Indian Media’s project to separate Hindus from Muslims is on the wane

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By Syed Ali Mujtaba, Edited By Adam Rizvi, The India Observer, TIO: Indian media’s project to separate Hindus from Muslims, which has been going on since 2014, is on the wane. The electoral defeat of the BJP at several places reflects that the ‘Othering Muslims project has lost its sheen, and the Indian media sees it as no business proposition. So the campaign of Hindu Nationalism that brought the BJP to power in 2014 has lost its momentum.  Thanks to other factors like malpractices in the electoral list that have dented the phantom called Hindu nationalism.

We have seen that the media coverage of Indian Muslims has gained traction after the BJP came to power in 2014, and since then Indian media has been dishing out stories with religious biases, misinformation, and disinformation about Indian Muslims.

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The media narrative that was put in circulation was that Hindus are in danger from the Indian Muslims. This communal-political rhetoric was injected into the Hindu veins to instill a fear in them about the demon called the Muslims. The social-cultural-political conversations within Hindu families about Indian Muslims since then are sourced by the media.

This was due to the internet and the TV, which made people cocooned, and they lost their deep interaction with society. What was fed to them from the media was accepted, and Muslims to Hindus were enemies, and they shut themselves from any engagement with the Muslims.

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This dangerous trend of anti-Muslim campaign by the media, egged on by the BJP rule, has disrupted the social order in India. Since 2014, we have been witnessing that the social behavior of intolerance, hatred, and lynching of Muslims has become rampant. There is no doubt that the media is helping the ruling party in building an environment where anti-Muslim imagery is created to buttress the cause of Hindu nationalism. This was deliberately done to sustain the kind of politics the BJP likes to run the country.

 It’s glaringly been seen that there is a media-politics nexus engaged to separate Hindus from the Muslims and to create an environment to exclude Muslims to sustain the BJP rule.

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A well-thought-out project is going on in the Hindutva laboratories to separate the Hindus from the Muslims. This project is being executed with the help of media through the catch phrase ‘Islamophobia,’ a euphemism to tar the Muslim image. This project aimed to brainwash Hindus to treat Muslims as anti-Indian citizens. Such negative stereotyping of Muslims is done under the benign protection of the ruling government, because it is such a magic formula that the quest to remain in power is inherent.

To explain it, the Indian media first found a problem with the word ‘secularism’ in the constitution. The media tried to demolish the concept of secularism, calling it Muslim appeasement. This lie was told umpteen times, and the Hindu consumer of the media accepted it as the gospel of truth. The central construct in the anti-secular narrative was to attack the Muslim identity with the motive to advance Hindu nationalism.

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This concocted theory of the Hindu right-wing was lapped up by a large number of people and translated into the BJP’s consolidating power in many of the Indian states. The government lured the media with tons of money through advertisements that made the media go all out to build public opinion about Muslims to be hated, mistrusted, and muscled through the brute Hindu nationalism. The sting operation conducted by the Cobra Post on the Indian media exposed this hidden fact.

As a result, this anti-Muslim narrative has become a media discourse since 2014 that has deeply polluted the Indian society with such toxic ideology. The BJP government, with the help of the media, has got away with such a concocted communal virus that even the coronavirus was blamed on Indian Muslims.

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Anyone watching this circus can say with some authority that Indian media is engaged in a turf war, building the theory that Hindus are a wounded civilization for which Muslims’ coreligionists, who once ruled India, are responsible. They committed atrocities against the Hindus, and for that, the current generation of Hindutva should be persecuted. Such hyperbole comes from the idea that the anti-Muslim narrative can sustain Hindu nationalism.

This vicious nexus of media and the ruling government needs to be exposed. The core ideology of the media houses, which is bourgeoisie in character, needs to be explored.  It can be done through researching the media profile, its ownership pattern, its ideological moorings, and its proximity to the government.  The effort should be to understand the demand side of the misinformation and expose the sources of such information. This will make us understand how the media has blinded the Hindu nationalists by feeding them with misinformation and disinformation about the Indian Muslims.

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This politico-media nexus is an assault on the idea of India that we have inherited from our past.  The media’s portrayal of Muslims as ‘other’ is robbing Indians of the social dividend of peace and harmony that is the only way to progress in our country.

Such ideas have called for a book to be titled, “Essays on Interplay of Muslims and Indian Media– Journalism, Nationalism and Sensationalism.”  The effort of this book is to unmask the true face of the Indian media and its biases towards the Indian Muslims. The purpose of this book is to create a public opinion against the untrustworthy role of the Indian media. The effort is to build a public opinion on how protecting the Muslim identity in India can sustain Indian democracy.

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The author is seeking essays from anyone who has an opinion on the distorting role of the Media and the Indian Muslim. The essay should be of 2500 words, well researched, fearlessly articulated, and poignantly opinionated. The essays should conclude why it is crucial to reclaim the plural values for the peace and prosperity of our country.

The deadline for submitting the essay is October 30, 2025. The authors can send a 150-word abstract to email- syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com or text to WhatsApp -9840698069. A sufficient number of essays can only guarantee the publication of this edited book.

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Curated by Humra Kidwai

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