A Tragedy Twisted: How Media Fuels Communal Hate After Pahalgam

The media – both the mainstream visual as well as social media – has left no stone unturned in communalising the terrible tragedy that occurred in Pahalgam on April 22.

I had a shocking and stark realisation of how deep anti-Muslim sentiments have permeated among the common people during my daily cycling exercise on the morning of April 29.

I saw two ladies in a burqa near the road leading to Chaproli village in Sector 168 of Noida. One of them was holding up her mobile phone high – perhaps she was recording something or taking a selfie. While she was at it, someone shouted at her words to the effect of ‘recording kar ke Pakistan bhejoge kya?’ (‘Will you make a recording and send it to Pakistan?’).

The comments, made towards two apparently Muslim ladies who were quietly going about their own business, are indicative of the amount of hatred and mistrust that has taken hold among the common citizens of India.

Perhaps the above comments and the latest wave of displaying hatred against Muslims are a direct result of excessive decibels being dedicated to highlighting the fact that Hindu tourists were specifically targeted and shot at point-blank range by the militants in Pahalgam.

The massacre at Pahalgam was a heinous act carried out by militants through indiscriminate firing, resulting in deaths of 26 innocent tourists and injuries to several others.

The media, instead of focussing on the Hindu/Muslim angle, should have asked how such an act could be carried out by militants without intelligence agencies detecting their footprints – electronic or otherwise.

Another question that the media should have asked is how and why there was no security – not even police – at a popular tourist place that was reportedly witnessing a gathering of a large number of tourists on a daily basis.

The media was repeatedly showing videos allegedly of the kin of the victims claiming that Hindus were targeted. One doesn’t really know whether these videos were put on air after due verification or not.

While the narrative of Hindus being targeted was being magnified, the mainstream media studiously avoided showing assertions by tourists about the help extended by locals in evacuating many panicked tourists to safe places.

The fact of locals providing stranded tourists with shelter and food and even opening mosques for them was hardly aired. Most media channels studiously refrained from showing victims praising locals about the manner in which they rescued many tourists, risking their own lives to save them.

The fact is that a local pony rider, Syed Adil Hussain, was amongst the 26 killed, reportedly after being shot in the chest while trying to snatch a weapon from one of the militants.

Having been on a couple of TV discussions about the tragedy, I found the anchors waffling, constantly interjecting and not letting me complete my sentence or moving on to the next speaker when I pointed to this as well as the fact that the tourists, having come from the rest of India, would mostly have been Hindus.

While reports of the selective killings of Hindus in Pahalgam are perhaps correct to an extent, giving this exclusive coverage at the cost of the alternative narrative expressed by tourists has provoked unscrupulous elements of society to harass and harm Muslims in many parts of the country.

The communalisation of the Pahalgam tragedy through this media blitz has reinforced the already prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment among large sections of society. This has given a fresh impetus to the hatred and attacks against Muslims in general and Kashmiris in particular that are being reported widely in social media.

Daily primetime high-decibel discussions on divisive topics, with maximum time being given to anti-Muslim voices, have helped spread the hatred wide and far.

And the incident I was witness to and have cited above manifests this hatred due to which innocent hard-working Muslims find themselves isolated, unable to carry out their daily activities and eke out a livelihood.

The incident cited above is not an isolated one. These anti-Muslim feelings have not emerged suddenly either. The animosity against minorities in general and Muslims in particular is the result of sustained propaganda against them for more than a decade now.

Even the police and administration are complicit in this. We have witnessed several riots in recent times where even the police have joined hands with rioters to target Muslims.

Also read: Pahalgam and the Normalisation of Communal Hate

That allegations of rioting and anti-national activities against Muslims mostly fail to withstand legal scrutiny is no consolation, because the process itself becomes the punishment. An honourable acquittal has no meaning, because the lives of the victims of such false allegations fall apart after having spent a number of years in jail.

We witness additions to our lexicon on a daily basis with terms like love jihad, vote jihad and even UPSC jihad being used to target innocents.

Anti-social elements merrily choose mosques to dance in front of while shouting hateful slogans and waving swords and other assorted weapons on the occasion of every festival, provoking and causing riots.

Administrations in many states disregard Supreme Court orders when they target Muslims and bulldoze their houses without giving them any opportunity to present their case.

The media is squarely to be blamed for this sorry state of affairs. It is in this context that it was refreshing to witness Kashmiris confronting mediapersons who were indulging in a Hindu-Muslim narrative. It was also encouraging to find surviving tourists contradicting the media narrative.

The government must initiate urgent steps to control the situation and prevent further divisions in society.

I am tempted to juxtapose the reactions of two governments separated by 17 years and quote from the speech of late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to parliament after the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

He said:

“The forces behind these attacks wanted to destabilise our secular polity, create communal discord and undermine our country’s economic and social progress … the idea of India as a functioning democracy and a pluralistic society is at stake … together we shall prevail.”

Singh could assert this and ensure that society did not get divided on communal lines, because until then the population of India had not become polarised and was tolerant of the beliefs of religious minorities.

Another very important factor that prevented the communalisation of the 26/11 attack was that the media in general was not yet ideologically compromised and did not indulge in giving communal overtones to such tragic incidents.

Unfortunately, the situation today is far different, and the primetime media and a section of social media is ever-ready to spread the divisive narrative. The media is failing India by resorting to agenda-driven reporting and hateful propaganda.

The media must live up to its duty as the fourth pillar of democracy.

Sanjiv Krishan Sood was additional director general in the Border Security Force.

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