Indian news channels have an overwhelming influence in Nepal. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Indians to light a candle or a lamp to express their solidarity with medical professionals, people in Nepal too lit candles and lamps. In fact, in places like Birgunj and Janakpur, much like in many places in India, people went one step ahead and burst firecrackers.
Hence, one can only imagine the influence of Indian news channels on Nepalese. Here, I consciously say “news channels” instead of a generic term like “media”. This is because the latter includes many things – from newspaper to online portals – which are popular in Nepal, but not as ubiquitous as Indian news channels. There are various reasons for this – Hindi is understood by most Nepalese, India and Nepal have close ties, and people here are interested in knowing what is happening in India.
Communalising a virus
The outbreak of COVID-19, also known as SARS-COV-2, has forced several countries around the world to declare lockdowns and adopt attendant measures to control the spread of the virus. Nepal and India aren’t exceptions to that. However, what makes the Indian case different from rest of the world is that its news channels have identified the religion of the virus – Islam.
India saw its first confirmed case of COVID-19 on 30 January, and by 31 March, Indian news channels, through their meticulous investigation, had zeroed down on the virus’ religious affiliation. Between 30 January and 31 March, the caseload was rising; but news channels had other important things to do, such as playing ‘antakshari’ (a group game where one participant sings a song beginning with the last syllable of the song sung by the previous participant) and inviting prominent Bollywood singers to perform parody songs on corona.
All of this happened at the same time when thousands of migrant labourers from various urban centres in India were walking on foot for hundreds of kilometres just to reach their hometowns or villages.
Instead of questioning the government on the implementation of lockdown policies, these news channels were busy projecting Prime Minister Modi as strong leader. News channels, despite their honest efforts, could not find any fault, and the lockdown was touted as a masterstroke by Modi, similar to other “bold decisions” like demonetisation. There is little to argue that lockdown is the only sensible step to be taken in this situation. But at the same time, calling it a ‘masterstroke’ downplayed the sufferings of migrant labourers and daily wage earners who are under severe distress due to lack of income and food.
Also read ‘Journalism of Demagoguery: How Indian Media Is Vilifying Muslims Over the COVID-19 Crisis‘
Then on 31 March, nearly a week after the Prime Minister announced the lockdown, news channels in India got an elixir of life. A large cluster of COVID-19 positive cases was detected from amongst thousands who attended a Tablighi Jamaat congregation held in New Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz in the middle of March. News channels relentlessly aired this news, giving it a deeply communal spin. Gradually, it became clear that the main agenda behind this was to defame Indian Muslims.
Fake news ecosystem
Since 2014 when the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power, a certain pattern has emerged amongst several mainstream news channels in India – keep praising the Prime Minister and his policies, and when that becomes too much, start demonising and vilifying Muslims in a veiled manner. Under the pretext of covering the Nizamuddin Markaz incident, news channels broadcasted fake, misleading and defamatory news items with the clear intent of slandering the entire Muslim community.
These included videos showing Muslim patients seemingly spitting at medical staff and roaming around naked, violating the lockdown, spitting on fruits and vegetables, and what not. Some reports even created Tabligh-linked patients where there were none. The barrage of fake news was so intense that Twitter wings of a few state governments and police forces – from Uttar Pradesh to Arunachal Pradesh – had to intervene to bust some of them.
The level of fake videos has gone to such level that vegetable and fruit sellers in some parts of India have reportedly marked their carts with saffron flags to differentiate themselves from Muslim vegetable sellers.
Notably, these news channels have not reported on non-Muslim religious and political gatherings, which took place during the same time as the Nizamuddin gathering, with the same intensity and sensation as the Tablighi Jamat event. Here is a short list of other such gatherings that happened around the same time as the Nizamuddin event.
Recently, the number of COVID-19 positive cases in Nepal rose from 16 to 30 in a single day. The source of this spike were 12 Indian citizens from a mosque in Udayapur. Statistically, these alleged infected members of Tablighi Jamaat account for 40 per cent of the total caseload in Nepal. Indian channels have caught on to this firmly, and have already begun their hatemongering. Given their antecedents, it is fair to say that they are showing particular interest in this case not because the patients are Indians or because it happened in Nepal, which is a good friend of India, but because of its alleged connection to Tablighi Jamat and by extension, all Muslims.
Picking the right Indian news mediums
Here, us Nepalese need to be careful about how we approach the case spike in Nepal. We must treat the 12 patients as Indians who knowingly or unknowingly came to Nepal, and were in a mosque, and were found to be COVID-19 posited upon testing. We must let the authorities do their job, and not be prejudiced against a specific religious community. I say this because I can sense some degree of hatred brewing against the Muslim community in Nepal. I could be wrong, and would be happy to be proved so.
In this regard, the Nepalese would do better to not get swayed by the coverage of Indian news channels. They must not attribute blame to the entire religion on the basis of some isolated cases. In my memory, I have never witnessed any communal riots in Nepal, but the divisive coverage of Indian news channel and their influence on Nepalese people are fertilising the ground for religious violence.
My request to the Nepalese people to rely on websites of reputed Indian newspapers, like The Hindu and The Indian Express. Besides, there are many fact checking websites in India, such as Alt News, Boom Live, Factly and The Quint WebQoof, which the Nepalese people could rely on to distinguish between fake and authentic news.
The impetus to not communalise the pandemic is crucial not just for the sake of humanity or communal harmony, but also because of Nepal’s geostrategic interests. Recently, influential Arab voices in the Gulf countries, including those from the royalty, took cognisance of increasing Islamophobia among Indian community working there. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been particularly proactive in this. A considerable part of Nepal’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is comprised of remittances from Muslim-majority countries in the Gulf.
Therefore, disturbing religious brotherhood on the basis of biased news coverage would only be economically counterproductive.
Views are the author’s own and do not reflect any editorial line.
Dr Rachit Murarka is an Assistant Professor at the Kathmandu School of Law and has a PhD from the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
