|
Bias in the Indian Media Sept 22 England The BBC reported that over 10,000 Sikhs gathered at the Guru Nanak
Gurdwara in Wolverhampton for a national convention to call for recognition
as a distinct ethnic group. Another media, the "Eastern Eye,"
reported "The sheer scale of the event brought Sikh issues to the
attention of the national media, and wherever the media goes, politicians
will follow." And they did. The convention was attended and supported
by local MPs who made statements that Sikhs should be allowed to play
a greater role in UK society. But while the UK media essentially reported the convention as a successful
event for voicing the Sikh cause, the Indian media portrayed it as a
Khalistani scheme. This irked the Sikh Secretariat, the group which
organized the convention. Last year the 700,000 Sikhs in Britain, who make up the third largest
faith there, formed the Sikh Secretariat to present a coordinated approach
to promoting issues which affect them. The Sikh Secretariat created
a document called "The Sikh Agenda." It provides the UK Government
with a broad range of needs of the Sikh community in the UK and what
is required to ensure that Sikhs are able to play a more effective role
in UK society. The Indian media picked up on one of the items on the Sikh Agenda which
calls for lobbying to promote an independent Sikh state and branded
the entire convention as an underhanded maneuver for the separatist
cause. OutlookIndia.com ran a news story called "A Blast From the Past"
which starts "Just when everyone thought the Khalistan matter was
dead and gone, it is back, cleverly disguised as the Sikh Agenda produced
by a group calling itself the Sikh Secretariat. This time, not only
are British leaders listening, they're in a hurry to deliver what the
Khalistanis want." The biggest discrepancy in reporting between the UK media and the Indian
media is the account of how many people attended the convention. While
the UK media reported over 10,000 people attended, the Indian media
reported that only a few hundred were around. The reporter, Sanjay Suri, was also bothered by the support of UK politicians.
The Sikh Secretariat has been making significant headway in Parliament.
One of the MPs stated at the convention, "Those in the Indian subcontinent
who peacefully and democratically push for self_determination for that
part of the Indian subcontinent, their opinion for self_determination,
their right to ask for an independent Khalistan shouldn't be suppressed." An angry Dabinderjit Singh, spokesperson for the Sikh Secretariat, responded in a letter to sikhe.com, and picked apart the statements made by OutlookIndia.com. He wrote, "The Indian press and authorities are frightened and are doing their level best to ensure that Sikhs do not unite under the Sikh Agenda concept. British Sikhs must rise above the inaccurate and unbalanced reporting for which the Indian press is notorious." In the end, the OutlookIndia.com reporter conceded that, "Behind the usual hot_headed speeches by the usual Khalistanis, this move is being directed by some brilliant leaders such as Kashmir Singh of the British Sikh Federation and Indarjit Singh, a retired civil servant. These gently_spoken men in lounge suits are making more headway than all those men with the sten guns." |