Cosmicocean29

As a regular viewer of MSNBC news programs for the past few years, including Chris Hayes’s show, “All In,” I thought many of his presentations seemed to consider both sides of issues being discussed. But his recent presentation of a show on India’s recently enacted Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) was so partisan, that it now casts doubt on the objectivity of his programs. The panelists invited, Suketu Mehta and Dexter Filkins, presented only one side of the issue. There were no panelists to present the other side. The current Modi government has been elected by an overwhelming majority of Indian voters. The CAA was enacted democratically by a parliamentary vote. Modi’s Party, the BJP, openly campaigned on this issue, before the national elections, earlier this year, (2019). There has been nothing “authoritarian” or surreptitious about the Modi government’s enactment of the CAA. In fact it has been debated in India’s Parliament for years and lawmakers of the Congress party, now in the opposition, made a plea for this provision. The Act does not affect the rights of citizens of India, regardless of religion. The CAA provides expedited citizenship to stateless migrants living in India, who belong to non Muslim minorities from India’s 3 neighboring Islamic countries, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, and have fled religious persecution in their respective countries of origin. The problem is inherently religious in nature because of the partition of undivided India in 1947, on the demands of the Muslim minority, that led initially to the creation of Pakistan, and later Bangladesh. Muslim migrants from these 3 Islamic countries cannot be considered as belonging to a persecuted religious minority, since that is the legal rationale for the CAA. The leftist political parties and sections of the media have been misrepresenting the CAA. Similarly with the situation in Kashmir. The state became an integral part of India in 1947, with the signing of the Instrument of Accession, by the Hindu ruler of Kashmir. But it is on firm legal grounds. After decades of a virulent Islamic militant presence in the state, backed by Pakistan, which led to the violent ethnic cleansing of 500,000 members of the Hindu minority in Kashmir, particularly between the 1980s and 1990s, the current Modi government is using firm measures in dealing with this problem. The U.S. military has faced similar problems in Afghanistan, with Pakistan’s backing of the Taliban. Neither Filkins nor Mehta bothered to mention the ethnic cleansing of half a million of Kashmir’s Hindu minority! Were their lives dispensable? This is what their partisan views seem to imply. The leftist media seems out of touch and peddles its partisan views, but the reality is that the Modi government has the mandate of the majority of the people of India ( including a large section of the minorities in India), as well as the support of large numbers of the Indian diaspora. So get your facts right.

As a regular viewer of Fareed Zakaria’s show, GPS, for the past several years, I have enjoyed many insightful discussions on global politics evoked by the host from the invited guests/panelists. However lately, one gets a sense that some of the guests invited and the views aired, perhaps, reflect the personal bias of the host, particularly on topics concerning India. The most recent show on 12/15/19 contained a brief discussion on the Citizenship Amendment Bill ( CAB) recently passed by India’s parliament, that would expedite the citizenship process for migrants from three Islamic neighboring countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, fleeing religious persecution in their countries of origin and now living in India, belonging to minority communities in those countries, including Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Christians and Zoaroastrians. The host mentioned, erroneously, that Muslim migrants’ applications for Indian citizenship from those three neighboring Islamic countries would not be considered. He also failed to treat the discussion objectively, by inviting only one guest affiliated with the Congress party that lost the national elections in India, earlier this year. There are certainly many articulate and erudite guests who could have expressed different viewpoints. Similarly the views expressed on Kashmir presented the problem from one perspective, without any mention of the earlier brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus during the 1990s, with Pakistan’s religious brainwashing of Kashmiri Muslims ( including exhortations to violence delivered at mosques), financial support and training, or the plight of survivors, many of whom still live in refugee camps in the Hindu majority area of neighboring Jammu. It’s disappointing to watch the dilution of the standards of objectivity of this show.