DIY

A Pandemic Rends the Final Veil over India’s Islamophobia

For DIY #3, I chose to focus on the intersections of two of the currently most flammable topics—fake news and the Corona virus pandemic. I decided to lay special emphasis on India due to the country’s long standing relationship with fake news as it continues to heavily impact it sociopolity and media culture. Being stuck at halfway across the world in a friend’s attic during a raging pandemic is hardly an ideal situation. As part of my obsessive overconsumption of media and “reading my feelings” to calm my nerves, I have made it a point to regularly converse with distant relatives and long-lost friends from back home. Due to these newly-revived relations, I had been receiving tonnes of messages targeting the Indian muslims for the spread of the virus ,which in historical fashion, questioned their true motives and loyalties. Being in journalism school in 2020, one cannot really go about without learning about fake news as it continues to pervade all domains of society. I, anyhow, make it a point to not trust anything I receive over WhatsApp as a forwarded message. Recently, WhatsApp has become the arena for political parties’ ideological battles as they gear up their respective IT cells to further rhetorics that could advance their political motives.

Originally uploaded on Vimeo

I started with contextual videos to lay the chassis of the argument as I tried to explain the details of how the pandemic had specifically impacted India. I explained the religious linkages to the issue at hand and how the political parties had been able to communalise the issue to feed into their agendas. I decided to insert interview clips of leaders from the ruling party with all their hateful dogwhistles against the muslim community. The evidenciary clips came next, and I explained the difference between their original and intended meanings by placing them in the right context. For fact checking purposes, I used the Alt News website as they had some thoroughly researched stories that I used for my video.

Next I cut out clips of renowned journalists, editors and political activists to provide the audience with some historical perspective and make them aware about the stakes of the conversation. They placed the simple fake videos in the wider rise of islamophobia in the Indian governmental and social structure and the governmental complicity in the same. To place their claims in the real world, I put in clips of real life interviews and videos of common muslims suffering economic and physical harm as a result of the online vitriol.

Sources:

Featured Image via Deccan Herald

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