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“Mr. Sharma was returning home when a group of rioters started throwing stones and charged into the street near where his house is located, his brother said. “They came armed with stones, rods, knives, and even swords; they shouted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ [Glory to Lord Ram]; some even wore helmets,” said Ankur Sharma” – This is a quote from the WSJ’s February 26th article on Delhi riots. A lie cannot be more blatant than this. Ankit Sharma’s brother denied giving any such byte to the western publication and has instead gone on record to mention that his brother was instead killed by a Muslim crowd, managed by a Muslim politician from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is the ruling party in Delhi. The Muslim politician, Tahir Hussain has now been sent to jail by the Delhi court.

The lies and half-truths of WSJ haven’t stopped since then. The goal is to discredit a democratically elected government and label the indigenous Hindu population which has stood behind the elected government as a rock, as an intolerant majoritarian population. The WSJ and other media houses aim to create an opening for intervention by the ‘civilized’ west. Such interventions otherwise are almost impossible in India which already has systems such as democracy, transparent human rights record, gender equality, equal rights for minorities, etc., the typical tools that the ‘civilized’ world would normally use to undermine countries that are not completely aligned in business and cultural sense. Media houses such as the WSJ and NYT are tools that further the goals of the ‘civilized’ world by shaping the public perception among the readers who do not know much about India on their own.

Continuing with the half-truths, the WSJ, in another Feb 27th article, mentions “The violence began on Sunday after a local BJP politician with a history of sectarian provocations organized a demonstration in support of the citizenship law.” It further adds that “The BJP politician, Kapil Mishra, had said he would rally his supporters to clear the street if the police didn’t before the end of Mr. Trump’s visit Tuesday evening.” Kapil Mishra, a politician from PM Modi’s BJP, was referring to the arterial highway that the Islamist crowd had occupied for over a month now, causing inconvenience to Delhites. Even in the most biased court of law, this will not hold water for being the reason that started the Delhi riots. The Supreme Court of India also stated in its October judgment that the protesters cannot occupy public spaces. The investigative agencies have also not initiated any charges against Kapil Mishra. Instead, the investigative agencies have found evidence against the Muslim leaders, Tahir Hussain, Khalid Saifi, Sharjeel Imaam, Umar Khalid, Safoora Zargar, and few others for conspiring and meticulously planning the riots during the US President’s visit to India.

The Delhi sessions court in its judgment on July 13, 2020, observed that the Delhi riots were a well thought out conspiracy, and the judge further underscored the role of the Muslim leader, Tahir Hussain by stating that: “At this stage, I find that there is enough material on record to presume that the applicant (Tahir Hussain) was very well present at the spot of crime and was exhorting the rioters of a particular community (Muslim community) and as such, he did not use his hands and fists, but rioters as “human weapons”, who on his instigation could have killed anybody.” Apart from the observation on Tahir Hussain, the Delhi court, on Sept 16^th, also admitted Delhi police’s chargesheet naming 15 leftist and Islamist leaders. It can be argued that the accused have not been convicted yet, but prima facie pieces of evidence in the public domain already raise serious questions.

In its attempt to build the narrative against Hindus, the WSJ doesn’t even highlight the brutalities inflicted on Hindu victims. Dilbar Negi, a Hindu worker in a shop was brutally murdered by the Muslim crowd, with his hands and limbs cut off and then burnt alive. Similarly, in the riot-affected area, while the Muslim owned Rajdhani school remained intact, the adjacent Hindu owned DRP school was burnt down by the Muslim crowd operating from the Rajdhani school. Such incidents don’t find much mention in the WSJ.

In the riot planned and initiated by the Muslim groups, there was bound to be retaliation from the Hindus. A total of 53 people died, and it is correct that more Muslims were killed than Hindus in retaliation. But the final death toll doesn’t define the accountability. For example, in the 9/11 attack, around 3000 Americans lost their lives, but a lot more Taliban terrorists were killed in American retaliation. Does that make the USA responsible for the 9/11 tragedy? The half-truth based narrative run by the WSJ on the dead bodies of victims is flawed in the cases of planned conspiracies.

In its next wave of half-truths around the Delhi riots, the WSJ attacks Facebook for the role that it is playing in India. Facebook presents a significant threat through the sheer size of the organic political interactions on its platform in India. Facebook has 290 million monthly active users in India, and the active user base has the potential to dismantle the information asymmetry. The empowerment of ordinary citizens has rattled the ecosystem of the elite media houses who previously had an iron-clad grip on the narrative setting.

In WSJ’s August 14th article, the headline reads “Facebook hate-speech rules collide with Indian politics”. The article again tries to pin the blame for riots on Kapil Mishra by mentioning “Within hours of the videotaped message, which Mr. Mishra uploaded to Facebook, rioting broke out that left dozens of people dead.” Continuing its tirade against Facebook, in August 21^st article, referring to Facebook’s Muslim employees’ internal letter, the WSJ mentions “…..what current and former Facebook employees said was a pattern of favoritism in India toward the country’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu hard-liners”. Then on August 30th, another headline reads “Facebook Executive supported India’s Modi”.

In falsely accusing the Facebook to be pro-BJP, the WSJ conveniently omits the facts that current Facebook India head, Ajit Mohan, has consulted for the Indian National Congress (INC) in the past and that the INC was conspiring with Facebook-owned Cambridge Analytica to influence the Indian elections. While highlighting the ‘concerns’ of Facebook’s internal Muslim staff group, the WSJ and the Muslim groups ignore to highlight that one of Facebook’s oversight board members is linked to the Muslim brotherhood.

Despite the pro-opposition leanings of Facebook, what the WSJ demands is the complete submission from Facebook in ensuring that pro-Hindu voices are discredited or banned. Such bans on Hindu leaders though legally wouldn’t imply any complicity but would solidify WSJ’s narrative that the Hindu leaders are responsible for hate-mongering in India. In the process, the WSJ absolves the actual pro-Islamist hate-mongers such as Kavita Krishnan, Salman Khurshid, and a few more, by omitting any reference to these anti-Hindu provocateurs in numerous articles that it has published on the Delhi riots. Apparently, for the WSJ, the publicly available judgments, evidence, and charge-sheet were harder to access than cooking up fictional stories to pin the blame on Hindu leaders.

As the WSJ articles don’t seem to help much, the opposition leaders have started crying wolf that Modi’s BJP is arm twisting the investigative agencies. If managing the courts and investigative agencies on falsehoods had been that easy, then the INC would have succeeded in convicting Modi in its witch hunt post-2002, and in at least chargesheeting Col. Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya in the fictional case of ‘Hindu terrorism.’ The law will take its course in bringing justice to the victims in the democratic India, but it will not seek the validation of the fiction writers masquerading as journalists at the WSJ.