Islamabad, September 03, 2021 (PPI-OT):Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and Hindutva activists have created an environment of intimidation for journalists in India. A report released by Kashmir Media Service, today, maintained that journalists in India are facing intimidation for criticizing fascist Prime Minister Modi and his government.
It said, Indian journalist, Karan Thapar was muzzled for exposing mass violence that took place against Muslims of Jammu during partition. The report added that Thapar had been writing in the English language Indian daily Asian Age for the past 10 months at the newspaper’s invitation. During this time, he has been critical of the policies of the Narendra Modi-led government, including its Hindu-majoritarian social and political agenda.
In his column published on 20 August 2021 and headlined ‘Horrors of 1947 Partition: A selective remembrance?’, Karan Thapar had argued that Modi’s recent announcement to remember August 14 – also Pakistan’s Independence Day – as ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’ was specifically intended to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment in India, while the fact remained that “Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims suffered equally” on both sides of the border.
“At the time, Jammu was a Muslim-majority city. Yet literally in weeks communal riots, mass killings and forced migration turned it into a Hindu-majority one. Both contemporary accounts and those of historians put the numbers killed or expelled in hundreds of thousands,” Thapar further wrote in the column. Thapar then finished his article with a question: “Now that Mr. Modi wants to remember the horrors of partition, is this one of them?”
The write up became the last column of Karan Thapar in the Asian Age as the newspaper owners were pressurized by the Hindutva forces not to publish his articles. The report said Modi regime wants the media to toe its line otherwise they will have to face the same fate as Karan Thapar. Global journalists body Reporters Without Borders in its World Press Freedom Index 2021 ranked India 142 among 180 countries due to Indian suppressive policies towards journalists, it maintained.
For more information, contact:
Kashmir Media Service
Phone: +92-51-4435548, +92-51-4435549
Fax: +92-51-4861736
Email: info@kmsnews.org
Website: www.kmsnews.org