. This is the crux of the problem today and the riddle if Islam has to solved, if it wants to survive in the long run.
We will never be able to assess the immense physical harm done to India by the Muslim invasions. Even more difficult is to estimate the moral and the spiritual damage done to Hindu India. But once again, the question is not of vengeance, or of reawakening old ghosts, but of not repeating the same mistakes. Unfortunately, the harm done by the Muslims conquest is not over. The seeds planted by the Moghols, by Babar, Mahmud, or Aurangzeb, have matured: the 125 million Indian Muslims of today have forgotten that they were once peaceful, loving Hindus, forcibly converted to a religion they hated. And they sometimes take-up as theirs a cry of fanaticism which is totally alien to their culture. Indeed, as Sri Aurobindo once said: “More than 90% of the Indian Muslims are descendants of converted Hindus and belong as much to the Indian nation as the Hindu themselves”…(Rebirth of India, p.237) The embryo of secession planted by the Mahomedans, has also matured into a poisonous tree which has been called Pakistan and comes back to haunt India through three wars and the shadow of a nuclear conflict embracing South Asia. And in India, Kashmir and Kargil are reminders that the Moghol cry for the house of Islam in India is not yet over.
One of the main reasons I have decided to build in Pune a Museum of Indian History, dedicated to the great Shivaji Maharaj (who is depicted in Indian History books as a petty chieftain and a plunderer), is that it will not be enough to rewrite Indian History in books, it will also have to be done in STONE. Please see our website fact-india.com and contribute financially, if you can, to the making of that Museum (we have US, UK and Indian tax exemption). We are also looking for IT persons to donate time to do presentations, animations & GAMES based on the lives of India’s Hindu heroes: Shivaji Maharaj, Maharana Pratap, Rani of Jhansi, Ahilyabhai, the Vijaynagar empire, etc. You can contact me at fgautier@rediffmail.com
courtesy Francois Gautier, a french author and journalist, who has been covering India and South Asia for the last 35 years. All throughout his reporting years, he noticed that most western correspondents were projecting the problems, warts and shortcomings of India. Hence when Francois Gautier got a journalism prize (Natchiketa Award of excellence in journalism) from the Prime Minister of India, he used the prize money to mount a series of conferences & exhibitions highlighting the magnificence of India and the threats to its sovereignty.
My blog- K. Hariharan 