Prantik Ali
Mainstream news media in India is heavily reliant on sensationalised performativity, tapping into harmful stereotypes of Muslim people as innately violent and intolerant of people who subscribe to other faiths and religions. Prime-time discussions and debates hosted on the Israel-Palestine conflict by Indian news media anchors is hardly a different phenomenon, defined by a stark propensity to tap into the language of nationalistic chauvinism, and resorting to stereotyped images of the Arab to equate Palestinian resistance to ‘terrorism.’
More than a year into the Israeli genocide of Palestinian people, the Palestinian Health Ministry places the death toll well over 42,000. The Indian news media, in the backdrop of the genocide, has distorted the truth about the conflict to suit their agenda – which is to give it a communal rhetoric, by normalising the viewpoint that those who endorse Hamas harbour pro-terrorist sympathies. Especially in India, this problem is compounded by a serious deficiency of media literacy, which, coupled with a slovenly journalistic ethos and the ideological prejudices espoused by media houses, results in an unabated flow of misinformation and propaganda.
The glaring ideological bias with which prime-time news anchors on television perform their sense of duty to their audience, so to speak, should be reason enough to completely and unsparingly do away with consuming whatever excuse they have for spouting their spectacular nonsense. Some of the most insensible graphic imagery goes with the spoken rhetoric to make these reportages even more ridiculous, and paradoxically, all the more sinister. Missiles being deployed from one end of the screen to the other, terrorists (clad in the garb of the Muslim Arab) being gunned down by soldiers (who are inevitably white), tanks, bombs, barbed wires, and other paraphernalia of war form the visual aesthetics which corroborate the implied stereotypical decoding of Hamas and IDF for the audiences.
Arnab Goswami is one such journalist who has earned notoriety in the past decade for mastering the performative jingoism meant to silence any opposition to the Hindutva nationalist rhetoric. A few weeks into the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, he hosted a debate on his prime-time show, proclaiming ad infinitum that Hamas does not stand for the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and is, in fact, a terrorist group working at the behest of interests that are distinct from those of the innocent citizens. In doing so, he asserts a dichotomy between Hamas (painting it as a barbaric offshoot of radical Islamist forces), and the Jewish community, which, in the imagination of hundreds of thousands of Indian viewers, come across as defenceless victims to the ruthlessness of Hamas. He reduces all nuances of resistance to a simple binary construct, by claiming that endorsing the actions of Hamas is tantamount to being in opposition to anyone who is non-Muslim.
In another debate, Goswami explains that people who support Hamas should not disguise themselves as pro-Palestinian. This is a gross misunderstanding of not only Palestinian resistance but resistance per se. He pits the debate into the communal terrain of Islamic forces trying to ‘culturally erase’ other communities, once again basing his rhetoric on stereotypes of Islamic jihad. At one point, he points out that Hamas’s Khaled Mashal, in calling for uprooting ‘bulldozer Hindutva’ in India, is calling for an attack on Hindu beliefs at large. All of this is done in an aggressive, confrontational manner, sensationalising a false narrative in a way that renders illegitimate any other perspective that contradicts his own.
The killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024 triggered protests in Iran, and sent the Indian news media into a frenzied display of concern over the brewing of a ‘Third World War’, this time having the Middle East as its epicentre. Arnab Goswami’s prime-time debate started with him declaring that it was now “beyond understandable” why Israel is going all-out on its crackdown of terror. Using Orwellian ‘doublespeak’, Arnab seems to hint that the terror that Israel has imposed on Gaza, which habitually results in innocent children being killed in hospitals and refugee camps, is merely a necessity to address the more pressing need to curb Hamas’s terrorism.
What this kind of reportage does is winding down everything to a communally charged rhetoric of deshbhakti. Locating the origin of the conflict as late as October 2023 allows mainstream media to appeal to the principle of self-defence from the perspective of Israel, which it does by resorting to harmful stereotypes of Muslim people. A video essay by Newslaundry on the abysmal work done by Indian mainstream news channels on the Gaza conflict also draws attention to the figure of the ‘Muslim punching bag’ in such debate shows, wherein a Muslim person is invited to take a stance on Hamas just so they can be publicly ousted as being a terrorist sympathiser.
Deepak Chaurasia, of Zee News, confidently claims that Israel has never launched an offensive since 1948 but only reacted to attacks from Palestine. Aaj Tak stalwart Sudhir Chaudhary, likewise, begins a prime-time discussion by stating that the Israel-Palestine conflict is not about land or money, but a war of religion. Drawing on statistical data, Chaudhary shows how Israel harbours a greater percentage of Muslim citizens as opposed to Palestine harbouring Jewish people and then asks his audience to reconsider which country is more emblematic of religious extremism – Israel or Palestine. Finally, he situates Israel as a victimised other among Muslim-majority countries, which, according to Chaudhary, are mutually guided in their hatred towards Israel because of its Jewish population. In another discussion, he points, with unveiled indignance, to how people were expressing solidarity in protest marches across the globe with not only Palestinian people but also Hamas. He calls this an instance of ‘gaslighting’, claiming that Hamas was the instigator of the violence, as well as evoking the horrors of October 7. He also goes on to claim that Hamas had beheaded babies in their attacks on Israeli citizens on the same date, which has since been decried as a fabrication meant to justify the escalating hostility against Palestine.
Amish Devgan, of News 18 India, began his hour-long debate on the conflict by stressing how certain Muslim political leaders in India, along with leftist student wings, had vocalised their solidarity with Palestinians, disregarding what he calls Israel’s ‘rightful revenge’ for what had transpired on October 7. The singularity of this event cannot be overestimated as it manifests in almost all the prime-time debates on Gaza; by situating the origin of the conflict at the precise juncture where Hamas had attacked Israel, these anchors and journalists do away with the historicity of Israel’s settler-colonialism, instead representing it as some sort of final civilizational bastion against unadulterated barbarism.
Suresh Chavhanke, of Sudharshan News, in his deconstruction of Muslim politician Asaduddin Owaisi’s speech on solidarity with Gaza, claimed that 5000-6000 bombs had been dropped on Israel within the space of an hour, which is unsubstantiated by any report. Another speech by Owaisi shows him stating that 6,407 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli forces since 2008. Chavhanke retorts by enquiring how many gau-rakshaks have been killed in India in the same time period; an absurd juxtaposition which only works in the frame of the narrative Chavhanke is trying to assert – that one’s support for innocent Palestinians in Gaza means being in the faction of those staunchly in opposition to right-wing outfits in India. At one point, Owaisi also expresses concern over Israel’s use of white phosphorus, leaving Chavhanke to wonder, in casual indifference, whether the bombing of 10,0000 houses in the Gaza Strip (as claimed by Owaisi earlier in his speech) would kill more than the reported death toll.
A reportage of the killing of Yahya Sinwar by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in October 2024 led Times Now Navbharat to refer to the martyred Hamas chief as ‘The Butcher of Khan Younis’. It goes on to use dehumanising language to refer to his dead body, besides taking a sly pleasure in the slain Hamas chief’s having had no idea that he would be sent to jahannum (meaning Hell in Islam) months after taking leadership of the organisation as a result of Ismail Haniyeh’s death in July. This negative portrayal of Sinwar, as the despotic fundamentalist leader of a terrorist organisation takes the shape of an extreme caricature – exacerbated further by clips of US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressing how Sinwar’s death is cause for celebration.
The irresponsibility with which the mainstream news media in India reports on the situation in Gaza reflects an appalling reality – not only is it inextricably linked to a Chomskyian schema of power and hegemony, but is also an active catalyst in the communal polarisation that has engulfed the country since the beginning of the Narendra Modi’s leadership in 2014. By resorting to stereotypes of Muslims as innately violent, Indian news anchors have tapped into an already volatile atmosphere in Indian society, influenced markedly by the communal hate mongering that goes on in primetime debate shows.
Prantik Ali is a student pursuing English Literature from Jamia Millia Islamia.
Edited by – Sana Faiz
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.
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