Something macabre, something diabolic has happened. Two Hindu seers of Varanasi Junah Akhara were murdered by lynching in Palghar of Maharashtra, by a mob of hundreds with a contingent of policemen as mute spectators.
In fact Swami Chekhani Maharaj Kalpabrikkha, 70 years old, was beseeching the police officer to save them, by holding his hand but the police betrayed the trust, by handing him over to the bloodthirsty mob.
This happened the night of 16 April. Media reported it almost immediately in couple of lines here and there. Social media was active and some TV channels came up late on the 20th with details. So anxiously I was prying for getting a written report in your paper. So on the 21st and since, I have been anxiously looking for a full report. I hoped that it will be reported in your paper but it was not. This gory incident deserves the detailed attention the public needed. It should have been the first page headliner.
On 21st instead this was one of the headline news – “Draconian law against PM – critic journalist” by Mujjaffar Raina, where The Telegraph was expressly agitated that Masrat Zahra was booked and an FIR filed by the central police. A young journalist was simply booked, not arrested, yet the matter was given alarming prominence. But lynching of the two Hindu seers got censored by Telegraph. Sufferings or the injustice or, wrongs done to Hindus are not deemed right to print by Telegraph and they censor it.
Similar situation draws different fate. One Mohammed Aulakh, was lynched in 2015 in Uttar Pradesh on charges of carrying contraband cow meat in a small town of UP. The news attracted New York Times, 10,000 miles apart, that carried the news in condemnation of the acts; on the anniversary of Aulakh’s death, they carried out remembrance but surprisingly when in early 2019, 3 public lynching was acted in and around Kolkata within a span of 30 days where 3 Hindus were brutally killed, that news was not reported in New York Times.
So also we are not surprised that the execution of these two seers is not a testimony by the international news media. Unfortunately in India itself, the same pattern evolves when the Hindus are suffering, getting tormented or murdered in their own country; the newspapers are not carrying out the same news with such attention. NYT almost always refrains from reporting terrifying torture and cleansing of Hindus in Bangladesh, like the newspapers of India.
Thank you.
Pabitra Chaudhuri
Brooklyn, New York 11218
(718) 853 5236
Email: pchow26@gmail.com
Sr. VP., Indian American Intellectual Forum Inc.
Formerly Chairperson – BANA – Bengali Association of NA, Inc.
Former Editor: ‘Udayan’, New York
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