How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy

5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy

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The actor and his supporters in the BJP and on social media say he was reacting to Arundhati Roy’s recent comments on Kashmir. But she never even made them in the rst place.

https://thewire.in/139162/pareshrawalarundhatiroyfakenewskashmir/ 1/9 5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy and Paresh Rawal. Credit: Facebook

New Delhi: Fake news about a nonexistent interview Arundhati Roy supposedly gave during a recent trip to Srinagar that never happened is responsible for BJP MP and actor Paresh Rawal’s outrageous tweet against the author (https://thewire.in/138598/pareshrawalhumanshield arundhatiroy/) which ignited a Twitter war between his supporters and those who denounced him for advocating violence.

In his tweet, the actor and BJP MP said “Instead of tying stone pelter on the army jeep tie Arundhati Roy!” – a thinly veiled reference to the April 9 incident where a Kashmiri civilian was tied to an army jeep and used as a human shield. Rawal’s tweet prompted many others on Twitter to endorse his call for Roy to be abducted and held hostage, with some adding their own threats and suggestions – that the writer be physically assaulted, burnt and shot.

In a live debate on CNNIBN on Monday night, the anchor Bhupendra Chaubey said Rawal’s tweet had been provoked by an interview Roy gave and flashed the Facebook page that Rawal had tweeted when he began what would be a series of rants against Roy.

https://thewire.in/139162/pareshrawalarundhatiroyfakenewskashmir/ 2/9 5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy “It is [all nonsense]”, Roy told The Wire. She said she had not been to Srinagar recently or made any statements about Kashmir except for a short piece she wrote in Outlook last year (http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/azadi/297536).

Paresh Rawal Follow @SirPareshRawal

facebook.com/TheIndianNatio… is such a toxic ...Her birth certificate must be a regret letter from maternity ward ! 12:41 PM 17 May 2017 28 258

Paresh Rawal Follow @SirPareshRawal

70 lakh Indian army can't defeat azadi gang of Kashmir Arundhati Roy .Her birth certi in fact is a regret letter from maternity ward . 12:53 PM 17 May 2017 3,036 5,703

Rawal’s tweet linked to a post on the Facebook page of ‘The Nationalist’, “70 lakh Indian Army cannot defeat Azadi gang in Kashmir: Arundati Roy gives statement to Pakistani newspaper!”

https://thewire.in/139162/pareshrawalarundhatiroyfakenewskashmir/ 3/9 5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy

The Nationalist last Wednesday

70 lakh Indian Army cannot defeat Azadi gang in Kashmir: Arundati Roy gives statement to Pakistani newspaper!

70 lakh Indian Army cannot defeat Azadi gang in Kash… 70 lakh Indian Army cannot defeat Azadi gang in Kashmir: Arundati Roy gives sta… POSTCARD.NEWS

269 294 646

The ‘source’ of this Facebook post was a rightwing fake news site, postcard.news, which ran a story with the same headline (http://postcard.news/70lakhindianarmycannotdefeatazadigangkashmir arundatiroygivesstatementpakistaninewspaper/) on May 17. The story was bylined ‘Aishwarya S.’:

This lady who calls herself a journalist and Human Rights Activist has been standing for terrorists since decades. Recently she has given an interview to Pakistan newspaper The Times of Islamabad, blasting the government of India for taking action against terrorists.

She said “India cannot achieve its objective in the occupied valley even if its army deployment raises from 7 lakh to 70 lakh, further adding that Kashmiris have

https://thewire.in/139162/pareshrawalarundhatiroyfakenewskashmir/ 4/9 5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy remained committed with their antiIndia sentiments from many years.”

Though postcard.news gave no link to the source, the identical story was published on the same day under the byline ‘Anand’ on another Hindutvaoriented fake news site, satyavijayi.com (https://satyavijayi.com/arundarundhatiroycallsindianactionkashmirshameful interviewpakistaninewspaper/), and under the byline ‘Ankita K.’ in a third Hindutva fake news site, theindianvoice.com (http://theindianvoice.com/arundhatiroycontroversialstatement/). Other fake news sites that ran the identical story were theresurgentindia.com (http://www.theresurgentindia.com/indianarmycannotdefeatazadigangin kashmir/), revoltpress.com (http://revoltpress.com/india/70lakhindianarmy cannotdefeatazadi/), virathindurashtra.com (https://www.virathindurashtra.com/70lakhindianarmycannotdefeatazadigang kashmirarundatiroygivesstatementpakistaninewspaper.html), while a fifth fake news site, internethindu.in (http://internethindu.in/even70lakhindian armycannotdefeatkashmirissayspropakiandantiindianarundhatiroy/), ran a slightly different version but, helpfully, provided a link to the Times of Islamabad source.

https://thewire.in/139162/pareshrawalarundhatiroyfakenewskashmir/ 5/9 5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy Rightwing fake news sites with the identical Arundhati Roy story

The Times of Islamabad, which is a nationalist Pakistani site and not a newspaper, ran a story on May 16 with a Srinagar dateline (https://timesofislamabad.com/even70lakhindianarmycannotdefeatkashmiris arundhatirai/2017/05/16/), ‘Even 70 lakh Indian Army cannot defeat Kashmiris: Arundhati Rai’. The source of the story is simply ‘News Desk’, which asserts that Roy had made these remarks during a recent visit to Srinagar:

Speaking during her visit to Srinagar, she said India cannot achieve its objective in the occupied valley even if its army deployment raises from 7 lakh to 70 lakh, further adding that Kashmiris have remained committed with their antiIndia sentiments from many years. Taking a jibe at the Indian government she said that pity on the government which stops its authors from expressing their thoughts and put in jail those who raise their voice against injustices, however, sets free corrupt, rapists and other criminals.

Radio Pakistan ran a story, also on May 16, with the headline (http://www.radio.gov.pk/16May2017/arundhatiroytermsindianaggressionin occupiedkashmirasshameful), ‘Arundhati Roy terms Indian aggression in Occupied Kashmir as shameful.’ Nither Radio Pakistan nor Times of Islamabad identified a source for Roy’s comments but a similar news story on the Pakistanbased Geo TV site attributed her quotes (https://www.geo.tv/latest/142057ArundhatiRoycallsIndianaggressionin Kashmirshameful) to ‘Kashmir Media Service’. According to Kashmiri journalists, the Kashmir Media Service is not a media organisation but the propaganda arm of a Kashmiri militant organisation in Pakistan occupied Kashmir. It maintains a website (https://www.kmsnews.org/news/?) but the news about an Arundhati Roy interview is not archived there.

Subsequently, Pakistan’s ARY channel (https://arynews.tv/en/indiacant defeatkashmirisevenwith70lakhsoldiersarundhatiroy/) also quoted Roy, and this became the source for an angry article by Mayank Singh on a US site called Fair Observer (https://www.fairobserver.com/region/central_south_asia/arundhatiroyviolence https://thewire.in/139162/pareshrawalarundhatiroyfakenewskashmir/ 6/9 5/23/2017 How a Fake News Story Triggered Paresh Rawal's Outburst Against Arundhati Roy

kashmirconflictindiapakistaniasianworldnews34304/), in which he attacked the writer for her comments. This article was subsequently republished by NewsLaundry (https://www.newslaundry.com/2017/05/22/arundhatiroy pleasedonotsupportpakistansjihadinkashmir). In the CNNIBN debate, BJP spokesperson used the Fair Observer article as a source for the comments attributed to Arundhati Roy, with the anchor, Chaubey, saying he was right in doing so.

The only problem with all of this frenzied reporting on both sides of the border is that Arundhati Roy had not visited Srinagar recently and had given no interview there or anywhere else where the words attributed to her were said.

The news, in other words, was completely fake.

Roy has long been a critic of the Indian government’s policies in Jammu and Kashmir. In 2010, her comment that Kashmir was not “an integral part of India” led the government to consider charging her with sedition (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/26/arundhatiroykashmir india) before saner counsel prevailed. In her article in (http://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/azadi/297536)Outlook last year after the Burhan Wani upheaval, she urged an end to violence in the state and called for dialogue for peace.

The fact that Arundhati Roy gave no interview on Kashmir and did not even visit Srinagar recently makes the controversy around the remarks attributed to her a textbook case of the relationship between the creation and circulation of fake news and the underlying political agenda of those involved.

One of the purveyors of this fake news was Arnab Goswami, nightly anchor of NDA politician and MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s new channel, Republic TV, who attacked Roy (https://twitter.com/republic/status/866688030542671872) as a ‘onebook whiner wonder’:

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“they called the Indian Army names, they all came together, especially the Lutyens media, and the fake pseudoliberal crowd, they came together to abuse our army, and then in rhythm and almost in a preplanned way, onebook whiner wonders like Arundhati Roy came crawling out of the woodwork to once again attack the Indian Army.”

What makes this instance especially interesting is how the same fake news item was used to serve diverse political aims – ‘jihadi’ and Hindutva. In Pakistan, the fabricated interview was used to attack the Indian government’s Kashmir policies, while for the proHindutva fake news sites in India, the concocted comments were used to whip up nationalist sentiment against anybody critical of the way the Modi government has handled the Kashmir situation.

The nation needs to know what to read and believe. But that won’t happen until the media realise they need to verify the news before creating a huge uproar about it.