Media

Mainstream media has a fundamental bias against Hinduism. This is primarily because the journalists who staff various media establishments, go through the Western (Macaulayite) educational system that upholds the "superiority" of the West over India, and in subtle way the superiority of Christianity over Hinduism. This is not the fault of individual journalists and reporters but of the media establishment and more importantly the Euro-centric educational system that India has inherited from its colonial past.

At certain times in the past Hindu activists have pointed out a finger at the ownership of the media establishments. But there is no value to such emotive conjectures. The media establishments by and large are actually owned by Hindus, whose commitment to Hindu Dharma is second to none. The Marwari families that build grand mandirs and gaushalas, also own the anti-Hindu media. Thus, it is errorneous to believe that it is the media owners who are anti-Hindu.

The problem of anti-Hindu media has deeper civilizational roots and lie in persistence of colonised mindset. It is not going to go away just by change of media ownership or establishing new Journalism schools. These do not matter, as the establishment will continue to produce journalists with an Euro-centric worldview. For them Hinduism will always be a "religion" that is inferior to monochromatic single God/Allah believing Christianity and Islam. Hence, the need to have an institutionalized and constant effort to detect, compile and point out the anti-Hindu bias in the mainstream media.

With that imperative, GHI's Hindu Mediawatch is a practice where volunteers scan through a selected set of media, detect the bias, write a critique and compile the data. This critique is shared directly with the people and presentations made at various forums. The objective of this practice is to directly inform and empower the Hindus, so that they can have nuanced understanding of news reports and opinion columns produced by the colonialist mediapersons.