Western media’s love-hate relationship with India—in reality, “love to hate India”—has existed for a long time. But earlier, it was not very pronounced, and stayed confined to their belief of India as just another third world country, which is also a cauldron of communal and caste hatred. For those who cared to scratch below the surface, they found eastern mysticism, or exotica, nothing much beyond that. But India did not turn out the way they thought India would—a banana republic, with a starving mass of people begging for handouts from the West. India rose. India started to live up to its potential. I
ndia, in spite of the historical baggage thrust upon it by two centuries of colonial rule, arrived on the world stage. For those who had been basking in a sense of western exclusivism, it was offensive that India would try and claim a place on the global high table, where only those who are the epitome of the civilised world order had a place. This is particularly true of the western media, whose attitude towards India was epitomised in a cartoon by the New York Times to describe India’s successful Mars program in 2014—of an Indian farmer in dhoti and with a cow knocking on the door of an “Elite Space Club” of western gentlemen. Apart from being racist and resentful, it was also a reflection of the stereotypical lens through which western media saw—still do—India.
Meanwhile, Narendra Modi arrived on the scene as Prime Minister of India in 2014 and returned with a thumping majority in 2019. By then the western media had placed him firmly in the Trump-Orban-Erdogan basket, and their leftist leanings had caused their hatred for anyone on the right side of the spectrum to be projected on him. Their bias was adequately fed by the Indian ecosystem, which had found itself orphaned in 2014. In 2024, now that it seems PM Modi may return to power once again, western media’s propaganda against him has gone to a level where it has the potential to hurt India’s interests.
At a time, when it is actually the Chinese threat that looms large on the world, and when without India there is no countering China, the western media has decided that it is actually India that is threatening the world order. By now, we are used to the jibe that India is an “electoral autocracy”, so we are not surprised when publications from Financial Times to the Guardian, Economist, and even the supposedly balanced Foreign Affairs, peddle the narrative that India’s largest democratic exercise, the forthcoming general elections, do not make it democratic enough. The problem is that the narrative peddling is becoming increasingly sinister.
The western media has understood by now that they have zero influence on common Indian voters and cannot decide election results here. Hence, the sub-text of whatever they peddle nowadays is intended to influence western decision making, by painting India as dangerous and an unreliable strategic partner. What else explains the hatchet job done by the Guardian on the supposed “kill industry” that, the newspaper claims, India is running in Pakistan? To write any such report based on dossiers provided by the ISI, the biggest terror sponsors in the world, amounts to a joke that writes itself. The claims made in the report have been strongly refuted by the Ministry of External Affairs. But even if the report is taken at face value, wouldn’t such operations be considered as counter-terror ones, if carried out by the United States or Israel?
Amusingly, the report makes Indian agents sound like supermen, with the Indian RAW even better in its “kill rate” than the mighty Mossad. As it’s being said in security circles, the killings in Pakistan are most likely the handiwork of the ISI or rival terror groups, as it’s only they who have the wherewithal to carry out a series of such assassinations at home. Interestingly, to paint India as the bad guy, the harbouring of terrorists by Pakistan is not seen as a problem by the western media. And these are not the usual “your terrorist is my activist” cases, like the US says about Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. These are terrorists designated so by the United States.
As for the China factor, a deliberate false equivalence is being drawn between India and China. The refrain is that if India rises, it will be as serious a problem as an aggressive China. This narrative conveniently ignores that unlike China, India neither has imperial ambitions nor is expansionist in nature. However, it’s but natural that a country which is likely to be the third largest economy in the world in just a matter of years, will be assertive and would like to carve out its own path. But India will do so with firmness, minus any ill will towards anyone.
Essentially, all such media reports are political in nature. But are they succeeding in their effort to influence decision-making in western capitals? After all, in spite of the regular finger-wagging by no less than the State Department, India-US strategic, trade and people-to-people relations are working out well. So what can a few western journalists do? But that is no reason for complacency. In the foreseeable future, India will have to live with a hostile western media. The need of the hour is to build a strong counter-narrative.