NPR: Lauren Frayer's feature on blaming Modi for the second COVID wave in India

Dear Mr. John F. Lansing, President and CEO of NPR, 

I run the The Bahu of Bengal blog at https://sanatanadharma2002.blogspot.com/. On my blog, I publish letters that I have sent to media that have displayed anti-Hindu bias. 

This letter is in reference to the article: 

Frayer, L. (2021). 'This Government Has Failed Us': Anger Rises in India Over PM Modi's COVID Response. Npr.org. Retrieved 12 May 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2021/05/11/995446333/this-government-has-failed-us-anger-rises-in-india-over-pm-modis-covid-response.

 

Lauren Frayer, NPR International Correspondent, Mumbai, India

First of all, my family and friend have been impacted by COVID: My brother-ln-law lost his uncle and the uncle’s son in quick succession. The departed were musicians (masters of the sitar) of high repute. 

A friend of mine who lives in the State of Andhra Pradesh tested positive for COVID. As an observant Hindu, he wrote, “Pls pray for me and lit a small oil lamp at your Ista Devi [personal goddess]. I am covid positive and suffering.” He was self-isolating at home, as there were no hospital beds available. This was devastating, as he is a young man with a 3-year old son. Fortunately, he began to feel better after taking Fabiflu, a pill that is an antiviral drug for treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 patients.

I will leave it to the families to determine if Modi is at fault. 

That said, I will address points in Ms. Frayer’s article: 

It is disgusting that media publishes photos of burning funeral pyres when cremation is a personal matter for families of the departed. I have seen this sort of voyeurism up close. We were carrying out rites for my father-in-law, who left the mortal plane in 2011, on the banks of the Ganges River. A tour bus stopped, and western tourists disembarked to snap pictures. 

Ms. Frayer said that “India's health system has collapsed. There are shortages of hospital beds, medical oxygen, antiviral drugs, and vaccines.” My question to Ms. Frayer is: How did this happen India was exporting vaccines to many countries? It is sad to see India dependent on foreign largesse. Ms. Frayer didn’t investigate. 

Ms. Frayer said that “Nevertheless, there were few masks and scant social distancing in Modi's crowd [in West Bengal]. At the time, West Bengal had none of the pandemic restrictions reimposed in some other Indian regions.” This is not Modi’s fault, but rather the fault of the All India Trinamool Congress Party, the ruling party in West Bengal. 

Ms. Frayer said that “For weeks, Modi's Hindu nationalist government had also refused to halt the huge Kumbh Mela pilgrimage, in which millions of people gathered to bathe in the Ganges River throughout April.” In this article Blame game at this juncture is suicidal, https://www.rediff.com/news/column/blame-game-at-this-juncture-is-suicidal/20210512.htm, Vivek Gumaste wrote that “But in terms of cause and effect the Kumbh Mela does not stand out as the putative factor: The second wave was already in progress when the Kumbh Mela began.” 

Ms. Frayer said that “NPR contacted seven spokespeople for Modi's government or party to comment on the criticism. Two were sick with COVID-19. Another said he didn't want to talk. Four others did not respond to interview requests.” This is not surprising, given media’s hostility to Modi and the BJP. They cannot expect that media will treat them fairly. 

Ms. Frayer said that “But it's unclear whether voters penalized the [BJP] party [in West Bengal] for its pandemic response because the voting was held in several stages, with some ballots cast in late March and early April before the extent of the current coronavirus wave was clear.” Here, Ms. Frayer is partly right (gasp!). Other factors might include the failure of the BJP to project a candidate for Chief Minister and its failure to understand the nuances of the Bengali language. Bengals are very possessive of their language. 

Ms. Frayer said that “On May 5, the national BJP president, J.P. Nadda, held a news conference in West Bengal to talk about post-election violence in which some of the BJP's poll workers were allegedly attacked by supporters of a rival party.” Allegedly? Really? /sarc. Photos of BJP party workers who were victims of post-election violence in West Bengal have circulated online. Even the Communist Party, which the All India Trinamool Congress Party decimated, has raised their voices against the ruling party’s violence against their party! 

Ms. Frayer said that “Video filmed at a crematorium in the city of Meerut and posted to Twitter on April 30 shows an argument between a family that had just cremated their loved one, who died of COVID-19, and another man who interrupts the family and scolds them for bemoaning the government.” Once again, this is voyeurism in what should be a private affair. Admittedly, the man who interrupts the family and scolds them for bemoaning the government, shares blame. 

Noting that bordering countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal have not been afflicted by a devastating second wave, some suspect bioterrorism. 

In 2019, Dr. Indu Viswanathan created a petition for Greater Journalistic Integrity in Reporting on Hinduism @ NPR, https://www.change.org/p/national-public-radio-journalistic-integrity-in-reporting-on-hinduism-npr. She garnered over 10,000 signatures. She succeeded in contacting Nancy Barnes, the Senior Vice President of News at NPR. Ms. Barnes said that she and her team will look closely at the petition, the demands, and all of the data that we sent their way, in addition to reviewing [Furkan] Khan's and Lauren Frayer's articles. However, NPR never got back in touch with Dr. Viswanathan. NPR owes the Hindu community a reply and continued dialogue.

Sincerely,

NPR's Hindu hatred: a letter to the Rough Translation podcast

To: roughtranslation@npr.org,

cc: kmcbride@poynter.org

subject: NPR's Hindu hatred

National Public Radio (NPR) has a problem with Hindu hatred.  Rough Translation’s podcast How to Be Anti-Casteist, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/915299467, Season 4, Episode 2, September 30, 2020 5:30 PM ET is the latest example of NPR’s Hindu hatred.

Shrub-head Suraj Yengde - no cute kiddie pictures here!

Talking points:

• Greg Warner said, “So there is a caste for priests. That's the Brahmins. But there's also a caste for the warriors, the caste for merchants, another caste for manual laborers.”  He did not identify the other castes by name as it would undermine the trope of Brahmin oppression of Dalits. Breaking India forces (for example, Christian and Muslim proselytizers) use this trope to alienate Dalits from their Hindu identity.
• Could “Sam Cornelius” be reading something into someone patting his back or going for a swim that is not really there?  Not all Brahmins wear the sacred thread.  My husband, who is from a nominally Brahmin family, chose not to wear the sacred thread.  Traditionally, going overseas meant a loss of caste for Brahmins.  BTW I am NOT Indian, so I do not know how our marriage affects his caste. 😃
• Warner said, “There's no uncontroversial way to talk about caste, and even the words we use are fraught. So, you're going to hear people in this story talk about upper caste and lower caste. We're going to try to avoid those hierarchies and say dominant caste and oppressed caste.” This is ridiculous.  By “dominant caste” and “oppressed caste,” he introduced another hierarchy.
• Many Hindus have protested NPR’s anti-Hindu prejudice to the NPR Public Editor and NPR leadership.  Indu Vishwanathan started a petition Greater Journalistic Integrity in Reporting on Hinduism @NPR, https://www.change.org/p/national-public-radio-journalistic-integrity-in-reporting-on-hinduism-npr, which garnered over nine thousand signatures.  Ultimately, she liaised with Nancy Barnes, Senior VP of News at NPR. Ms. Barnes replied that she and her team will look closely at the petition, its demands, and all of the data sent to NPR and review Lauren Frayer’s anti-Hindu articles. Ms. Barnes said that it would take some time, but they would definitely get back to us, and that they take this seriously. However, NPR never followed up with Ms. Vishwanathan.
• When someone says that he is from Mumbai or Delhi and it is apparent that he has a name that belongs to a particular geographic area in India, I ask him where his family is from.  There is no casteist subtext.
• I appreciate that Suraj Yengde rose above his Dalit origins.  I am no fan of Kamala Harris - she is a rank opportunist with no moral core - but Yengde is reading “casteist privilege” into the video of Harris cooking masala dosa with Mindy Kaling.  Harris and Kaling are likely innocent of their “casteist privilege.”
• Warner interviewed Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs, an anti-Hindu organization.  Read the profile of Equality Labs, https://stophinduhate.org/hindu-haters-2/organisations/equality-labs/, on the Stop Hindu Hate Advocacy Network (SHHAN) website.  Equality Labs’s goal is to make caste a protected category in the United States: in other words, it wants to perpetuate caste divisions in the United States.
• SHHAN also profiled scroll.in on its website: https://stophinduhate.org/hindu-haters-2/media/scroll-in/. 
• Suraj Yengde tells Mauktik Kulkarni, “You got to be a cultural suicide bomber. You have to utilize your cultural privilege and blow that up by challenging all of the other people who are sitting there comfortably into the chairs without even questioning.”  By telling Mauktik Kulkarni that he should be a “cultural suicide bomber,” Yengde wants to destroy Hinduism.
• I looked up Suraj Yengde on the Harvard website.  No surprise, he collaborates with race baiter Cornel West.  Interesting how these professional victimologists get positions at elite universities!
• Warner said, “Suraj [Yengde] holds out the hope that activism in America might spark change in India, where caste has its source. But in a time of nationalism in India and around the world, there is also a backlash to this approach.” Is this a reference to the “Hindu Nationalist” BJP that leads the Government of India? 🙄 Gimme a break.  Prime Minister Narendra Modi is from what is classified as an Other Backward Caste, while President Ram Nath Kovind is a Dalit.

I can't envision NPR abusing Islam in the way it abuses Hinduism: NPR would be too afraid.

Yours sincerely,