I read the first part of transcript of the program.

It became very clear to me that the reporter's commentary not only bias but it is also false.

PBS sought only anti-Hindu groups to write the commentary and did not even use good journalism duty to check the validity of statements.

As it is shown in false anti-Hindu theme statement on PBS web site, the commentary is also false.
Let me give you examples below:
1. He is describing Rath Yatra as a Hindu parade, giving impression that Hindus want to parade to scare Muslims. He is hiding the real fact that the Rath Yatra is a Hindu religious ceremony and it has been going on for thousands of years. How about calling the Virgin Mary processions and ceremonies in Latin countries as a parade???
2. Why the reporter was unaware of Rathyatras, when they are being carried out in large cities in USA even today?? I had participated in Rathyatra in Philadelphia, USA, many years ago.

3. PBS reporter says RSS people go to villages and recruit villagers for the parade. For any religious ceremony, be it Christian or Muslim, people come for faith. Hindus come on their own to pray to God to join the pilgrimage with God in Chariots. RSS does not have to do anything.

4. The reporter also gives impression that many Sadhus coming with Trishuls as if they brought swords with them to join in parade. He should have investigated that the Trishul is a religious symbol and Sadhus keep it with them all the time. What would you say if some Bishops come with a long stick and a cross in a parade??? Would you say it is for attacks on non-Christians???


I question the reporter why he did not find Rathyatra as a positive sign, because it in fact proved that the harmony and peace retuned back after riots, in worst hit city in Gujarat??

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Documentary was indeed a biased presentation because there were no Harish Bhatts on the "other side" who was interviewed: who were the ones who plotted the Godhra massacre? What were their reasons? What were their goals? What about the help from across the border and why the igniting of the communal fuse at this point in time, etc.

From the transcript itself, I have been able to note the following:

“Modi and Bhatt both aim to turn India's secular democracy into a religious Hindu state. The slogan of their Hindu Alliance is 'one nation, one culture, one religion, one language.'”

(Comment: This is editorializing without any kind of support. How can Modi, a Chief Minister, and Bhatt, an activist, turn India into a Hindu religious state? This is egregious and patently inflammatory editorializing and there is no document of the RSS and the BJP that proclaims these goals.)

“Gandhi's main opposition came from the National Volunteers Association, or RSS - a Hindu nationalist movement which was inspired by European fascism and ideas of racial purity. It did not share Gandhi's trust in the goodwill of India's Muslims. And it opposed his policy of non-violence”.

(Comment: Opposition to Gandhi came from all quarters Aurobindo, Annie Besant, people within the Congress Party, etc., all opposed Gandhi on one issue or the other. To claim that the RSS was inspired by European fascism is yet another piece of nonsense which has been peddled by Indian Marxists and those opposed to the RSS. Koenraad Elst has detailed how at the time in the mid to late 1920s very few people had an idea of the nature of fascism and the consequences that were to follow. Most people equated fascism with nationalism, nothing more, nothing less. And it was not just in India that this idea prevailed. It was the same all over the world, even where there was more information regarding the origins and activities of the fascists).

“During the partition fighting broke out between Hindus and Muslims. The RSS joined the attacks on Muslims. The communal violence claimed the lives of a million Indians - on both sides”.

(Comment: The RSS attacked those who were doing the attacking. The RSS members were thanked for their vigilance by none other than Congress Party leaders who acknowledged that without the vigilance and the response of the RSS more Hindus would have been killed, raped, and butchered)

“On January 30th 1948, Ghandi was assassinated by a former member of the RSS”.

(Comment: It was six years after Godse left the RSS that he assassinated Gandhi. To merely refer to Godse as a former RSS member ignores the reasons he provided for the drastic action he took, as well as to try and pin the blame on the RSS which has all along distanced itself from the conservative Hindu parties like the Hindu Mahasabha).

“Tainted by the assassination, the RSS slipped into obscurity. But it did not disappear”.

(Comment: The RSS did not slip into obscurity as much as it was forced by Nehru and his policies to try and shut down their activities)

“Today a revived RSS is the controlling force in the Hindu Alliance, and Gujarat is its stronghold”.

(Comment: We don’t know what it means to say the RSS is the controlling force in the Hindu alliance. Seems as if the commentator here is deliberately trying to demonize the RSS).

Harish Bhatt is a member of RSS.

(Comment: This is the kind of segue that allows the director to demonize the RSS. First allege something about the RSS, and then point to a man like Harish Bhatt, and then have the viewer make the connections)

“The RSS claimed that in the 16th century Muslim invaders had built the mosques on holy Hindu ground and that the Mosques must now be destroyed”.

(Comment: It was not the RSS but the VHP that spearheaded the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, and the goal was not to destroy the mosque but have the site recovered for the construction of the temple. The VHP said it would provide the money for moving the mosque to a new site!)

“Their first target was the Babri mosque in Ayodya where they say the Hindu God Ram was born. This is where the present wave of violence began.”

(Comment: This is once again a bad summary and a patently false one. To connect the Gujarat violence merely to the Ayodhya issue ignores the hundreds of years of Hindu-Muslim clashes and enmity).

“Ten years later, in February of 2002, Urmilla and other Hindu activists decided it was time to finish the job. And build a temple to Ram to replace the mosque they had demolished”.

(Comment: The movement to build the temple has been on for the last ten years, and the present government, which took office in 1998 has been dealing with the issue through the courts as well as on a political level)

“She says he never fired at the crowd. In the following days and weeks, the pogrom spread all over Gujarat”.

(Comment: The use of the word “pogrom”. Why is it not just retaliatory killing? Pogrom is used to evoke the horrors of Nazism and the choice is deliberate and mischievous. Also, whose word is to be taken for the truth about whether the gun was fired or not?)

“In the past, Gujarat's Police arrested Hindu or Muslim militants at the first sign of violence. But the day the killing started in Ahmedabad, there were no arrests”.

(Comment: In the police action 27,000 people were arrested, 3,400 FIRs recorded and 7,233 rounds fired. Yet the documentary fails to note this. 139 people got killed in the police firing alone, almost all of them are Hindus. Again, this fact is being suppressed).

“There are over 100,000 Muslim refugees as a result of the attacks. They are living in camps all over Gujarat, their homes destroyed”.

(Comment: There are/were about 30,000 Hindu refugees in the aftermath of the Gujarat riots. Their plight is not mentioned.)

“Gill has arranged for loudspeakers to blare patriotic Indian songs in Muslim areas. The Hindus can scarcely object. And they drown out any Anti-Muslim taunting from militants”.

(Was there anti-Muslim taunting? Seems to be mere speculation. And not just “militants” participated in the processions.)
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