OpinionHere’s someone you can blame if India and Pakistan wipe each other out in a nuclear war
- Yonden Lhatoo calls out the subcontinent’s hysterical and bloodthirsty media for blatantly beating the drums of war as the two neighbours stare into the nuclear abyss
“We want blood, not condemnation ... it’s time for blood, the enemy’s blood.”
Imagine the news anchor yelling this kind of bloodthirsty rhetoric at you every time you turn on the TV, worried that your country is on the brink of a thermonuclear war with its neighbour.
That’s how it’s been in India, ever since February 14, when a suicide bomber killed 40 paramilitary troops in Indian-ruled Kashmir, a region at the centre of a bitter and blood-soaked territorial dispute with Pakistan that dates back to 1947.
Jingoistic journalism has long been the mainstay of the media in the world’s biggest democracy, but this time its doughty disseminators of news and information have become completely unhinged.
Their conduct can border on the bizarre and hint at the ridiculous, as in the case of one anchor presenting his newscast in combat uniform and brandishing a replica gun.
