{"id":12463,"date":"2017-08-17T17:19:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T11:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dorjegurung.com\/blog\/?p=12463"},"modified":"2021-08-16T10:41:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T04:56:29","slug":"propaganda-vilifying-madhesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dorjegurung.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/propaganda-vilifying-madhesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Propaganda Vilifying Madhesis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“Let’s share as much as we can.
“Leaders of Madhes<\/em> [Southern Plains], change social ills that inflict such intense psychological trauma on Dalit children by partially shaving their heads and tying them to a tree for allegedly touching a well. And then come for dialogues about constitutional amendments.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While a foreign citizen can be arrested and deported<\/a> for allegedly aiming to spread “social discord\u201d<\/a> with his tweets…while sharing graphical representation of information and data about the power structures in the country can be characterized as<\/a> “creating conflict between castes”, “creating animosity between people” and even spreading “hatred for the high castes”… some people in Nepal can — on social media — defame, denigrate, humiliate, harass, demonize, a fellow user, or a group, with impunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They freely spread false news or information with, as far as I can tell, the express purpose of maliciously propagating, reinforcing stereotypes of certain groups, dehumanizing them and thereby justifying the way they treat them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above Facebook post<\/a> is but just one such blatant example. If you have been on social media for long and have participated in exchanges with fellow Nepali users, you will have encountered numerous such examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first time I saw the above image being attributed to an incident in the Southern Plains of Nepal, Madhes,<\/em> was way back in December 2016 on Twitter. So, I was surprised to come across it again earlier this month. Knowing full well that the image does NOT represent what the user says it does, I posted a comment challenging him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More than a week has passed since my comment but there has been no response. While most comments denigrate Madhesis<\/em> instead of challenging him, there are some like mine, like the one highlighted in blue above and the ones in this screenshot<\/a>. A user, Addsubtract Multiply Divide, shared the fact that this post is “fake news” a number of times, one of which appears in the screenshot, but NONE of them appear to have had any effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can see in the header image, the post has had 1K reactions to it. It has been shared almost 2700 times and has received 324 comments! Without even reading every single comment in every single share, sad to say but, I am pretty confident that the majority of the comments probably denigrate the Madhesis<\/em>, the indigenous people of the Southern Plains. \ud83d\ude41 The reason for that is pretty straight forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have leaders in the country who, not unlike in the United States of American right now, rule the population using the rhetoric of division<\/a>! Political leaders and even high ranking government officials routinely belittle, denigrate, demonize, vilify different people of the country and paint them in a bad light, including the Madhesis<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have a media in the country which, very biased against the Janajatis, adivasis<\/em> and Madhesis<\/em>, does the same routinely to sow discord among — and distrust between — different people and ratchet up support for their political agenda of exclusion. Our journalists are not naive and “insensitive”, as per a friend’s characterization, but rather, I argued, they are malicious and are on that campaign to legitimize and perpetuate the monopoly<\/a> of the hill so-called high caste Hindus in the power structure, and elsewhere, and to maintain their most privileged status<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Click here<\/a> and here<\/a> for examples of media bias against the Madhesis<\/em> and here<\/a> for an example of a petty editor-in-chief of a major media house in Kathmandu who blocked me for challenging their publications.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it any wonder then that average Ram, Shyam and Ganashyams do what they do to — and about — fellow users on Social Media, or to — and about — people belonging to certain groups, with impunity?! Is it any wonder then that they create and spread fake news or information about them to propagate and reinforce stereotypes?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the source of the image, it’s a July 24, 2016 tweet about kids in Bangladesh being punished for stealing food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click here<\/a> to go to the original tweet.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But when the same image got passed around as Dalit kids being punished in India, Odisha News Insight<\/em> produced this article<\/a> pointing out the mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, sadly, following in the footsteps of Indians, as the Nepali people have a tendency to do, social media users picked it up and made it theirs! (Of course, it’s #BackOffIndia<\/a> only when everyone appears to be doing it and when it appears to be “cool.” \ud83d\ude00 )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2016, when I came across the malicious tweet ascribing the image to abused Dalit children in Madhes<\/em>, I tweeted a correction, which included a screenshot of the above article. (Incidentally, the Editor-in-chief tagged in the tweet below is no other than the petty one I made a reference to earlier.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.@rsansar<\/a>, ~30K followers, creates fake news (image 1) Editor-in-chief @subhash580<\/a>, 10K followers, retweets (image 2). Original=image 3. pic.twitter.com\/4Dk51FuScF<\/a><\/p>

\u2014 Dorje Gurung (@Dorje_sDooing) December 9, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n