As news TV scrambled for convenient terminologies to describe the demonstrations against the anti-Prophet remarks and the Agnipath scheme, they betrayed stark communal bias in how they apply their editorial yardsticks – all in the short span of a week.
When it came to the protests over the Prophet remarks, news anchors called for the thunder of bulldozers and deployed words such as “pattharbaaz”, or stonepelter, and “dangaai”, or rioter. However, for the unrest surrounding the new armed forces recruitment programme, many tried to sympathise with the stakeholders, calling them “protesters” or “angry youth”. Nary a word was said about a bulldozer – increasingly seen as a symbol of state-sanctioned violence against minorities – to rein in Agnipath protesters, no matter the scale of the violence.
