A couple of days back, a muslim man was killed by a mob for allegedly eating beef. The incident occured not far from the capital and has generated a lot of media attention, with the usual suspects using this as an excuse to claim that religious discrimination and communal violence has increased multifold since the BJP formed government.
Whilst the killing of this person (or any other innocent person) is of course wrong, we need to ask why the media selectively covers such news items and also why there is outrage only when a muslim is attacked/ killed and collective silence when hindus are the affected community.
To highlight this, i will share a couple of examples:
1. The world over, we have seen numerous instances when muslims have killed people for buring the kuran or 'insulting' islam (drawing cartons, criticising islam etc). There has been no outrage about this and most muslims in fact even justify the killings (there were many posts defending the recent Charlie Hebdo killings).
2. There have been numerous instances in pakistan where minorities have been falsely accused of insulting islam and lynched by mobs.
3. Even in India, there have been numerous instances where muslims have started riots, killed hindus and the government then imposes martial law and deploys paramilitary forces, which ensures that there isnt any retaliatory violence. After sometime, the situation calms down and things resume as before; untill the next riots when the same cycle is repeated. Why isnt there any widespread condemnation of the repeated violence committed by muslims?
4. Another point about the media coverage is that usually when muslims start violence, the media usually balances the reporting by suggesting (sometimes wrongly) that both parties were equally culpable and highlighting previous instances of hindus attacking muslims - all in an effort to underplay muslim aggression and demonstrate that hindus are equally violent. However in cases where Hindus kill even one person, the whole stance changes to portraying muslims as victims of unbridled hindu aggression.
While we should not justify violent actions committed by anyone, we do need to call out and expose the intellectual hypocrisy and ideological double standards, whereunder numerous instances of minority aggression are swept under the carpet (and dismissed as minor/ routine incidents) but even an isolated instance of hindus resorting to violence is blown out of proportion and depicted as being part of a wider pattern of state sponsored progroms and hindu atrocities against minorities (when in reality it is the other way round).
As intelligent and thinking individuals, we need to question why this is so.
Whilst the killing of this person (or any other innocent person) is of course wrong, we need to ask why the media selectively covers such news items and also why there is outrage only when a muslim is attacked/ killed and collective silence when hindus are the affected community.
To highlight this, i will share a couple of examples:
1. The world over, we have seen numerous instances when muslims have killed people for buring the kuran or 'insulting' islam (drawing cartons, criticising islam etc). There has been no outrage about this and most muslims in fact even justify the killings (there were many posts defending the recent Charlie Hebdo killings).
2. There have been numerous instances in pakistan where minorities have been falsely accused of insulting islam and lynched by mobs.
3. Even in India, there have been numerous instances where muslims have started riots, killed hindus and the government then imposes martial law and deploys paramilitary forces, which ensures that there isnt any retaliatory violence. After sometime, the situation calms down and things resume as before; untill the next riots when the same cycle is repeated. Why isnt there any widespread condemnation of the repeated violence committed by muslims?
4. Another point about the media coverage is that usually when muslims start violence, the media usually balances the reporting by suggesting (sometimes wrongly) that both parties were equally culpable and highlighting previous instances of hindus attacking muslims - all in an effort to underplay muslim aggression and demonstrate that hindus are equally violent. However in cases where Hindus kill even one person, the whole stance changes to portraying muslims as victims of unbridled hindu aggression.
While we should not justify violent actions committed by anyone, we do need to call out and expose the intellectual hypocrisy and ideological double standards, whereunder numerous instances of minority aggression are swept under the carpet (and dismissed as minor/ routine incidents) but even an isolated instance of hindus resorting to violence is blown out of proportion and depicted as being part of a wider pattern of state sponsored progroms and hindu atrocities against minorities (when in reality it is the other way round).
As intelligent and thinking individuals, we need to question why this is so.
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