NBDSA Orders Zee News to Take Down Videos of Its ‘Mehndi Jihad’ Programmes

New Delhi: The self-regulatory News Broadcasters and Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) recently ordered Zee News to take down videos of programmes it aired about purported ‘mehndi jihad’ on the grounds that they violated media guidelines on neutrality.

In a separate order former Supreme Court Justice A.K. Sikri, the NBDSA's chairperson, also asked Times Now Navbharat to remove tickers from two of its broadcasts on ‘love jihad’ that the complainant in the case noted were communal and vilified Muslims.

Indrajeet Ghorpade, the complainant in both cases, said that Zee in programs aired in October last year amplified a western Uttar Pradesh-based Hindutva group's campaign seeking to discourage Hindu women from having mehndi applied by Muslims during the Karwa Chauth festival.

The group had claimed that Muslims spit and mix ‘non-vegetarian’ items into the mehndi they apply on Hindu women. Muslim henna artists also pretend to be Hindu as part of a conspiracy to marry Hindu women and also plan to forcibly convert them to Islam, it alleged.

This group also sought to police mehndi artists by checking their Aadhaar cards and performed pujas on lathis saying it would beat up artists who did not conform to its demands if the authorities did not act, Ghorpade recalled.

When Zee covered the group's demands it “amplified them with a certain approving tone, [offered] no counter-narratives, expert voices or legal perspectives”, Justice Sikri cited Ghorpade as saying during an NBDSA hearing.

In Zee's broadcasts, Ghorpade contended, “Muslim men were presumed guilty of deceitful intent”, while the channel reproduced slogans such as ‘dande maro salon ko’ (‘beat the bastards with sticks’) and ‘de danadan’ (‘hit [them] left and right’) without qualification or criticism, and referred to Muslims as jihadis or ‘adharmis’ (‘impious’).

It also used tickers, headlines or titles such as ‘Mehndi jihad naya fasad’ (‘the new trouble of mehndi jihad’), ‘jihadiyon ke liye lathi taiyar’ (‘sticks stand ready for jihadis’) and ‘mehndi jihad ke khilaf lath model launch’ (‘a stick model is launched against mehndi jihad’).

Zee offered a number of defences for the programmes in question, including that it was merely trying to inform the authorities and the public about the Hindutva group's demands and that the terms on its tickers were not its own words but those of the right-wing body.

Its reportage on the “unfounded claims” that Muslims spit in mehndi before applying it on Hindu women was meant to “[ensure] that both communities remain vigilant against any potential undemocratic activities”, the broadcaster also argued.

Ultimately Justice Sikri ruled on September 26 that Zee ran its tickers without ever clarifying that the words they carried were not its own.

“… While ample time was given to the views of the Hindu groups, the broadcaster had failed to present any other point of view … Failure to present the views of all affected parties constituted a violation of the principle of neutrality under the Code of Ethics & Broadcasting Standards and the Specific Guidelines Covering Reportage,” declared Justice Sikri.

Given that the media is the “fourth pillar of democracy in shaping public discourse, it would behove broadcasters to critically examine the content they air” when dealing with “potentially sensitive subject matters”, the judge added, saying the NBDSA had decided to “admonish” Zee and order that videos and hyperlinks containing the four impugned programmes be removed.

Navbharat ‘love jihad’ case

Ghorpade in another complaint said that Times Now Navbharat in two programmes on October 2, 2024 misleadingly covered a case wherein a Bareilly court sentenced a 25-year-old Muslim man to life in prison for raping a Hindu woman after presuming a false Hindu identity.

The judge in the matter, who also sentenced the man's elderly father to two years in prison, had notably referred to the case as one of ‘love jihad’.

‘Love jihad’, an Islamophobic conspiracy theory used by many Hindu nationalists, holds that Muslim men deceive and seduce Hindu women as part of a concerted effort to convert them to Islam.

Times Now Navbharat's reportage on the case, argued Ghorpade, “intentionally” left out the detail that the woman went back on her initial statements and said she was pressured by her parents and Hindu right-wing groups – who objected to her marriage to a Muslim – into accusing Mohammad Aalim of the crimes.

“The omission of this critical fact misled viewers,” he told the NBDSA.

As The Wire had then reported, judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar rejected the woman's statement and suggested that Aalim was influencing her. He wondered how she lived away from her parents for a number of years and managed to afford life expenses, including buying an Android phone, saying that Aalim must have given her financial support.

Navbharat's lawyers defended the channel's decision to leave out the woman's accusations of pressure by saying it did not cover them in light of the judge's decision.

“As a journalistic organisation, it is obligated to report facts as upheld by judicial bodies, and its decision to refrain from including unverified or legally unacknowledged statements was in line with responsible journalism and the guidelines set forth by the NBDSA,” Navbharat argued.

Ghorpade had also pointed to Navbharat's use of tickers such as ‘UP mein love jihad … toolkit Pakistani’, ‘Anand nikla Aalim, farzi mohabbat wala jalim’ (‘Anand turned out to be Aalim, a cruel [man] of fake love’) and ‘Jhuthe naam ka afsana, maqsad Musalman banana’ (‘a story of a fake name, an aim of making [converting to] a Muslim’), which he said noted stereotyped Muslims.

Justice Sikri in his order said that Navbharat ran its programmes “on the narrative of court findings” and thus “would not be objectionable”.

However the channel's use of tickers “went beyond the narrative in the judgment”, “introduced certain elements which are not a part of the judgment … [and] which did not fit the intended subject of the reportage”, the judge said, ordering Navbharat to remove the tickers from its broadcasts.

Ghorpade reacted to the NBDSA's orders by noting that they had come close to a year after he filed his complaints in the two cases.

With regard to the Zee case he said on X that the NBDSA “despite … having the power to levy fines ranging from Rs 2-25 lakh” chose not to fine the broadcaster and “only asked the channel to delete the videos containing violent threats against Muslim men, one year after the videos were aired on TV”.

The NBDSA enforces the News Broadcasters and Digital Association's voluntarily drawn Codes of Ethics & Broadcasting Standards as part of a self-regulatory mechanism.

The Association has 125 news and current affairs channels as its members, per its website.

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