Why Western media loves painting India dark

Objectivity is one of the founding values of journalism. All journalism classes emphasise the importance of objectivity in the news gathering and production cycle.

Although objectivity is now being increasingly questioned in journalism and mass communication studies, it remains the best possible guard against bias and subjective opinions in the face of media organisations operating under a lot of commercial pressures and being dependent on numerous stakeholders for funding and other purposes.

Objectivity as a core news value is part of mainstream Western media and journalism theory. Yet, it comes as a surprise that the Western media abandons objectivity when it comes to reporting on India.

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It constantly exoticises India for the Western gaze. About 20 years ago, it exoticised India’s poverty, underdevelopment, etc.—Slumdog Millionaire style.

Now that India is developing at an unprecedented pace and lifting millions out of poverty, it seems to have discovered new material for exoticisation.

This time, it is the civilisational and cultural ethos of India that is being distorted and misrepresented through a colonial framework. It is through this frame that the Indian government’s idea of a Hindu Rashtra is being presented as the idea of a totalitarian Hindu majoritarian state ringing alarm bells for India’s minority communities.

India’s efforts to invoke its civilisational and cultural identity, hitherto buried under the debris of both Islamic and British colonisation, are being seen as an aggressive, hyper-national, ultra-right-wing attempt to suppress minorities and create a fascist state.

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This is most evident in the Western media’s reporting of the Ayodhya Ram temple inauguration ceremony. The bias can be seen in Western media reports published both in the run-up to the consecration ceremony and following the inauguration.

Most Western media reports create the impression that a mosque has been razed to pave the way for a Hindu temple. They talk about the history of Babri mosque but conveniently omit the history of India and the Ram temple that existed on the land on which Babri mosque was built.

The Western media reports briefly mention the Supreme Court judgement giving a ruling in favour of Hindus in the Ram Janambhoomi case, but they do not talk about the archaeological evidence based on which the ruling was delivered. The landmark verdict by India’s apex court was delivered in 2019, almost seven decades after the first case was filed over the Ayodhya Ram Temple-Babri Masjid dispute in post-independence India.

By staying silent on the complex historical backdrop against which Babri mosque was demolished and the long legal route taken by the Hindu side to prove the existence of the temple based on archaeological evidence, the Western media distorts the issue.

To a layperson who knows nothing about the Ram temple inauguration issue, these news reports give the impression that India’s Prime Minister ordered the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a razed mosque to appease the Hindu majority electorate of India in the run-up to the country’s general elections.

The headlines also create that impression. A photo feature story by CNN on the Ayodhya Ram temple inauguration runs with the headline: “Photos: India’s divisive new temple saw half a million visitors on its day open to the public."

The opening stanza of the article reads, “Half a million people entered the new Ram Mandir on Tuesday, a controversial Hindu temple in the holy town of Ayodhya that is built on the ruins of a destroyed 16th century mosque."

This is how objectivity is compromised and bias is introduced. The report tells the reader about the temple being built on the ruins of a mosque but stays silent on the history of the mosque and the Islamic invaders who built it on the ruins of a Hindu temple. Another news report by CNN runs with the headline: “Modi hails a new ‘divine India’ as he inaugurates controversial Hindu temple ahead of nationwide elections."

“Modi Opens a Giant Temple in a Triumph for India’s Hindu Nationalists” is the heading of a story done by The New York Times on the Ram Temple inauguration issue. “Ayodhya Ram Mandir: India PM Modi inaugurates Hindu temple on razed Babri mosque site," reads the headline of a news report done by the BBC.

Although the use of provocative and dramatic headlines has been a longstanding convention in journalism to catch the audience’s attention, it should not come at the cost of journalistic objectivity.

Many Western media reports claim that the Ram temple consecration ceremony is disrupting the communal harmony of India. But ironically enough, such provocative news headlines about the ceremony have more potential to disrupt the country’s communal harmony than the ceremony itself.

The Western media is setting a dangerous narrative by suggesting that a mosque was razed to create space for a temple in Hindu-majoritarian India because Hindus believed a temple existed on that site. Yes, the Hindus believed so, but the Supreme Court of India didn’t deliver the judgement purely based on the beliefs of Hindus. It gave the judgement based on a plethora of textual and archaeological evidence proving that the Babri mosque was indeed built on the ruins of a Hindu temple.

The superficial and one-dimensional reporting by the Western media on such a complex issue is highly problematic and unsettling, to say the least.

The Hindu diaspora the world over is filing complaints against the biased coverage of the Ayodhya Ram temple consecration ceremony by the Western media.

As per an X post by Nivedita Ramdenu Shukla, a novelist and writer based in Ireland, an article on the Ram temple consecration ceremony—published by RTE News, the Irish national public broadcaster—has been taken down due to numerous complaints made by Hindus in Ireland. As per Nivedita’s post, the article was provided to RTE News by the news agency AFP.

Many Hindu organisations in the West, including the US-based Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) and the Canada-based Canadian Organisation for Hindu Heritage Education (COHHE), are also raising the issue of the biased Western media coverage of the Ram temple consecration ceremony. They are highlighting their responses to specific articles published by Western publications through social media and various other channels.

The Ram temple inauguration ceremony is a turning point in the history of India. It will be seen as a symbol of the cultural and civilisational resurgence of a nation that has long lived under the shadow of its colonial past.

It’s perhaps the first-ever global instance of a native culture reclaiming its civilisational and cultural spaces from the clutches of colonisation. That’s why the Western media’s biased coverage of the Ram temple inauguration issue hasn’t gone unnoticed. It has stirred a hornet’s nest this time. This faux pas by the Western press will initiate a long-lasting dialogue on the colonial tropes that pervade the Western media coverage of issues concerning India. It is still not too late for them to embark on a course correction and ensure objectivity and fairness while reporting on India.

Rati Agnihotri is an independent journalist and writer currently based in Dehradun (Uttarakhand). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.