India Today, one of the leading media outlets in our neighboring country, published a report on November 10 titled “Bangladesh cracks down on Trump supporters after he denounces attacks on minorities”.

The report claimed: “On Friday (November 8) evening, several groups of people in Dhaka and other cities who gathered to celebrate Trump’s emphatic victory in the US election were met with swift action by the authorities, preventing them to organize the planned victory parades. .”

The Chief Counsel’s press wing was quick to debunk the report, clarifying in a Facebook post that “There have been no arrests or crackdowns against supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump in Bangladesh.”

The post also clarified that dozens of Awami League activists, whose leadership, officials and members have faced allegations of mass murder, corruption and laundering billions of dollars, were arrested in the country on Sunday (November 10) under the charge of planning subversive activities. in the capital Dhaka.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) also issued a statement confirming this. According to the statement, some of those arrested were carrying photographs of Donald Trump after fugitive AL leader Sheikh Hasina allegedly instructed his supporters to display his portrait as a shield against arrest. The detainees told police that they did not follow US policy and only carried the Trump posters on Hasina’s orders.

Despite clarifications from both the Chief Counsel Press Wing and the DMP, India Today is yet to withdraw the misleading report or issue a correction. As of the publication of this story, they too have not responded to our request for comment.

While there had already been a significant amount of misinformation circulating in the Indian media following Hasina’s ouster, focusing on violence against minorities, it now appears that a new wave of misinformation has emerged with the election of Donald Trump as the new US President . .

In the long term, it is essential that the Indian media invest much more effort in educating correspondents who have a genuine interest in Bangladesh and are able to understand the perspective of the Bangladeshi people instead of merely reproducing the perspectives of the Indian foreign ministry.

Naresh Fernandes, Editor, Scroll

Experts believe that this spate of misinformation since Trump’s triumph appears to be a strategy to influence policy changes regarding Bangladesh in influential countries, especially the US.

According to Jon Danilowicz, ex deputy head of mission at the Embassy of the United States of America in BangladeshIndian right-wing media is behind spreading such misinformation about Bangladesh to undermine the new government and bolster Modi’s influence by portraying the anti-Hasina uprising as extremist or foreign-backed, which could also sway US policy in favor of Hasina’s supporters.

“Most recently, these efforts have moved to the United States, where Hasina’s supporters hope to enlist Donald Trump in their effort to discredit the revolution in Bangladesh. The Hindutva lobbying effort has grown following revelations of the Indian government’s attempts to assassinate political opponents in the US and Canada, which have put the Modi regime on the defensive. The Modi government and its supporters are now hoping for a change in US policy once President Trump takes office.” Danilowicz told The Business Standard.

According to him, since Hasina’s self-imposed exile in India, her supporters have tried to rewrite history and redirect public opinion. Instead of defending Hasina’s disarray, these supporters looked for ways to tarnish the image of the student protesters and the caretaker government that took over after her escape.

“They are holding on to the fantasy that she will return to power. One line of attack was to spread the fiction that the July revolution was part of a supposed foreign “regime change” operation. Another was to portray the uprising as an “Islamist Plot,” reviving the Awami League’s traditional bogeyman of branding any dissident voices as belonging to “anti-liberation forces,” Danilowicz explained.

In the Indian media, there have been efforts to introduce the Chief Counsel, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his government as wary of Trump after condemning violence against minorities in Bangladesh just before the election.

After Trump’s victory, The Telegraph in Kolkata published a report titled “Yunus Congratulates Donald Trump Amid Murmurs of Discontent Over Election Result”.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) also sought to present the recent resignation of all members of the Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission as a consequence of their monthly report, which highlighted an increase in crimes such as beatings, rapes and other crimes in October.

Some Indian media tried to frame the interim government’s provisional approval of the Interim Government Ordinance, 2024 as “tantamount to the establishment of a dictatorial regime in Dhaka”.

“The idea is clear that every human or inhuman action is valid in Bangladesh. They want to limit human rights and the courts will not see their actions. We have seen dictatorial regimes in the world, including our immediate neighbor Pakistan, but no one does. this by passing an ordinance,” News18 quoted an Indian source as saying.

Danilowicz warned that while none of these false narratives is likely to gain traction in Bangladesh, there is a risk that they will resonate abroad.

Naresh Fernandes, editor of the Indian independent media outlet Scroll, believes that one of the underlying problems in the Indian media behind spreading misinformation about Bangladesh or publishing ill-informed reports is that no Indian publication has full-time staff in Bangladesh or cover it regularly. . Reports on Bangladesh, mostly from news agencies, appear in the Indian media mainly if there is a notable event – ​​usually a natural disaster or political unrest.

“For the most part, we are not interested in the texture of everyday life in our neighboring countries. As a result, we only see disruptions and fail to understand the underlying processes that led to these events,” Fernandes told The Business . Standard.

He explained that the problem is compounded by viewing recent developments through the lens of Hindutva politics. Characterizing the attacks on Bangladeshi Hindus as genocide allows the BJP to justify its controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, which allows persecuted Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis from some neighboring countries a fast track to Indian citizenship.

“Because of Sheikh Hasina’s close ties to India, the Indian media has long maintained the impression that the Awami League is the only viable ruling party in Bangladesh – that other parties are affected by Islamist elements or, in the case of the caretaker government, are advancing a agenda set by George Soros These, of course, are considered threats to India’s security,” Fernandes said.

“In the long run, it is essential that the Indian media invest much more effort in cultivating correspondents who have a genuine interest in Bangladesh and are able to understand the perspective of the people of Bangladesh, rather than merely reproducing the perspectives of the foreign ministry of India. “, he concluded.