Western media on India| Book review

Books wale Bhaiya

1 Jul 202407:35

Summary

TLDRThe video discusses the book 'Western Media Narrative on India: From Gandhi to Modi' by veteran journalist Umesh Upadhyay. The book explores how Western media creates biased narratives about India, often misrepresenting historical events and India's progress. Through examples like the limited coverage of India's presidents and critical events, the book highlights how media selectively portrays information to serve specific agendas. It also emphasizes the need for India to develop its own unbiased media systems and spread information freely, combating misrepresentation in the global media landscape.

Takeaways

📚 The speaker introduces a book titled *Western Media Narrative on India: From Gandhi to Modi* by Umesh Upadhyay, a veteran journalist.
📰 The book explores how Western media shapes narratives about India, often creating biased or selective stories.
🇮🇳 Umesh highlights an incident where the election of Giani Zail Singh as India's president in 1980 received little coverage in Canadian media, raising questions about selective media focus.
🚍 The author compares this with how Western media widely covered a bus accident involving Hindu pilgrims in India around the same time.
🌍 The book also discusses the lack of coverage on significant global events like Suriname's independence from Dutch rule in 1975.
🖋 Umesh uses historical examples, including India's independence and British rule, to explain how false narratives were created to justify colonialism.
🚀 A chapter in the book examines how Western media mocked India's space program, portraying India as a poor country unfit for such advancements.
😷 The book covers media biases during the COVID-19 pandemic, where Western media focused on India's challenges while ignoring its successes.
📰 Umesh emphasizes how intellectual colonialism continues today through media outlets, perpetuating narratives that may not reflect the truth.
🌐 The author suggests India should develop its own unbiased media system to counter these narratives and ensure truthful information dissemination.

Q & A

What is the main focus of the book 'Western Media Narrative on India: From Gandhi to Modi' by Umesh Upadhyay?
-The book focuses on how Western media creates narratives about India, highlighting biases, inaccuracies, and selective coverage from the time of Gandhi to the Modi era.
Who is Umesh Upadhyay, the author of the book?
-Umesh Upadhyay is a veteran journalist with decades of experience, known for analyzing media narratives and their impact on India.
What specific incident made Umesh Upadhyay start questioning Western media coverage of India?
-While in Canada in the 1980s, Umesh noticed that the election of India's President Giani Zail Singh, a significant event, was largely ignored by Canadian media, despite Canada's large Sikh population. This incident led him to question how media selectively covers news.
What role does the author suggest Western media plays in shaping global perceptions of India?
-The author argues that Western media creates and propagates biased narratives about India, often showing it in a negative light or focusing on selective aspects to fit their agenda.
How does the book describe Western media's portrayal of India's space program?
-The book highlights that when India made significant strides through ISRO, Western media mocked the country’s poverty and questioned why a 'poor country' was investing in space exploration, rather than praising the achievement.
What example does the author provide regarding biased coverage of India's internal affairs by Western media?
-The author cites the liberation of Hyderabad, where Western media favored the Nizam’s side and criticized Sardar Patel, despite the complexities of the situation.
How does the book address the colonial mindset still present in Western media narratives?
-The book argues that even after India’s independence, Western media continued to propagate narratives similar to the colonial era, depicting colonial powers as benefactors to the colonized countries, echoing the thoughts of figures like Rudyard Kipling.
How did Western media respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to India, according to the author?
-The book criticizes Western media for focusing on how India mishandled COVID-19, selectively highlighting issues and inaccurately portraying the situation, instead of reporting the global nature of the pandemic.
What solution does Umesh Upadhyay propose for countering biased narratives in Western media?
-He suggests that India, as a rising economic and global power, should create its own unbiased information flow system, ensuring free and truthful dissemination of information without relying on biased Western outlets.
What does the author say about the influence of social media and technology on media narratives?
-The book warns that with technologies like AI, the spread of biased narratives has become even more pervasive, as social media amplifies selective information, making it crucial to discern between truth and media bias.

Outlines

00:00

📚 A Remarkable Book on Media Narratives and India

The speaker begins by welcoming the audience to the video and highlights that after reading numerous books in 2024, the standout is *Western Media Narrative on India: From Gandhi to Modi* by Umesh Upadhyay. Umesh, a veteran journalist, explores how media companies create biased narratives, particularly about India. The speaker shares an anecdote from 1980 when Umesh was in Canada and observed that the election of India's first Sikh president, Giani Zail Singh, went largely uncovered by the media, while a bus accident involving Hindu pilgrims received considerable attention. This sparked his understanding of selective media coverage and led him to study the biases in Western media regarding India.

05:01

📰 The Role of Media in Shaping Public Perception

The speaker explains how Umesh Upadhyay discusses the biased narratives created by Western media regarding India, from colonial times to the modern era. He gives examples of how figures like Sardar Patel were misrepresented, and how false stories were spread about Gandhi and Nehru. The narrative, often shaped by media like Reuters, framed British rule as beneficial. Umesh highlights that even after India's independence, biased narratives persisted, influencing public opinion. An example includes the portrayal of India’s space program and how Western media mocked the nation for investing in space exploration while being portrayed as a poor country. The speaker emphasizes the importance of recognizing these skewed narratives.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡Western Media

Western media refers to news outlets and media organizations based in Western countries. In the context of the video, it highlights how media in these regions has historically shaped biased narratives about countries like India. The video discusses instances where Western media selectively covered or ignored events, like the election of Indian president Giani Zail Singh, to propagate certain views.

💡Narrative

A narrative is a particular way of presenting events or stories. In this video, the term 'narrative' emphasizes how media, especially Western media, constructs and spreads biased or selective portrayals of India, influencing global perception. Umesh Upadhyay argues that Western media has perpetuated false or incomplete narratives about India, especially in its portrayal of key historical events like India’s independence or its space program.

💡Bias

Bias refers to a tendency to favor one perspective over another, often leading to unfair or unbalanced reporting. In the video, bias is a central theme as it explains how Western media has historically presented India in a skewed manner, focusing on negatives while downplaying its achievements, such as in the coverage of India's space program.

💡Colonialism

Colonialism refers to the practice of acquiring and maintaining colonies, especially by European powers. In the video, colonialism is discussed in the context of how Western media narratives were shaped by colonial attitudes, particularly in portraying the British rule over India as beneficial, which continued even after India’s independence through biased reporting.

💡Intellectual Influence

This refers to the impact of ideas and information on people's thoughts and beliefs. The video suggests that even after physical colonization ended, intellectual colonization continues through Western media's biased reporting, shaping how Indians and others view their own country and its history.

💡Selective Coverage

Selective coverage is when media outlets choose to report certain events while ignoring others. In the video, Umesh Upadhyay provides examples of how Western media selectively covered incidents like the election of India’s president and ignored significant events like Suriname’s independence, revealing how this selective approach influences global perceptions.

💡Space Program

India's space program, led by ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), is referenced in the video to illustrate how Western media mocked India’s efforts in space exploration, portraying it as a poor country wasting resources. However, the video highlights that the achievements of the program were downplayed or misrepresented by the Western press.

💡COVID-19

COVID-19, the global pandemic, is used in the video as a case study of how Western media allegedly misrepresented India's handling of the crisis, focusing on negative aspects and creating a narrative that India mismanaged the pandemic, even when the situation was complex and evolving worldwide.

💡Reuter's

Reuter's is a major global news agency that is cited in the video as an example of a prestigious Western media outlet that, according to the speaker, played a role in shaping biased narratives about India. This reference is used to critique how even respected institutions can be complicit in creating misleading stories.

💡Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is mentioned towards the end of the video in the context of how technology today is being used to further manipulate narratives in the media. The speaker argues that the challenges of bias and misinformation have increased with the rise of AI, as it can be used to amplify biased or false narratives in the digital age.

Highlights

Introduction to the review of the book 'Western Media Narrative on India: From Gandhi to Modi' by Umesh Upadhyay.

Umesh Upadhyay, a veteran journalist, examines how media narratives are selectively created, especially regarding India.

The author recounts his experience in Canada in the 1980s when India's seventh president, Giani Zail Singh, was elected but received little Western media coverage.

Umesh Upadhyay began to understand how Western media selectively highlights certain events while ignoring others, as seen with the lack of coverage on the election of India’s president.

He shares another example where a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in India met with an accident, which received significant coverage in Canadian media.

The author points out the lack of Western media coverage when the country of Suriname gained independence from Dutch rule in 1975.

The book discusses how media creates narratives for control, focusing on Western media’s bias against India, especially since its independence.

Umesh highlights a Western media bias during the Hyderabad Liberation, where Sardar Patel was portrayed negatively while the Nizam was supported.

The book exposes how the Western media created false narratives, like suggesting Nehru and Gandhi were exhausted and retreating for a holiday during India's independence.

The influence of British colonial intellectuals in shaping false narratives about India, including Rudyard Kipling's 'White Man's Burden,' is highlighted.

Umesh explains how even after independence, Western media continues to perpetuate biased narratives, often portraying India negatively.

The book discusses how India’s advancements in space exploration, especially through ISRO, were ridiculed by Western media, focusing on India's poverty instead of its achievements.

Umesh examines how Western media portrayed India’s handling of COVID-19 as poorly managed, despite it being a global crisis.

The book emphasizes the power of Western media in shaping intellectual colonialism, influencing how people, including Indians, perceive global narratives.

In the conclusion, Umesh offers solutions for India to develop its own unbiased media system, free from Western influence and narrative manipulation.

The book suggests that India should create new systems for information flow, using technologies like AI to counter biased narratives.