The killing of over two dozen tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir should be condemned by anyone who thinks that the taking of a human life is worthy of condemnation.
What should also be condemned is the way and manner in which India’s mainstream media – beholden as it is to Modi and the BJP, and because of which even many independent-minded Indians label it ‘Godi Media’ – has blamed Pakistan and its intelligence agencies for the attack.
The accusations and allegations are so blatant and unfounded that they began to be aired on most mainstream Indian news channels even as the incident was being initially reported and before the Government of India had even notified the official death toll.
The question to ask is who has the most to gain from such a brazen attack on civilians in the first place. Of late, the BJP government has been taking a solid beating on social media, a place where its keyboard warriors usually rule the roost (much like the PTI’s keyboard warriors in the Pakistan case). Prime Minister Modi himself has been the subject of increasing ridicule by Indians on social media, and things like his comments where he claimed to have a non-biological origin or where he referred to himself as ‘Vishwaguru’ are being openly ridiculed.
The BJP and its affiliated and like-minded parties all draw their strength from their anti-minority and in particular anti-Muslim rhetoric and narrative. The whole talk of ‘Love Jihad’, of Muslim men marrying and converting Hindu girls and of India’s Muslim population overtaking its Hindu population (Muslims make up between 14-15% of the country’s population of 1.2 billion, according to the Government of India’s own official figures) are all designed to scare the Hindu majority into somehow thinking that it’s in danger and that in the not-too-distant future India may be ruled by Muslims again. This then leads to calls for weaponisation of Hindus and we have seen this as a very popular call to action by all of India’s rightwing parties, where ordinary people are told to take up arms and be ready for the (Muslim) invaders who, the Hindus are told, are already living in their midst for many years.
Muslims would have to be foolish to carry out such a heinous act because we know what will follow
Muslims in India are seen as having patriotism that is always under a cloud, and because the Hindutva rightwing ideology sees the Muslims as the ‘other’, and that their loyalties lie not with the state and constitution of India but with Pakistan, since Pakistan is a Muslim-majority state. Of course, this is not to say that all Indians who are Hindus think this way, but to point out that this is one of the fundamental planks of Hindutva and the religious right in India, and that is why they consider conversion to their religion as an essential part of their constructed Hindu reality. The view borrows from the belief of many rightwing Hindus that all present-day Muslims of India were once Hindus who were converted and that they need to be converted back and brought into the fold of Hinduism.
It is in this context that the Pahalgam attack needs to be seen. Muslims would have to be foolish to carry out such a heinous act because we know what will follow. Muslims in India will be further ostracized and their loyalties will be further tested and not believed in by India’s Hindu majority population. And of course, an essential part of this is to then blame Pakistan since, for the right-wing Hindu perception it is the ultimate paradigm of the Other, the Other that is hostile to Hindus and which, so the Hindutva narrative goes, seeks to harm Hindus.
And this is why mainstream Indian media, which is heavily saffronised and believes in the Hindutva worldview, in large part because that’s how its owners and its anchors see things (not to mention that it would make perfect business sense to do so), is quick to blame Pakistan for Pahalgam without any iota of evidence.
It’s far easier to blame the other, the imagined enemy, the one who your population has been brainwashed to think hates your way of life – in other words, Pakistan – than to objectively investigate the attack and examine why and how it happened, and consider the possibility that its causes and its planners and executors may all be homegrown. Far more difficult also to consider the possibility that actions like the abrogation of Article 370 further alienated an already disaffected population and which may have led to a situation where the anger and resentment boils over. Far easier, of course, to say that that’s the best thing that Modi has done in his time in office.
Clearly, that’s not the case at all.