American and European elite institutes specially the elites like BBC or Guardian or New York Times, leaning left of center, love bashing India no matter what good Indians as a nation do. Snake charming, maharajas, poor Calcutta, Taj mahal, great Moghuls, mysterious naked sadhus- the list of charm is infinite. Modi the name also makes them feel uncomfortable but curious.
It is hard for these elites to swallow the truth that India is an undying culture despite last thousand years of occupation by foreign invaders, India at heart is still an undefeated culture and that is no small feat. The true soul of India rests in its villages that no empires – no English Muslim or Hindu rulers or the modern-day oligarchs were able to change so far. India still worships Rama, Krishna, Buddha and Mahaveer as a real event of yester year. That should not alarm elite Europeans, Americans or Indian academia.
India has bad things and current education system is one of them, western media jokes about it and that is their prerogative. So is issue of corruption. Demonetization was a terrible miscalculation by Indian government in 2015. There may be other problems that India faces and India fights them over in its own way. India is a strong democracy. RSS or Rastriya Swamsewak Sangh may have communication and media relations problems but it is a certainly not derogatory, ugly, narrow institute that western media portrays it to be. Any national disasters and their members put their lives on risk to persevere and survive as a nation, but those boring stories do not get clicks or eye balls like rape of babies or religious hatred or cow worship. Blaming Hindu Muslim problem on RSS is a sad old story in western media, and is partly fueled by elite left of India born out of a desire to follow old Soviet Union and half cooked nonaligned movement of the Nehru-Tito-Sukarno and Nasser allies of mid twentieth century.
Western media also loves to portray Akbar the great and Pratap of Mewar the loser in his resistance to Moghul empire, totally escaping the complex infighting of Indian rulers and inviting foreigners for benefit of their little empires be it Jai Chand, Jai Singh or Siraju Dolla.
Being judgmental, simplification and bashing India is perhaps a need for western media to reach their audience, specially when You Tube, Twitter and Face Book are the real currency to reach maximum of the clicks and eye balls. So it may be naïve to expect any better description of India by the elite western media.
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