Conclusion

Distorted or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues is a well-entrenched feature of Indian journalism.  There is no self-corrective mechanism in place to remedy this endemic culture of disinformation.  No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindu nationalists.  This way, a partisan economy with the truth has become a habit hard to relinquish.

Yet, in the instance under consideration, the brutal distortion of the facts pertaining to the recent archaeological findings may be a matter of more than just a bad habit.  Some people learn from their failures, but these disinformation specialists may also have learned from their successes.  Consider a few earlier instances.

After the BJP came to power in 1998, India should have witnessed a genocide of the minorities, gas chambers and what not.  At least if you believed the predictions made by the secularists in the preceding years.  Nothing of the kind happened, so in the next two years the secularists tried to make the most of what few incidents did take place.  In particular, all manner of small incidents within the Christian community were at once blamed on the evil hand of Hindu nationalism.  Thus, in the Central-Indian town of Jhabua, a quarrel among mostly christianized tribals led to the rape of four nuns.  With no Hindu nationalists in sight, the media decided nonetheless that this was an act of Hindu nationalist cruelty against the poor hapless Christian minority.  Though the police investigation confirmed the total innocence of the Hindu nationalists in this affair, their guilt has been consecrated by endless repetition in the media.  While the media in India couldn't prevent the truth from quietly making itself known, the international media have never published a correction, and the story of "four nuns in Jhabua raped by Hindu nationalists" now keeps on reappearing as an evergreen of anti-Hindu hate propaganda.

Likewise, a series of bomb blasts against Christian churches in South India was automatically blamed on the Hindu nationalists.  In that version, the story made headlines around the world: Hindu bomb terror against Christians.  Hindu organizations alleged that it was a Pakistani operation, which only earned them ridicule and contempt.  Yet, when two of the terrorists blew themselves up by mistake, their getaway car led the police to their network, and the whole gang was arrested.  It turned out to be a Muslim group, Deendar Anjuman, with headquarters in Pakistan.  But this was not reported on the front-pages in India nor made the topic of flaming editorials; and in the international media, it was not reported at all.  In the worldwide perception of Hindu nationalism, the association with raping nuns and bombing churches has stuck.

So, moral of the story: feel free to write lies about the Hindu nationalists, for even if you are found out, most of the public will never hear of it, and you will not be made to bear any consequences.  Striking first is what counts.  Any second round in which the truth comes out, will hardly be noticed.  Indeed, conditioned by the initial lie, many readers and viewers will deride the correction as an attempt at "denial" of the grim facts which "everybody knows well enough".  And the audience abroad will never even be informed that there has been a correction.

In the present case: what are the chances that BBC World will ever broadcast the real results of the ASI investigation in Ayodhya?  If the issue ever comes up again, chances are that the editor will dismiss it as uninteresting: "Haven't we already done something on those Ayodhya excavations lately?"  And even if it gets adequate coverage, it will never be able to undo the impression created by the initial story.  So, apart from being the natural implementation of a bad habit, this particular lie about the excavations in the secularist Indian media may well be part of a deliberate ploy to condition public opinion against the true story if and when it ever comes out.  For fourteen years, the secularists have worked so hard to keep the lid on the Ayodhya evidence that they don't want some puny radar scanners or some muddy-handed archaeologists to expose the facts now.

THE END