BJP Propoganda | SabrangIndia

Listen to Criticism

sabrang — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 07:04:44 +0000

The dictionary defines the word ‘propaganda’ as being ‘information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.’ In Old India, propaganda was managed by controlling Doordarshan. Or at least that is what political parties assumed. The news segments in the evenings reported on the government and its agenda. The Opposition was given no space. This was accepted as being natural. During elections, however, the Opposition would demand to be given as much screen time as the ruling party, especially in delivering their manifestos. Party leaders would read them out in front of the camera, and smaller parties would then ask to be given as much time as the larger ones. With the coming of private news channels a quarter century ago, this changed and instead of Doordarshan, or perhaps along with it at least in the initial years, senior party leaders would come to panels in studios. It seemed that this was the dawn of independence and some of the senior journalists around today are the product of that time, particularly those who were in the old Star News segment which became NDTV.

The phenomenon of Godi media beginning in the months before 2014 took us back considerably to propaganda. This time it was worse than in Old India and more damaging. On Doordarshan, the Opposition was merely ignored; it was not daily vilified and attacked and called anti-national. On Doordarshan, even when it was in the hands of hypocrites, minorities were not the constant target and distraction was not the only game. In New India this became the daily fare of the channels and remained so for a decade. But a third shift has now come and while it is relatively recent it is so fully established that the government is moving to gain control over it. That shift is the rise of independent journalists using social media to reach large audiences. This includes the set of people known as content creators, who might not necessarily be journalists by background but engage with current affairs through humour, particularly satire. How large are their audiences? Have a look at the numbers. On YouTube, independent journalists have as much reach as news channels. Punya Prasun Bajpai (47 lakh subscribers), Ajit Anjum (61 lakh), Abhisar Sharma (67 lakh) and Ravish Kumar (1.1 crore) can rival entire news networks. Times Now (53 lakh subscribers), Republic (62 lakh) and India Today (93 lakh) are in the same region. Dhruv Rathee (2.3 crore subscribers) has as much reach as Zee News (3.6 crore). Indeed in many ways the reach of the independent voices is more because of the concentration of their content on one specific daily issue. The average Ravish Kumar video gets over 10 lakh views while the average one from Zee gets a few thousand, because there are so many of them. Distribution of these clips through WhatsApp further amplifies the independent voice’s reach. The sharing of advertising revenue by social media networks like YouTube affords these individuals the opportunity to be able to do their work outside of a corporate space.

In addition to the journalists, a set of humourists has risen to comment on our times. They are the product of the stranglehold of Godi media and the suffocation people have felt of having propaganda inflicted on them. A few names are worthy of mention, like Bhagat Ram, Ms Medusa, Meghnad, Garima, Ranting Gola, Shyam Rangeela and Urvish Kothari, all of whom I follow and greatly admire and whose work I enjoy. Unfortunately for the government there are few quality creators on the other side. This is because propaganda and sycophancy are not good ingredients for humour. Godi creators tend to produce content that is sullen and angry and for this reason generally ignored.

It will take an academic paper or a book to examine the effect of the independent voices on our democracy. There is to my mind little doubt that they have managed to loosen the monopoly of the Modi government on narrative.

It is for this reason that the government has moved to throttle the voices of the creators and independent journalists. This is being done through the broadcast bill a draft of which is being circulated. Essentially it seeks to regulate everyone who is on social media because that is the only way in which the government can interfere, block and ban content it doesn’t want seen. The government is also trying to go after independent websites like The Wire, Scroll, Newslaundry and Newsminute.

Because these creators are independent individuals on social media, they cannot be licensed or regulated in the way that news channels can. This is why the government is attempting to do this with the broadest of definitions that will affect every single person using social media. The intent might be to use the law in targeted fashion but that will not be how it will turn out. Bad laws produce bad outcomes.

Will the Modi government be successful in pushing the regulation through? It will not. This is not the same place we were last year. There are too many obstacles for it and too many points of resistance. Even if it had been passed in the previous Parliament through brute force it would have been a total mess in implementation. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet will be compelled to do what governments in other democracies must: listen to criticism from citizens tolerate it and even learn from it. In doing so, perhaps they can also get a laugh out of the material, as many of us so often do.

Courtesy: Orissa Post

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The Kerala Story: now claims of true story of only 3 girls?

sabrang — Wed, 03 May 2023 05:51:50 +0000

When the trailer of Sudipto Sen directed and Vipul Shah produced ‘The Kerala Story’ released last week, it caused much furore as it claimed that 32,000 girls were converted to Islam and sent to join ISIS. Many demanded that the filmmakers come up with evidence to prove this.

Two posts then started circulating on Twitter where an individual and a Committee in Kerala have offered prize money to those who can prove the claims made in the teaser and trailer of the movie.

A user called Nazeer Hussain Kizhakkedathu offered Rs. 10 lakhs to those who can give names and addresses of women who were converted to Islam and sent to ISIS. He said only 10 names were enough. Even the Muslim Youth League Kerala State Committee has announced a reward of 1 crore if anyone can prove The Kerala Story allegations.

After these challenges were issued, the makers of the film quietly went ahead and changed the description of the movie in the YouTube upload. Earlier the description of the teaser read:

“heartbreaking and gut wrenching stories of 32,000 females in Kerala!”

Now the description reads:

“The Kerala Story is a compilation of the true stories of three young girls from different parts of Kerala”.

During a screening at JNU organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Tuesday, Sen was addressing a crowd and said, “Do you think the number actually matters? The 32,000 number is an arbitrary number. It is based on facts,” reported The Quint. He further said that “the number doesn’t matter” and that “even if one girl faced this, the story needs to be told.”

Sen had earlier said, “In 2010, former Kerala CM Oommen Chandy made a statement before the Kerala assembly. Before my camera, he denied that anything had happened. But in 2010, I documented a case where he (Chandy) said that every year approximately 2,800 to 3,200 girls were taking up Islam. Just calculate it for the following 10 years, and the number is around 32,000.”

It appears the lead protagonist of the film is inspired from the real life of Nimisha from Trivandrum, since she allegedly converted to Islam and her husband, a Christian had converted to Islam. The Print report also states that between 2016 and 2018 only 21 people had thus “fled” to Afghanistan.

A plea has been filed against the preposterous claims being made in the movie and while the Supreme Court refused to entertain the plea, a petition before the Kerala High Court is set to be heard on May 5. The apex court had asked the petitioners to go before the high court first.

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Ahead of 2019 Elections, BJP Opens Floodgates of Fake News

Mon, 14 Jan 2019 05:26:00 +0000

The common subjects in the right-wing supporters’ fake news are false military developments, religious matters, Ram mandir, false government achievements, incidents of communal violence, defamation of political leaders, Pakistan and so on.

On January 1, 2019, Jayarajan, a retired postmaster from Kerala’s Valanchery town allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his residence. On the following day, two women from the menstrual age entered the Sabarimala temple, becoming the first ones to do so since the Supreme Court in October last year ordered the end of a decades-old ban on women of menstrual age entering the shrine. The Right-wing supporters from the state spared no time in linking the two separate, unrelated incidents, and have reportedly started circulating hate and fake news on internet, which was immediately shared across social media platforms by the BJP IT cell and its supporters.

“Another Ayyappa devotee commits suicide. Jayarajan of Valancheri committed suicide after the desecration of the #Sabarimala temple by Maoist women activists. He is the fourth devotee to die brokenhearted in 2 months. #SabarimalaTemple is such an emotive issue here”, reads a tweet from the handle @PartyVillage017. Within hours, this tweet was widely circulated, and some Right-wing websites even carried news articles around this narrative.

Boom, a fact-checker website has busted this fake news. Police officials and Jayarajan’s family members affirmed that Jayarajan’s death has nothing to do with the women entering the shrine, as Jayaraman committed suicide a day before the historic entry by the women into the temple. However, the tweet still exists on the social media platform, which has attracted some 1300 retweets and 1000 likes so far.

For the last few months, the BJP in Kerala is trying to make inroads in the state with its polarisation around the Sabarimala controversy. While, this is not the first fake news on Sabarimala, it has been reported that the controversy around the shrine entry has been the central focus of misinformation for Right-wing supporters for some time now.

A 2018 BBC study tilted ‘Duty, Identity, Credibility: Fake News and the Ordinary Citizen in India’ found that the BJP’s social media networks have outpaced other parties in the spread of fake news last year. “…the anti-BJP amplifiers are very loosely interconnected, but the pro-BJP amplifiers are very closely interconnected,” the report found. This means that the pro-BJP accounts have more overlapping connections with one another, thus the widespread fake news.

Perhaps, the BJP/RSS trolls don’t leave any opportunity to create fake news whenever there is an incident of death with a religious angle in it. For example, on January 2, when a priest named Baba Prem Das was found hanging in Ram Janki temple in Unchahar area in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, conservative Right-wing social media handles propagated that Das was murdered by “Jihadists” and Muslims. Some BJP supporters shared the photo of the priest hanging, and called the incident “ISIS style terrorism”.

The Boom fact-checked the posts related to this incident, and found that there was no “communal angle” in the priest’s death and that he committed suicide, days after he was accused in a rape case.

Another common aspect of the BJP’s fake news gang is spreading false news against the other party leaders: especially from the Congress and the Left. Last week, a four-year-old video of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi reiterating a fake claim about Sonia Gandhi being ‘the sixth richest woman in the world’, has resurfaced on social media. Facebook pages such as ‘the India Eye’, ‘Zee News Fans Club’ and so on shared the video reaching thousands of netizens. Fact-checking alternative media platforms fractured the propaganda by revealing the facts. It has been revealed that the claim first appeared in 2012 in Business Insider (without any sources supporting the claim) which was in contrast with the information available with the Election Commission of India.

A 2012 Dainik Jagran report on false claims on Sonia Gandhi’s wealth

One video of Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party head Arvind Kejriwal has been shared widely on multiple social media platforms. The one-minute video has a slurred speech of Kejriwal with an accompanying claim that he is drunk. The news which surfaced on Facebook pages such as ‘Arnab Goswami’, ‘We Support Narendra Modi’ etc., was targeted at Kejriwal. Alt News found that the video was first posted by a user, Rajan Madaan, on Facebook which was subsequently shared by the BJP IT cell members. The fact is that the live video post by Kejriwal on 29 January, 2017 has been edited to slow it down deliberately so as to give the impression that Kejriwal is in an inebriated condition.

Distorted Video shared by ‘WE SUPPORT NARENDRA MODI’ facebook page

These incidents are just a tip of the iceberg when it comes to the massive fake news in circulation. It has now become evident that the right-wing social media trolls have intensified their spread of fake news, as if the BJP has opened the floodgates of fake news, ahead of 2019 elections.

The common subjects in the right-wing supporters’ fake news are false military developments, religious matters, Ram mandir, false government achievements, incidents of communal violence, defamation of political leaders, Pakistan and so on.

It should be noted that the PM Narendra Modi himself follows at least 15 fake news sources on Twitter, which only hail Modi and constantly spread fake news.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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Lal Sarkar Film Set for Release, Demonises Manik Sarkar’s Left Govt: Tripura

Thu, 08 Feb 2018 06:47:26 +0000

Lal Sarkar, a film directed by Abijeet Ashol Paul and produced by Mumbai-based Susheel Sharman and widely believed to be made as the BJP’s unofficial propaganda tool since the party is hell bent on ‘taking Tripura’, is all set for a gory and dramatic release. The film manipulates facts to demonise the people friendly CPI-M government in the state of Tripura, and uses hyperbole, gun shots and a play on facts to titillate the viewer.

Three trailers (see links below) are available on You-Tube and tell a tale of blood, rape, drugs and gore in Tripura. Actors are none other than Vikki Rai, Srikanta Manna and Koel Das, and the film has ‘soulful music’ by Babul Supriyo. Sharman claims to be an associate member of the India Film & TV Producers Council.

The official teaser trailers have 7,000 and 22,000 views. ‘The Hidden truth’ about Tripura is a story’ where ‘daughters and daughters in law are raped every day’. He who ‘dares to speak out’ is ‘silenced.’ ‘Time to Know’ a ‘State Under red terror’ scream the trailers. A suave looking Chief Minister look alike oversees this den of corruption, drugs, murder, blood and gore. The ‘Internet is Ordered to be shot down!”. Who can change this, is the million dollar question the trailers raise.

Clearly part of the BJP’s unofficial campaign, this film is set for a release any day now. Hitting below the belt, be it the Congress or the Left, has always been the BJP’s best poll strategy, unconcerned as the party is with facts or truths

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