Identifying Saharanpur victims by religion: Journalist's tweets start Twitter war

Even before Indian politicians could cause the Saharanpur riots to snowball into a secular party versus communal party war, guess who took their spot? The country’s media. A day after riots in the Western UP town claimed four lives, Gaurav Sawant, a journalist with English news channel Headlines Today tweeted questioning the reportage of the riots by the mainstream media. Sawant would later delete some of the tweets he posted on July 27, but they had gone viral. His tweets appeared to suggest that the Indian media was biased towards reporting crimes against Muslims and wasn’t vocal enough about crimes committed by Muslims. The deleted tweets included one asking why, in covering the Pune techie murder case,  the media had relentlessly pointed out that the victim was a Muslim while  the perpetrators were Hindus. [caption id=“attachment_1643331” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Gaurav Sawant. Image courtesy: YouTube.[/caption] He asked why the victims in the Saharanpur riots were not identified by their religion. He also questioned why, while there had been a huge furore over a Shiv Sena MP shoving a roti into a fasting Muslim worker’s mouth, there had been no anger over fasting Muslims gathering to pray and leading to a riot. His comments kicked off a Twitter storm with people lining up on either side of the debate. Following the uproar, Sawant tweeted the following:The tweet got close to 2,600 retweets. Soon, a hashtag #IAmWithGauravSawant started trending on Twitter and continued to be the top trend through the day. Twitter then saw a series of  squabbles over allowing him to carry on his job as a journalist. Several petitions and counter petitions were filed in the course of the day, with colleagues and friends tweeting pictures in support of the journalist. Following are a few tweets posted in response to Sawant’s:

However, there was a flood of support in favour of Sawant. Some went to the extent of re-tweeting tweets claiming that Hindus had locked themselves up in Saharanpur fearing attacks from Muslims. Here are a few tweets:

However, the issue didn’t end at that. A section of journalists and intellectuals started a petition, asking Headlines Today to sack Sawant. In response, his supporters started another petition condemning those seeking Sawant’s sacking. [caption id=“attachment_1643345” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The tweets which he later deleted.[/caption] The petition seeking Sawant’s removal says , among other things, “The language used by Mr. Sawant was equivalent to the one used by people who lead mobs during riots. That Mr. Sawant deleted his tweets, confirms the above statement and also shows his guilt. As a Hindu I personally felt hurt to see Mr Sawant’s views who is trying to paint Hinduism as a religion of hatred and I am sure millions of Hindus around the globe must have felt the same.   I request India Today group,as a responsible media house and an important foundation of the fourth pillar of our pluralistic democracy, to take strict actions against Mr. Sawant.” The petition, as this report was being filed, seemed to have gathered 100 signatures. However, the counter-petition, being promoted zealously by Twitterati, has already garnered 3,000 signatures. The petition, addressed to the Press Council of India and exhorting it to intervene in the issue to make sure Sawant’s work is not affected, says, “His crime - He dared to ask a very specific and pertinent question about double standards that many journalists follow while reporting on sensitive issues like riots and terrorist attacks. A question that many Indians have been asking on social media platforms for a long time. Unfortunately, those agitating and running this smear campaign could not dismiss, abuse and block him as a Internet Hindu Troll.” Needless to say, the spat is far from over.