‘Intellectual debate’: How papers and TV covered diplomatic fallout of BJP leaders’ Prophet remarks

India has been forced into diplomatic firefighting as remarks made by two BJP leaders against Prophet Muhammad have sparked outrage in several Arab capitals. On Sunday, the governments of Qatar, Kuwait and Iran summoned India’s envoys and expressed their anger, even handing over diplomatic notes of protest and demanding a public apology from the Indian government. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan also condemned the remarks. In response, New Delhi said the comments were made by “fringe elements” and didn’t reflect the views of the government of India.

The comments were made by the BJP’s national spokeswoman Nupur Sharma on the TV news channel Times Now on May 26 and echoed by the party’s media head in Delhi Naveen Jindal on Twitter on June 1. Indian Muslims outraged by the remarks demanded action against them, to no avail. But once the foreign governments took note, the BJP suspended Nupur and expelled Naveen.

As India seeks to contain the diplomatic fallout, Newslaundry looked at how the country’s top newspapers and TV news channels are covering the story.

While the Telegraph and the Indian Express hit out at the BJP in their Monday editions, Hindustan Times produced a safely worded editorial. The Times of India and the Hindu reported on the issue but did not carry an editorial.

On TV, India Today patted itself on the back for “breaking the story”, without specifying what they meant, while Times Now conveniently forgot to note that Nupur had made the comments on its show. On NDTV, a BJP member doubled down saying Nupur had only spoken an “unpleasant truth”.

In print

The Times of India carried the BJP’s action against Nupur and Naveen as its frontpage lead. It quoted BJP sources as saying that action was taken because the remarks were at odds with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “sabka saath sabka vikas” agenda and also that the controversy breaking out amid the government’s celebrations of its 8th anniversary “annoyed the brass”.

Nowhere did the newspaper mention that Nupur had made the remarks on Times Now, which is also owned by the Times Group.

On page 11, the paper carried reports on the diplomatic fallout in Qatar, the social media outrage by Hindu supremacists who blasted Qatar for giving citizenship to artist MF Hussain after he was forced to quit India because of threats over his depiction of Hindu deities, and a demand by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation for the United Nations to take steps against the targeting of Indian Muslims. It also carried a piece on the Congress dismissing as a “joke” the foreign ministry’s description of BJP leaders as “fringe elements”.

The daily did not publish an editorial.

Hindustan Times led with the headline, “India moves to assuage outrage in West Asia”. It mentioned that Nupur had made the comments on a TV show but did not name the channel.

The daily also ran an editorial on how the BJP’s statement on Sunday “broadly laid out the party’s position on religious freedom”, noted that domestic politics can have damaging international ramifications and tarnish “India’s image”, and called for condemnation of “any mala fide action to stoke communal disharmony”. It also noted that the BJP, along with other political parties, “will have to focus on forging a new peace compact”.

“Outrage in Gulf over BJP leaders’ hate remarks, party sacks them,” the Indian Express reported on the frontpage. An editorial pointed out that the remarks made by BJP’s spokespersons were no sudden act of bigotry. “The BJP’s electoral victories since 2014, and especially after 2019, have emboldened party activists and others of the saffron bridge to an extent that they indulge in casual everyday anti-minority actions with the confidence that they have a free hand to do this,” it said.

The Hindu’s frontpage headline read, “Amid global outrage, BJP acts against leaders for hate remarks.” On page 11 it carried the Congress party’s statement on the matter.

The Telegraph’s coverage took up almost the entire frontpage. “Psst! Did you know this?” asked the headline, before sarcastically listing down points from BJP’s statement yesterday about respecting all religions.

Saying that the BJP had “sacrificed” Nupur and Naveen, the newspaper reported, “The nature and speed of the action after a backlash in West Asia was uncharacteristic of a dispensation whose leadership tends to ignore not just Muslim-bashing but even calls for genocide against the community.”

Inside, the paper featured a story on the Congress calling out the BJP’s “pretence” as well as a story on Nupur’s background.

On air

On Times Now, where it all started, anchor Amita Wadhwa said that Nupur has been in the eye of the storm since she purportedly made controversial comments about the Prophet in a TV debate. The anchor forgot to mention the debate in question was on Times Now, hosted by its group editor, Navika Kumar. The channel consistently omitted this particular detail, whether on news bulletins or while doing explainers.

The channel’s coverage of the diplomatic outrage features tickers like, “‘Insult’ to Prophet showdown” and “Hindu Right Groups slam ‘Actions’”.

On June 3, Shoaib Jamai of the Indian Muslim Foundation had asked Navika on air if she regretted what had happened on her show after Nupur made the remarks and why she hadn’t stopped the BJP leader.

“In a live debate, when people say something, it is a live debate,” Navika replied, launching into a monologue. “I have no way of censoring anybody. You should know, you have said so many objectionable things, I have stopped you. That day also I intervened and I told Nupur Sharma don’t say hurtful things. She mentioned certain things that were mentioned in the Quran but I still said and I appealed to her that we should not say hurtful things to each other because this is a civilised debate and we should pick up issues.”

She continued, “But do not forget, she throughout the programme continued to say that people were insulting Hindus and they should not do so by calling it a fountain and refusing to call it a Shivling. If anything, you should have said that the court will decide if it's a Shivling or fountain, I have no problem with that. But to point fingers at Nupur Sharma or me, go ahead, be my guests, FIRs are all over the place, now the matter will go to the courts, let the courts take the call, and frankly I am nobody to give a verdict on it.”

Navika, however, didn’t intervene until at least 10 seconds after Nupur made the remarks against the Prophet, and only to say, “Let’s just calm down.”

Meanwhile, on an NDTV panel discussion with Vishnu Som, Debjani Bhattacharyya of the BJP declared that what Nupur had said was no more than “an unpleasant truth.” The channel also ran tickers such as “BJP axes spokespersons: Too little, too late?” and “Backlash abroad = action in India?”

Over at India Today, anchor Pooja Shali wanted to know if the BJP “has given in to threats of Islamic hardliners or to international pressure that was beginning to pile up against the government?” In response, advocate and “analyst” Naveen Chomal insisted that Nupur had said nothing wrong.

Claiming the BJP spokesperson had been “forced to react” during the Times Now debate, Chomal said, “Ultimately it’s not something that is derogrady to Prophet Mohammad. She was being ridiculed about the Shivlings, it was being said Shivlings were on the roads everywhere. So she raised a very logical question. It was an intellectual debate.”

Shali seemed to agree, later remarking, “In a discussion like that if you are feeling suddenly cornered so much, you tend to react, words came out because she felt insulted over her religion being insulted.”

India Today also lauded itself for being the “channel that broke the story”. “India Today newsbreak sends shockwaves,” one ticker went. The channel didn’t specify which of the many stories on the issue they meant, but we suppose they were referring to the BJP suspending Nupur.

Update on June 7: Both the Times of India and the Hindu carried editorials today on the issue.

TOI's was headlined "Nupur, Naveen & us – Please note: Aggressive right-wing politics can also cost those who benefit from it most" and said the "appalling" comments on TV and Twitter showed "how much political discourse has coarsened in this country". It flagged the "relentless aggressiveness of the Hindu Right" and the lack of "any critique from central BJP or government leadership", which acts as an "oxygen for right-wing rhetorical fire".

The editorial said: "Bulldozing houses, slapping sedition charges on history professors and university students, evicting hawkers selling non-vegetarian food, creating controversies out of halal meat and namaz venues, not to mention strange lower court receptions to this-mosque-is-a-temple petitions – all of these institutional responses have been encouraging signs for TV and Twitter right-wing loudmouths."

Not once did the editorial acknowledge that the debate took place on Times Now.

The Hindu, meanwhile, said the government's response would "represent an inflection point in the debate over growing communalisation, if it were not for two factors": that it reacted a week later, and that its reactions seemed to have been spurred by statements from foreign governments, not Indian organisations.

"There is also a case for similar introspection to be made within the media, particularly news television channels that appear to have turned prime time viewing into a prize-fight, encouraging the most radical voices to spar verbally every evening and engage in blatantly extremist hate speech," the editorial said. "While the right to free speech must be upheld, and nobody should be allowed to threaten violence, the Government would have avoided the entire controversy if it had acted according to the law, and immediately engaged with the issue before it snowballed into an international incident."