A sinister objective is at the core of a synchronised propaganda blitz by the Right-wing ecosystem, a spearhead against misinformation said at a city programme on Sunday.
“Villainise the Muslim around you. Day in and day out. Make that person undesirable. We see it every day in the work that we do,” said Pratik Sinha, co-founder of fact-checking website AltNews.
Sinha and his colleague Muhammed Zubair — who spent nearly a month in jail earlier this year on charges of hurting religious sentiments through one of his tweets, the arrest triggering widespread condemnation in India and abroad — were part of a panel discussion on the closing day of the Anti-Fascist Film Festival at Mahajati Sadan in central Calcutta.
It was organised by a forum called Bengal Against Fascist RSS-BJP and the People’s Film Collective, an independent, people-funded body that screens films and hosts conversations.
The topic of the discussion was “How to Stop Fascism”.
Talking about Aftab Poonawala, accused of killing his live-in partner and chopping her body, Sinha talked of the immense interest that mainstream media had found in the case.
“It is a heinous crime. But his narco test, polygraph test, every single thing about Aftab is being put out by the media. They are points of discussion everywhere. The love jihad issue is raked up again. A synchronised propaganda is being used to create a sense of fear, so much fear that next time someone wants to date someone from another community, the family would wonder if their daughter would end up in pieces,” said Sinha.
Poonawala should be punished if proven guilty, but the crime should not be judged on the basis of religion, said Sinha.
“The communities will continue living separately, leading to further ghettoisation of Muslims. That is what they want…. Any crime by a Muslim will make national headline, day in and day out. This is their agenda,” he said.
The same objective to demonise the Muslim community was behind the concerted attempt to blame the spread of Covid on the Tablighi Jamaatcongregation in Delhi in mid-March of 2020, Sinha said.
“Like in Aftab’s case, the mainstream media was obsessed with Tablighi Jamaat. It diverted attention from the plight of tens of thousands of migrant workers returning home barefoot.... We were told that Muslims kept spitting to spread Corona. That led to Muslims getting attacked,” he added.
Sinha shared the story of a Muslim man with a paralysed right hand who accidentally dropped a note at a petrol pump in Gujarat in April 2020. He was accused of doing it deliberately to spread Covid.
A case was started and the man had to spend 48 hours in jail, Sinha said. To fight this project of hate, the country needs “informed and empathetic citizens”, Sinha said.
Zubair, who the moderator said was “uncomfortable in giving a speech”, took a couple of questions from the audience. He was asked about his life in prison.
“The cops were after AltNews as an organisation. They asked me how many employees worked there, they asked their names. When I gave the names, they were shocked to know that the majority of the employees were Hindus. ‘Why do you publish anti-Hindu things then’, I was asked. The police were also fed on Right-wing propaganda,” said Zubair.
He was given access to the prison library. One day he borrowed a book by Subhas Chandra Bose. But a senior officer, constantly monitoring him, mistook it for a book by Hindutva icon Vinayak Savarkar. The officer later told Zubair that he had noticed how Zubair took to reading Savarkar.
