The simple answer is yes, yes and yes. Hinduism is the 3rd largest faith by number of adherents, which make up almost 15% of the World’s population. Although majority of Hindus are based in 2 nations, India and Nepal, there are tens of millions across the remaining 196 of 198 global nations. To put it in other words, Hindus live as cultural and religious minorities in 99% of the World’s countries, where they either face some type of oppression or are not even legally recognized as a religion nor community. 176 of 198 nations belong to majority Abrahamic faiths, either Islam or Christianity.
Now, lets look at some of the World’s largest media outlets with global coverage, such as Washington Post, Vice News, New York Times, CNN, BBC, Toronto Star, CBC, RT, the Guardian and AlJazeera. All of these media houses claim to be unbiased and are proud of their ‘equal’ coverage, yet if we do a thorough search of their news content, this couldn’t be further from the truth. If we consider that Hindus are 10-15% of the World’s population, then we would consider that at least 10% of the religious/cultural content would be related to Hindus or Hinduim, yet it’s less than 1%, and at most 3%. To make things worse, over 90% of these articles have a negative sentiment. Just taking a few examples, Hindus were in the news in situations where a group of 15 Hindus held a Trump rally in India (over 30,000 articles Worldwide on the topic! based on Google News index) and where they are the aggressors. Now, lets dig deeper in the latter scenario. Sure, there have been cases where they have been aggressors in a nation where they are majority (2 of the 198!).
Guess, how many original-content English articles were written when a Man was beaten for eating beef in a small Indian village last year? Over 100,000 results across local and global blogs & media outlets, including all of the mainstream major outlets listed above (Using a google search under Google news around a single specific regional event). Compare this with the past week where there were over 25 Hindu temples and over 300 houses of innocent Hindu families attacked and robbed across 5 towns in Bangladesh. Not newsworthy enough? Well, it happened on the most auspicious Hindu holiday of Diwali. Still not impressed? Well, a Bangladeshi Govt Minister then said Hindus are cursed/bad and stated ‘it’s not a big deal’ (as per reported by mainstream Bangladesh english media). Now, let’s do a quick check of who did and didn’t cover this story..
Quick Snapshot Highlighting Clear Anti-Hindu Bias (Hinduphobia) of Major Global Media Outlets
A quick look at the chart shows how there is a clear pattern where Hindus for some reason are not given any coverage (original content, not an autofeed link) when oppressed and victims, especially when compared to other major faiths. We extended this analysis to 25 specific events where each of the 3 major faiths have been victims of a crime in Asia, Africa, Europe and North America AND the pattern shown above stayed consistent.
This issue of significantly less positive coverage or stories regarding hindu human rights in global media is not only problematic from a equality and bias perspective, it also has roots in the culture of abrahamic supremacy which can lead to further demonization of non-abrahamic cultures & faiths.
We should also declare that The Chakra team and many of our readers notified all of the major media outlets listed above of the news on large crimes against Hindus, including last week’s large scale riots on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh by Islamists. However, after endless efforts to notify them, none covered the slow genocide of Bangladeshi Hindus except NYTimes, Fox News and Breitbart. The only pattern we could identify aside from all major media outlets systematic silence of Hindus and Hinduphobia, is that on the rare occasion of coverage, it is done by right-leaning media houses such as Fox News and Breitbart.
This brings the question to as why do so called ‘liberal’ and center media outlets from Vice to CNN to Washington Post always always always (did we mention ‘always’) ignore positive Hindu narratives? The simple answer is Hinduphobia. In a World where Abrahamic faiths rule supreme (not only in global population, but in history books and people of power from politics, sports to media), Hinduism is the ignored, ‘inferior’ and ‘who cares’ faith that is only worth mentioning when it fits the stereotype of blood-thirsty, red-dotted brown tribals from the Indiana Jones Temple of Doom movie.
Update: After a few days of still trying to notify major media outlets of the 2016 Diwali Hindu attacks in Bangladesh, we have not recieved a single acknowledgement or response. If it counts, one major journalist coincidentally tweeted an article on how ‘evil’ Hindus were responsible for rioting 15 years ago. Not sure what it has to do with 2016, but I guess some just can’t hide their hate & bigotry.
Update (Nov 6 2016): 6 days after the anti-Hindu attacks, and constant efforts to reach the various media outlets listed above, Al Jazeera finally posted an article on the series of events.