- Dark colours of Hindutva
A series of sting operations carried out by Cobrapost.com and published in 25th May 2018 story of The Wire titled ‘Cobrapost Sting: Big Media Houses Say Yes to Hindutva, Black Money, Paid News’ is a startling revelation of greed and perfidy.
The exposé reveals some of the biggest names in the Indian media agreeing to business proposal by an undercover reporter seeking promotion of Hindutva agenda and influencing of electoral outcome for a price. The daring disclosure, conducted under the codename “Operation 136” – which derived its name from the rank India got in the World Press Freedom Index of 2017 – also sheds light on the willingness of Indian media to indulge in money laundering.
Cobrapost.com has released video clips of interaction of its reporter with top executives of Times of India and their reaction to hush up the exposé. Two months earlier, Cobrapost.com had released its first tranche of reports that some Indian media houses were prepared to strike business deals to promote the Hindutva agenda and help polarise voters in the run up to the 2019 elections. The website has now released a second batch of video recordings shot surreptitiously by an undercover reporter that shows managers and owners of some of the largest newspapers and TV channels succumbing to the same package of Hindutva advertorials.
The scoop claims that none of the business representatives of the media houses like Dainik Jagran, Khabar, SAB group, Daily News and Analysis, UNI, 9X Tashan, Samachar Plus, HNN 24×7, Swatantra Bharat, ScoopWhoop, Rediff.com, IndiaWatch, Aaj and Sadhna Prime News, etc, seemed to consider it problematic that a client wanted to use their platform to influence the upcoming election to polarise voters and tarnish the reputation of opposition leaders mainly on communal grounds. These media houses were willing to “not only cause communal disharmony among the citizens but also tilt the electoral outcome in favour of a particular party” for a price.
The portal informs that the media groups agreed to play these because a sangathan (organisation) has set aside a budget of Rs742 crores for the Karnataka elections alone. It was also revealed that about Rs8,000 crores were spent for media management in the last general elections; and that the budget for the 2019 polls will be even more.
The reporter’s modus operandi in dealing with large media houses was to dangle his bait before junior executives, who then led him higher
It is a redeeming factor that two media houses whose representatives refused the undercover reporter’s proposals were the Bengali newspapers Bartaman and Dainik Sambad.
In what is likely to alarm the finance ministry and the income tax department, several of the media houses – including, in some cases, proprietors like Vineet Jain of the Times Group – have been recorded discussing ways in which proposed transactions running into hundreds of crores of rupees could be conducted using cash, i.e. black money.
The Times Group owns the Times Now channel, the Times of India and several other media platforms. The ease with which Jain discusses ways in which the undercover reporter could pay the company using black money by routing those payments through other business houses and families is hard to reconcile with Times Now’s campaigns in favour of demonetisation – which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said was needed in order to deal with black money.
For the sting, an undercover journalist, Pushp Sharma, posed as “Acharya Atal”, a man who identified himself as a representative of an unnamed “sangathan”, or organisation, but who gave the impression that he was a member of or close to the Nagpur-based Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In the recordings the website put up on YouTube, Acharya Atal can be heard trying to strike deals with media house executives involving the promotion of a Hindutva agenda through advertorials – paid-for content – that would run on their newspapers, radio stations, TV channels and websites.
It is indeed alarming that a country like India, which boasts of sticking to its democratic principles is actually willing to exploit its media to sway the elections in favour of an extremist party, while the media itself, which is considered as one of the pillars of the state, is malleable and ductile to fall sacrifice the very principles it has sworn to uphold, at the altar of greed.
To be fair to the various media houses named in the sting, some of them like the Times Group responded that they had made marketing offers to the Cobrapost.com reporter to “reel him in to reveal his antecedents”. In essence, Vineet Jain, owner and Managing Director of The Times Group can be seen and heard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr4GNJyNfkc&index=45&t=0s&list=PLtIitJsHQm66Z2Vk7Us-YE_Bhy0_eYG_C) in the released video, in which Acharya Atal said he would pay Rs500 crore in exchange for advertorials and events that that would be presented as programming on Krishna and the Bhagvad Gita but which would serve as a cover for Hindutva and its political agenda. In one of the meetings, Jain and the group’s executive president, Sanjeev Shah offer guidance to the undercover journalist on how to make payments in cash even though they said the Times Group itself had no use for cash.
The other major group India Today, approached by Cobrapost.com’s undercover admits that the discussion about using Krishna and the Bhagvad Gita to promote Hindutva since Ram and Ayodhya had become controversial had come up. ‘Acharya Atal’ said the ‘sangathan’ would make use of the Krishna messaging the India Today group would put out to promote Hindutva among the wider public as part of its “infield activities”. The reporter also spoke about translating the campaign for his “political gains” and even said that he should not be held accountable later for polarisation.
Pushp Sharma had earlier met TV Today’s chief revenue officer, Rahul Kumar Shaw, who had conveyed to him his own support for the sangathan’s agenda. “I must tell you, I am very, very pro; very pro to the government”. Soon after the meeting with Kalli Purie vice-chairperson of the India Today Group, Shaw sent an email proposing a Rs275 crore advertising campaign – an astonishing amount for what was officially going to be described as promotion of the Bhagvad Gita. The value placed on this one campaign alone was 20pc of the total revenues earned by the India Today group in 2017.
Cobrapost sting’s depicts 25 media houses bending backwards to accept the nefarious deal being offered. The reporter’s modus operandi in dealing with large media houses was to dangle his bait before junior executives, who then led him higher and higher up the corporate food chain. In the final stage, Pushp Sharma tried to meet with the owner directly in order to establish what he said was an “emotional connect” that would convince the ‘sangathan’ that the media house genuinely believed in the goals of the Hindutva campaign and was not simply engaging in a transactional relationship.
Finally, as elections approach, the campaign would move to “target opposition leaders, namely, Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav, caricaturing them using less than dignified language like Pappu, Bua and Babua, respectively, for them, in order to show them in poor light before the electorate.” The arrangement included running the campaign on all platforms – print, electronic, radio or digital including, e-news portals, web sites and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The dark world of Hindutva is all pervasive in Indian politics as well as its media.
