Turning achievements into mockery! Western media's aversion to anything Indian

It was a pastime of Western media to belittle India on the global stage. The New York Times cartoon mocking India's Mangalyaan mission to Mars still tells lucidly the Western media’s facetious response to anything Indian.

The cartoon, which depicted a farmer holding a cow at the door of a space club for the rich, whose members were only savant men in coats and ties, caused a huge outcry. The New York Times later regretted this after receiving complaints from readers. India's mission to Mars was a success in its first test. This was an achievement that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could achieve.

Similarly, some Western media outlets, including the BBC, couldn’t muster the courage to call the Pahalgam perpetrators 'terrorists'. The shrewd double standard of such paparazzi came out openly when they started publishing pieces blaming India, during India's daring Operation Sindoor. Western media giants like the New York Times, Reuters, BBC, and CNN portrayed India's retaliation as an invasion, breaching the global order and norms. Some other media portals tried to downplay India's lightning strike that destroyed nine terror camps and important air bases in Pakistan by giving more airtime to factoids such as India losing a slew of Rafale aircraft in the encounter.

The world recognises Pakistan as a haven of terrorists, even home to Osama bin Laden, the master brain behind the 9/11 attacks. Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, has been directly behind many small and large terrorist attacks in India. Despite India releasing the evidence every time, the Western media responded by shrugging it aside as it was not what they desired.

The American military used three helicopters in the operation to kill bin Laden. One of them crashed while landing in Abbottabad. But no media outlet tried to highlight this because the core of the mission was to eliminate Laden, and it tasted success. Expecting a similar forthright journalism in the India-Pakistan clash was too much to ask.

It is not unusual for warplanes and ammunition to be lost in wars and attacks. Western media elites are no novices and are clearly adept at the game of war, yet they decided to belittle India for the fact that prejudice has eclipsed their ethos of journalism. Every Indian achievement is made into opportunities to throw jibes and bizarre cartoons.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval at the convocation ceremony of IIT Madras challenged the West to give at least one photo of the Rafale jet crash, which they were busy claiming and reporting. Till this time, the western media has remained silent to Doval’s open challenge. It speaks volumes of thier ethos.