On November 7, the spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a press conference that Canada had blocked “prominent” news outlet The Australia Today after it published a report on External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s Australia visit highlighting the “Khalistan problem”. According to the spokesperson, “these are actions which yet again highlight the hypocrisy of Canada towards freedom of speech”.
The claim was fake – and the purportedly prominent news outlet, which despite its name, mainly carries a great deal of news about India and its diaspora, had a mere 9,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter.
But the story became breaking news for the Indian media and journalists. “Canada is no longer a democracy,” claimed one journalist on X, adding, “Will Canada soon abduct and disappear businessmen and journalists for questioning incompetent Justin Trudeau like Pakistan?” Said another, in a message since deleted: “Canada, torchbearer of ‘freedom of speech’ bans media”.
Others carried it as the “big story” on primetime news. Major media outlets published the ministry’s statement as a story with the word “hypocrisy” in the headlines, reinforcing the Indian government claim.
Is it conceivable that the government of a nuclear power, with the fourth-largest military in the world and Great Power aspirations, does not have the capacity to check an easily verifiable fact?
The event is extraordinary because the media, especially television media, in the largest democracy in the world went along with this deliberate misinformation, not because of incompetence, but because large sections of the mainstream media have become mere government messengers.
Government lens
The post-liberalisation era in India, with the corporatisation of the media, has seen a spectacular erosion of the press as the fourth estate of democracy. The Narendra Modi-led era has added another dimension in which Hindutva has enveloped the media.
Scholars argue that television media employs complex “communicative frames” to relate to their audience. Increasingly, mainstream Indian television journalism relies on dominant frames, that is, news dominated by a single external source: the government. Discarded are frames of contest and contention, which represent opposing and multiple perspectives, especially of those who are marginalised.
The collective interests of the nation-state and its elites who are upper class/caste, cultural recognition of a homogenised majoritarian nationalism and mythic tales of the greatness of the Hindu nation have become the frames that characterise Indian media coverage. Of course, there is little scope for the exposé/investigative frame that interrogates the government itself.
This bias has been in full visibility in the media coverage of the India-Canada diplomatic row since 2023: a complete toeing of the government line without questioning the impact on diaspora populations of the bravado of “New India’s” alleged targeted killings of “enemies” overseas or spreading of disinformation about these developments.
The voices featured on TV are those who represent Indian – or rather Indian government interests (these are not always the same). The Canadians who are invited are Canadian government critics, either genuine critics or propagandists. They are merely there to reinforce the official Indian view.
It is amusing that the same Canadian critics appear on every Indian TV channel. The rare Canadian dissenting voice is reduced to the status of the Pakistani guests on news anchor Arnab Goswami’s show.
‘Khalistanis vs Hindus’
This dominant frame of Hindutva and the nation-state played out in the violence at a Hindu temple in Brampton in Canada earlier this month. Journalists rushed to share videos – including unverified ones – framing them as “Khalistani groups on the rampage” and “Khalistani violent extremist mob” seeking out Hindus.
These videos played out in an endless loop on countless channels and the social media accounts of journalists, evoking anger in India and producing a swift condemnation by the Indian prime minister.
The event became theatrical and sensational, and what scholar Daniel Dayan calls a “media event”: “great news events speak of accidents, of disruption”. Here, the disruption is of the nation and of the (Hindu) nationalist community. Here, media frames of contest and contention only belong to Khalistanis, a category to which all Sikhs are reduced. TV news debates have no diaspora voices who represent Hindus who are not Hindutva supporters.
There is no media attempt at pursuing the facts – even while acknowledging that truth cannot be established only by social media videos. Initial short videos that journalists shared showed that both the Khalistani and Hindu/nationalist groups were involved in a violent clash, using sticks and flag poles, rather than just Khalistani groups attacking unarmed Hindu groups.
Later, longer videos show that the confrontation began outside the temple as Khalistani supporters chanted anti-India slogans against a consular camp held within the temple. They were challenged by Hindu supporters and a fight broke out. The Hindu group retreated into the temple premises, chased by the Khalistani groups. Nevertheless, the unlawful entry of Khalistani supporters into the temple premises has to be unequivocally condemned.
All this context disappears in a media narrative that is framed only around a “Khalistani attack on a Hindu temple” when, ironically, the Indian diplomatic press release itself mentions “violent disruption outside consular camp”.
There was also a complete media blackout of Hindutva groups indulging in violence against property, possessing weapons, and inciting violence – which included a Hindu priest from the same temple – against Sikh temples in “retaliation”.
Even when reported, it is reported as “Canadian police fac[ing] criticism” for arresting only Hindu protestors. This is another framing device: the complete inaction by the Canadian police against Khalistani lawbreakers.
In reality, arrests of violent Khalistani protestors had already been made within a few hours of the first instance of violence, evidence was sought for ongoing investigations and further arrests were made, including of a prominent Khalistani activist. The Indian media’s obfuscation is dangerous as far-right Canadian politicians do not distinguish between Khalistanis and Hindu nationalists and use these incidents to fuel anti-immigration sentiments.
Rather than educating readers and viewers about the Air India bombing by Khalistani extremists and asking very legitimate questions about the failures of the Canadian government, the media has spread misinformation such as claiming that nobody was convicted for the Air India bombings – when, in reality, Inderjit Singh Reyat, the bomb-maker, spent nearly 30 years in a Canadian jail.
The media similarly ignored the fact the mastermind of the bombing, Talwinder Parmar, could not face trial in Canada as he had been killed, allegedly in a “police encounter” in India.
Most shockingly, there has been a complete media silence about the fact that Ripudaman Singh Malik was removed from an Indian travel blacklist in 2019, and that he, in turn, had praised the Modi government. Who was Malik? A key Canadian Khalistani conspirator in the bombing that took 329 lives.
The Canadian court that had acquitted Malik for want of foolproof evidence to convict him for mass murder, nevertheless, had refused to declare him innocent. A major Indian newspaper, which has routinely pilloried the Canadian government for harbouring Khalistani terrorists, called Malik a “Sikh leader”.
India’s fears about Khalistani-backed terrorism are genuine. However, the Indian media has odiously fanned the scourge of religious extremism by focussing disproportionate attention on the Khalistani movement overseas, even though experts attest that it is virtually dead in India. In a 2021 Pew survey, 95% of Sikhs were “very proud to be Indian”. Even the small uptick in fatalities in the last few years is associated more with criminal gangsterism than ideological vigour.
It is the same media lionising that saw obscure radical Khalistani preacher Amritpal Singh win a parliament election from Punjab earlier this year while in prison.
The media will not say that the number of fatalities from Khalistani extremism between 2000 to 2024 is 87 (including extremists killed). During the same period, the figure was 22,362 in the Kashmir militancy, over 12,000 in insurgencies in the North East and 11,500 for the Maoist insurgency.
The Indian media do not report that the number of Khalistani fatalities in 2008-2015 was a historic zero and it will not ask why the Khalistan movement has got such visibility since the capture of state power by Hindutva.
An Indian YouTube media outlet, which considers itself not to be “godi media” or lapdog media, has in the past month published 36 videos related to Canada and Khalistan out of its total of 216 videos. This is the staggering level of attention in a nation with a myriad of problems such as newborn babies dying in hospital fires and toxic air pollution.
In this, the media acts an ally of Hindutva, which is constantly looking for external and internal enemies to shore up its legitimacy. As scholar Noam Chomsky argues, “You’ve got to divert the bewildered herd”, the public, from the most pressing problems. And “you've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous…”
Just after the Canada temple violence, a woman was killed after allegedly being raped in Manipur, the latest in the ethnic conflict which entering its 17th month. All minorities need protection and equal rights, whether it is Hindus in Canada or in Bangladesh, and Muslims and Christians in India. All violence is condemnable, irrespective of which religious/ethnic group is targeted.
When the Indian prime minister thinks Khalistanis bullying visitors in the parking lot of a Hindu temple in a foreign country is condemnable, but not 250 people killed, 60,000 people displaced and hundreds of churches destroyed in Manipur in his own nation, it betrays a ghoulish hypocrisy, enthusiastically reinforced by the media. If Manipur were covered 24/7 and as breathlessly as Khalistanis in Canada, could the tragedy there be ended?
Canada has a lot to answer for, especially in the refusal of its government and politicians to explicitly condemn Khalistani extremism, and Canadian critics have been asking these questions. But do those sections of Indian media, which have refused to question their own government, which do not have a commitment to the truth, which have actively participated in a majoritarian jingoism and which have tragically reduced the Indian diaspora to Khalistanis vs Hindu nationalists, have the moral right to ask these questions?
Nissim Mannathukkaren is with Dalhousie University in Canada and his X handle is @nmannathukkaren.
