But things were happening on the other side too. OpIndia, a website aimed at providing a counter-narrative to the usual liberal narrative, was launch… - Rahul Roushan

Somehow all this responsibility goes for a toss if a Muslim couple were to claim something similar. Recall how allegations of many Muslim men who claimed that they were beaten up and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ were reported without the mainstream media waiting for verification or confirmation from the police. The bulk of such cases, incidentally reported after Modi won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, was found to be baseless or downright fake after the police carried out interrogations and investigations; yet reporting on such lines continued unabated.

Hence in today’s world, a journalist’s ideas of what will be ‘responsible’ have become even more complex and sometimes borders on the absurd. For example, in January 2018, a lady reporter with The Wire, a far-Left news and opinion website founded by a former editor of The Hindu , was manhandled and heckled in Ahmedabad by a mob of 15–20 men who were supposedly ‘Dalit activists’. Distressed and disturbed by what had happened, the reporter wanted to write about her ordeal, but she was told to ‘let it go’ by the leftist activist and editors. Forget writing about it in any mainstream publication, she was advised not to even file a police complaint against the goons. By advising a woman to forget that she was manhandled and attacked, the leftist editors were acting ‘responsibly’ in their minds, because the evil of Brahminism had to be defeated. Apparently, Brahminism can’t be defeated if Dalit men are identified as aggressors, even in isolated incidents.

I remember that during one of the tiffin breaks, while we kids were playing some silly games, a Muslim boy caught hold of a big empty earthen pot, which was used to store drinking water for the students during summers, and raised it with both hands shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. He was imitating the Ramayana TV serial scene where Lord Hanuman raises big boulders and throws them at Raavan’s army. Today, forget Muslims, our intellectuals are busy teaching even Bengali Hindus that ‘Jai Shri Ram’ is not part of their culture and they shouldn’t chant this phrase.