The virus and an enemy within: Construction of an invidious news discourse by the mainstream press in India

Abstract

Human rights organizations and media watchdogs have expressed concerns about COVID-19 news coverage in the Global South, particularly by the Indian mainstream media, due to the Islamophobic discourse it generated. This study critically examines the first wave of COVID-19 coverage by four major Indian media outlets and argues that the press perpetuates an ideologically driven discriminatory discourse developed over a century. Drawing on past scholarship in Discourse Historical Analysis (DHA), the study finds that the media employs various discursive strategies – nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization, mitigation, and intensification – to construct a malevolent identity for Indian Muslims. This represents them as the ‘enemy within the nation’, attributing blame for the virus’s spread in the country. Conforming to Hindutva, a dominant ideology that has been shaping Indian national politics for decades, these strategies collectively contribute to an invidious news discourse, contradicting the press’s purported fairness and neutrality.

Early in the pandemic, places of worship worldwide turned into COVID-19 hotspots. Congregations in the Evangelical Church in Mulhouse in France, an ISKCON temple in the UK, and the Sarang Jeil Church in South Korea caused virus outbreaks, attracting flak from authorities and the general populace for their alleged negligence (BBC News, 2020; Krishnan, 2020; McAuley, 2020). Though harsh, these criticisms waned in a short news cycle. However, India witnessed a different trend after an event conducted by Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic organization, that hosted devotees from Southeast Asian countries, caused one of the earliest virus outbreaks in the country (Capron, 2020). An online hate campaign ensued. Numerous Facebook posts and tweets sprang up accusing the Muslim community of importing and deliberately spreading coronavirus in India. A derogatory nomenclature ‘#CoronaJihad’ went viral along with doctored images and videos showing Muslims spitting in public places and defying lockdown rules (Nizaruddin, 2021; Perrigo, 2020). Combining the term Jihad, a synonym for Islamic terrorism nurtured in the post-9/11 global discourse, with the menacing virus helped fuel a new Islamophobic hate campaign online. It didn’t end there.

The ‘disinformation-assisted hate propaganda campaign’ (George, 2020: 145) surged in India’s social media – overwhelmingly explicit and confined to the fringes of online space – made its way into mainstream news media (Vetticad, 2020). The press coverage of a national health crisis thus amplified the hate contributing to a new wave of Islamophobic discourse (Amarasingam and Desai, 2020; Perrigo, 2020). Instead of focusing on a novel virus, which organically spread among the population, the news coverage targeted the Muslim community at large, using the Tablighi Jamaat as a proxy (Shantha, 2020). These media houses and journalists, however, claimed to uphold high levels of professionalism and integrity, arguing that they were merely reporting the news (Vetticad, 2020).

Drawing on such an intriguing context, this paper examines how Indian news media constructed the Islamophobic discourse while covering the first wave of COVID-19 in the country. Considering news media content as a discourse imbued with ideologies and as a form of socially and politically situated text, it employs Discourse Historical Analysis (DHA; Wodak, 2001) to examine how the Indian media uses specific discursive strategies to weave Islamophobic narratives into the coverage of a national health crisis. It explores how Muslims are represented in the news. It also investigates how the Islamophobic discourse is effectively drawn from a century-old historical discourse to perpetuate Hindutva – a dominant ideology in India.

Two key reasons make this study relevant. First, current scholarship has overwhelmingly focused on social media and online content when studying hate propaganda and discriminatory discourse (Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017; Ben-David and Matamoros Fernández, 2016; Benkler et al., 2018; Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021; Hameleers, 2021). This study takes a less explored path by focusing on discriminatory discourse in the mainstream press. Second, previous studies that analyzed ideological discourse in the news primarily focused on Western media (Breazu and Machin, 2021; Izadi and Saghaye-Biria, 2007; Kalyango et al., 2015; Luther and Rightler-McDaniels, 2013). In contrast, this study specifically targets the media landscape of India, home to the world’s largest democracy. Investigating news discourse and ideology within the Indian media, which boasts the highest number of news media organizations globally (Goel et al., 2020), could offer valuable insights into what journalism produces in India and, more broadly, the Global South.

Being at the forefront of the struggle against British colonial rule, the Indian press asserts itself as a key player in upholding democracy (Parthasarathy, 2015). The Indian media’s deviation from the normative expectation of fostering democratic principles, such as equality and pluralism, through the production of discriminatory discourse is a significant concern. This warrants a thorough investigation into the strategies employed by the media in shaping this discourse.

This research, by conducting a ‘systematic ideological analysis of news’ (Van Dijk, 2009: 196), can make sense of the type of news discourse constructed by the mainstream press. While previous studies established the idea that media reinforces power dynamics through ideology, this analysis stands out as it illustrates, through empirical data, how this process occurs in India. This study is also an informed critique which is crucial for holding media outlets accountable, encouraging ethical journalism, and prompting discussions on media reform. By utilizing DHA, the study offers an exploration of how media narratives shape and perpetuate Islamophobic sentiments during a national health crisis. It offers insight into how media discourse, crisis reporting, and the perpetuation of prejudiced ideologies intersect. Despite DHA’s widespread use in examining racism and anti-Semitism in the West, its application to the study of Islamophobia has been limited, making this study stand out in that regard.

News discourse and ideology

News as discourse is a framework that enables researchers to examine news content in its context and ideological underpinnings. Discourse, in this context, refers to either a specific instance of text or talk within its social setting (Van Dijk, 1989) or a societal phenomenon involving the ideological construction of knowledge (Foucault, 1969). When considering news as discourse, news engages in the ‘discursive construction of events, problems, and positions by social actors’ using specific discursive strategies (Carvalho, 2008: 161).

In this study, news discourse is defined as the strategic use of language, including speech, text, visuals, and narrative structures, to ideologically construct and shape information in news reporting (Bednarek and Caple, 2018; Ekström, 2023; Montgomery, 2007; Fowler, 1991; Van Dijk, 1988b). Contrary to journalists’ epistemic claims, news is not neutral. News discourse perpetuates ideology, as argued by Gramsci (1971), wherein media functions as a hegemonic institution through which dominant groups exert control using persuasion. It enacts and reproduces power structures, ideology, and discriminatory social relations through reportorial practices, interview sources, and production methods (Oktar, 2001; Tuchman, 1978; Van Dijk, 2013). News discourse reflects and reinforces power structures and legitimizes existing power relations within society through the use of chosen language (Fairclough, 2001).

This study considers ideology as the system through which symbolic forms convey meaning to establish and maintain power dynamics (Oktar, 2001), and news media as an entity that operates within and is influenced by the ideological and political structure of a society (Kress, 1983, 1985). Ideology in the news is opaque. Because ideology is embedded in broader, long-term contexts, understanding it requires examining discourses in a way that focuses on consistent underlying values and power dynamics that persist across historical settings (Kelsey, 2015). Such an approach enables researchers to move beyond the surface level of individual texts. It helps to reveal the deeper ideological patterns that shape news discourse. By examining these patterns, researchers can uncover the underlying ideological trajectories and how they are presented within the context of news (Van Dijk, 1988a, 1988b, 1989).

As stated earlier, past studies that analyzed ideological discourse in the news focused on Western media content while stressing the impact of dominant ideological, cultural, and political forces on the discursive construction of mainstream news content. Some of them uncovered pervasive racist ideologies in Western mainstream press. Media houses like Newsweek and Time perpetuated racist discourses in their coverage of interracial marriage in the US (Luther and Rightler-McDaniels, 2013), while Australian news media reinforced racist narratives in their coverage of Asian descent, with the ideology manifesting in an ‘asymmetrical power discourse’ (Teo, 2000: 7). European news channels also disseminate concealed racism against minorities and marginalized groups (Breazu and Machin, 2021). Studies exploring Islamophobia pointed out that mainstream media aligned with the dominant ideology. The likes of the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters predominantly drew on orientalist arguments like inferiority, backwardness, irrationality, submissiveness, and untrustworthiness of Iran and Shia Muslims in their coverage (Izadi and Saghaye-Biria, 2007; Kalyango et al., 2015), while major cable news networks reproduced Islamophobic discourse when covering the issue of a proposed Islamic community center in New York (DeFoster, 2015). In Europe, the mainstream press often fueled the extreme right-wing discourses. Far-right organizations in Europe selectively highlighted content from mainstream press to convey both overt and covert anti-Semitic discourses, reminiscent of historical Nazi propaganda (Haanshuus and Ihlebæk, 2021). News discourses also often represented women in sexist portrayals (Marcellus, 2006).

Studies conducted in non-Western countries, fewer in number, pointed to the ideological reproduction and discriminatory discourses in the press. Flowerdew et al. (2002) and Flowerdew (2012) demonstrated how news discourse discriminated against the Chinese in Hong Kong, despite their shared ethnic and linguistic background. Kuo and Nakamura (2005) revealed that two ideologically opposed Taiwanese newspapers translated the same interview into Chinese differently, reflecting the underlying ideological disparities between them. Alvaro (2013, 2015) posited that Chinese English news media publishes ideologically loaded, Sinocentric language in an attempt to counter Western ideology. All these studies discussed here highlight the role of language, visuals, and narrative structures in shaping news content to reinforce prevailing power structures and ideologies. By analyzing both textual and visual elements in TV and newspaper content, researchers can uncover the ideological influences embedded within news content.

Ideological discourse in Indian media

Studies show that the Indian mass media serves a dominant ideology – Hindutva (Hansen, 1999; Manchanda, 2002; Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal, 2001). Hindutva, unlike the Hindu religion, represents a majoritarian nationalist ideological venture and variant of right-wing extremism that originated in colonial India, and it aims to establish religious and cultural dominance of Hindus in the country (Iwanek, 2018; Leidig, 2020). Hindutva distinguishes itself from Hinduism by being perceived as a national-cultural ideology rather than a religious one as it does not seek a theocratic state (George, 2022). It is seen as ‘synonymous with the idea of India’ (George, 2022: 6). Hindutva envisions an idealized Hindu as the model Indian citizen and deems various other identities in the country unfit to be part of its vision of India (Waikar, 2018). It is rooted in othering. Its project of otherization marginalizes several groups, including Dalits, Liberals, Christians, Feminists, and especially Muslims (Sharma, 2011). Hindutva ideological campaigns, through grassroot movements and media, nurture India’s version of Islamophobia, where Muslims pose an existential threat to the majority community Hindus (Babur and Akthar, 2021; Thobani, 2018; Waiker, 2018). They undermine Muslim identity through symbolic attacks by portraying the era of Muslim rule in the subcontinent as a time marked by brutality (Flåten, 2016). It depicts Muslim men as oppressors of femininity (Agnes, 2016) and a dubious group attempting to establish Muslim demographic dominance by forcibly marrying Hindu women and reproducing (Dey, 2017). Past Hindutva campaigns incited individual violence and numerous massive riots against Muslims including the Gujarat pogrom, which claimed over a thousand lives in Western India (Dhattiwala and Biggs, 2012; Jaffrelot, 2009; Pandey, 2005).

Analyzing the coverage of the 1999 Kargil war and internal conflicts in Kashmir, Manchanda (2002) argues that the Indian mainstream press served as a propaganda vehicle for Hindutva. Its purpose was to propagate the core idea of restoring the culturally essentialist nature of Indian society, aiming to strengthen the state through the militarization of Hinduism and Hindu nationalism, specifically catering to the majority community in India (Manchanda, 2002). Movies, children’s comics, radio shows, and television programs mixed Hindu mythologies with day-to-day political messages (Hansen, 1999; Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal, 2001). They featured programs that combined nationalistic narratives, portraying India as the single most powerful country in the world golden past (Hansen, 1999; Mankekar, 1999). Many popular Bollywood films actively propagated hateful rhetoric against Muslims by perpetuating negative stereotypes that Hindutva invented (Khatun, 2018). The media, in effect, injected extreme Hindu nationalist ideology or ‘Hindutva’ into the daily lives of Indians (Hansen, 1999; Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal, 2001).

Studies show that Indian news media amplify Hindutva’s hateful content—often produced by nationalist groups, political figures, and their supporters—that targets minority groups in the country (Falnikar, 2020; Nadaf, 2022). The media takes up, reiterates, and redeploys these narratives, effectively acting as a conduit for the spread of Hindutva’s divisive and exclusionary rhetoric (Falnikar, 2020). In the 1990s, Hindi newspapers exacerbated communal tension during the Babri Masjid demolition, leading the press council to state that the media had violated journalistic ethics (Engineer, 1991). During the first decade of the 21st century – a period marked by religious violence in western India – mainstream English news media reprinted hate speech from Hindutva ideologues, who made utterances such as ‘Christians are worse than Muslims, kick them out’, (Manchanda, 2002). This amplification of hateful content has been accelerating in the digital age as news media routinely extract it from Hindutva’s online space.

Hindutva has utilized digital technologies, including social media, to proliferate its ideological campaigns for decades (Thapliyal et al., 2022; Therwath, 2012). It built an organized structure not just in Indian cyberspace but globally. Drawing on their extreme nationalist ideology, Hindutva organizations went global (Rajagopal, 2001) while maintaining a centralized global network (Therwath, 2012). They constructed a mammoth digital mass media system with websites, social media platforms, blogs, and online-first news websites in the last three decades (Gittinger, 2018; Khan, 2015; Thapliyal et al., 2022; Therwath, 2012). They maintained paid and unpaid troll armies of thousands of tech-savvy youngsters, and hate speech and falsehood (Farooq, 2018; Chaturvedi, 2016; Therwath, 2012) through ‘enterprise Hindutva’ – organization of the masses of online professionals and volunteers with fixed division of labor (Udupa, 2018: 453). Hindutva social media influencers generated viral content, including hate-filled pop songs (Zaffar and Pandit, 2022).

During the first wave of COVID-19, posts and tweets blaming Muslims as the primary culprits for the outbreak began spreading online (Perrigo, 2020). Indian news media echoed those claims (Hashmi et al., 2023). They labeled COVID-19 as a ‘Muslim disease’ and linked it to narratives of holy war and Islamization, often referring to it as ‘Corona Jihad’ (Tieri and Ranjan, 2023). The press not only disseminated Islamophobic discourse but also legitimized the portrayal of Muslims as the perpetrators of a national health crisis (Baharuddin and Baharuddin, 2022). They reciprocally bolstered online trolls with more content and facilitated their targeting of Muslims, exacerbating Islamophobia even further (Baharuddin and Baharuddin, 2022).

This brief literature review shows that the Indian media exemplifies a broader phenomenon. It does not passively convey information but actively participates in the construction of ideological discourses. Hindutva proponents instrumentalize the media to propagate their ideology, a form of right-wing extremism distinct from the Hindu religion. By embedding these ideologies within everyday cultural outputs like films, comics, and digital content, the media normalizes and reinforces a majoritarian hateful discourse that systematically targets minority groups.

In this context, my query centers around three key questions. First, I investigate the strategies employed by mainstream news media in constructing Islamophobic discourse. Second, I examine how this discourse represents Indian Muslims. Third, I analyze how the current discourse aligns with and complements the historical discourse of Hindutva. Additionally, I also briefly inquire about the structure and underlying nature of this discourse while contrasting them with normative news narratives.

Method

Considering news as a socially situated discourse, this study examines the ideological nature of news content. It adopts Discourse-Historical Analysis (DHA), a strand of Critical Discourse Analysis, as the methodological tool and theoretical scaffolding. Historically developed as a model to explore anti-Semitism in Europe after the Second World War, DHA draws on complex concepts of social critique that embrace three aspects: uncovering internal inconsistencies within discourse, elucidating latent persuasive elements in wider social contexts, and offering practical solutions to improve communication in various institutional settings (Wodak, 2001). Scholars use DHA to analyze discourses of racism, right-wing populism, nationalism, Islamophobia, sexism, etc. (Reisigl, 2017). This approach considers discourse analysis not just as a method of language analysis but as a multidimensional scheme that merges theory, methods, and empirical research practices (Forchtner, 2011; Reisigl, 2017). It is rooted in a critique that takes a frame of reference from DHA’s axiological commitment: democratic and ethical principles, including equality and justice, and principles of empathy that care about the discriminated section of society (Reisigl, 2014).

The analysis of news media content utilizing frameworks and analytical tools from Critical Discourse Studies is still a developing area of research (Kelsey, 2019), with a scarcity of such studies in the field of journalism studies compared to more widely adopted text-based research approaches like quantitative content analysis (Reynolds, 2018). To contribute to this developing area of research, this study explores the ideology and discursive strategies embedded in the news text published by the Indian mainstream press. It focuses on the structure of strategies, historicity, and contexts that are woven into the discourse. It aims to investigate beyond text patterns, trends, and causal interpretations. DHA suits this study given these objectives.

Critical discourse analysts generally do not gather representative samples. Instead, they purposively choose specific narratives to highlight and characterize ‘critical discourse moments’ (Carvalho, 2008; Richardson, 2006). This study follows the same path. I selected news items, opinion pieces, and news analysis segments published and broadcasted by Indian media during the first 8 months of 2020 – a period when the first wave of COVID-19 infection struck the country. I chose four major news organizations: Republic TV, a prominent English-language TV channel, Zee News, a popular Hindi TV channel boasting the highest viewership in the country, Times of India, the country’s most circulated English newspaper, and Dainik Jagran, the largest circulated Hindi newspaper. These media organizations represent the Indian mainstream news media landscape because of their dominance in the industry. They claim to be independent and politically non-aligned (English Jagran, 2015; Republic World Digital, 2017). The selection of these four news outlets contributes to data triangulation, which involves choosing news texts from various sources like newspapers and television news broadcasts. Data triangulation using these sources, which present distinct editorial perspectives and discourse patterns, enhances the study’s reliability and validity – conceptualized as trustworthiness, rigor, and quality in the qualitative paradigm (Golafshani, 2003).

I searched the content using the keywords ‘COVID-19’, ‘Corona,’ ‘Coronavirus’, ‘COVID hotspot’, ‘COVID outbreak’, ‘Coronavirus Infection’, ‘Virus’, ‘Tablighi Jamaat,’ ‘COVID-19 and Muslims’. I collected the newspaper content from their online websites and transcribed TV news content from their respective official YouTube channels, websites, and Facebook pages. After gathering the corpus and checking the publication date and relevant keywords, I reduced the data size based on criteria including descriptive scope, salience, redundancy, representativeness, and frequency (Wodak and Meyer, 2015). I selected the content that specifically focused on Tablighi Jamaat event or Muslims in association with the spread of COVID-19. This makes sure the data carry substantial weight in addressing the core objectives of the study.

The final list includes 19 texts, comprising 8 transcribed prime-time TV news analysis segments and 11 newspaper articles. The units of analysis include both textual and visual content. For newspapers, this means examining the discourse within the articles as well as the accompanying photographs. For TV segments, the analysis considers not only the spoken content but also the visuals presented and the anchor’s body language. This approach ensures a thorough examination of both the written and visual elements that contribute to the overall discourse.

The coding scheme in this study focuses on the systematic identification and analysis of specific discursive strategies within media content. Media text contains multiple levels of linguistic organization, which are intentional practices aimed at fulfilling social, ideological, political, or psychological aims, and these practices can be called discursive strategies (Wodak, 2001). These strategies – nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization, mitigation, and intensification – discursively construct discriminatory discourses (Reisigl, 2014; 2017; Wodak, 2001). Nomination involves the creation of absolute divisions along religious, ethnic, racial, or national lines. Predication labels members or actors and their actions with positive or negative attributes, contributing to the overall discourse. Argumentation justifies these attributes, whether positive or negative, shaping the narrative’s persuasiveness. Perspectivization explores the perspective from which nominations, predications, and argumentations are expressed, delving into the underlying ideologies. Mitigation and intensification operate on a spectrum, influencing the significance of events or aspects by minimizing or amplifying their impact.

Following the application of the coding scheme, Appendix Table A1 summarizes heuristic questions, strategies, and corresponding utterances derived from the selected news articles. After this systematic coding and categorization, I conducted in-depth analysis of patterns within and across categories. This analytical, drawing on DHA, process involved the exploration of trends, variations, and connections between distinct discursive elements present in the media content.

India News Media’s discursive strategies

The analysis below demonstrates how Indian news media used five discursive strategies while covering a national health crisis that emerged out of a contagious virus organically spreading across the country in a short period of time. In the initial stages of the pandemic, an Islamophobic online hate campaign gained traction with posts and tweets, going viral with claims that Muslims were deliberately spreading COVID-19 across the country with the intention to harm as many Indians as possible (Bajoria, 2020; Ellis-Petersen and Rahman, 2020). Indian news media echoed this narrative, uncritical of the hate campaign. The news media singled out virus-infected Muslims in their coverage, displaying photos of men and women in Islamic attire and focusing on infection in Muslim settlements. Calling Tablighi Jamaat members the ‘super-spreaders’, in one of its prime-time segments, Republic TV Editor-In-Chief Arnab Goswami stated:

They made fun of our national effort. They have been spreading hate against the lockdown and told their followers to do everything possible to defy the lockdown . . . Not only did they break the law, they asked their followers everywhere to break the lockdown! Can you believe it, viewers? They used religious teaching (to make sure) the lockdown rules imposed by Narendra Modi (India’s prime Minister) are defeated. These are dangerous people. They have compromised us all. We were just winning when they did everything to defeat us.

The anchor constructs clear societal division in terms of religious identities in this monologue, during which he points fingers at the camera whenever he refers to ‘they’ while looking visibly angry. The discursive strategy of constructing such absolute divisions along the lines of religious, ethnic, racial, or national identities is what Wodak (2001) calls nomination, which creates ingroups and outgroups in a context. The anchor builds two opposing sides in his narrative by repeatedly using ‘they’ and ‘our’/’us’. ‘They’ denotes not just the Tablighi Jamaat members, but the Muslim community as a whole, as Shantha (2020) argued that news coverage targeted the Indian Muslim community at large using the Tablighi Jamaat as a proxy. By stating ‘they use their religious teachings’ to break the lockdown rules, the anchor achieves such generalization. He imagines Muslims as an outgroup, who are in stark contrast with an ingroup, which is constructed through the deictics and phoric expressions ‘us’, ‘we’, and ‘our’. He assumes great solidarity within the ingroup. He portrays the outgroup as a serious threat with their deliberate attempts to defy the state’s emergency measures. He also accuses them of openly undermining the ingroup’s collective efforts against Covid-19.

Utterances of the nomination strategy were found in all news texts analyzed for this study. As Table 1 shows, those texts contain deictics and phoric expressions like They, Them, We, and Our, and religious anthroponyms like ‘Muslims’. They also contain metonymic toponyms like ‘fundamentalists’. The news media use these labels to create a boundary between the Muslims and the majority community, the ‘us’.

The next two discursive strategies – predication and argumentation – work in tandem. While the former labels members or actors and their actions positively or negatively, the latter justifies the negative or positive attributes (Wodak, 2001). Predication strategy can be understood by looking at what characteristics, qualities, and features are attributed to actors and their actions. Examining what kind of claims of truth and claims of rightness are presented in the text could reveal the argumentation strategy. Such claims come with examples that justify why the characteristics are attributed to certain actors or actions.

Zee News, a widely watched television station in India, employed the predication strategy in its news coverage, which blamed Muslims for spreading the virus. In his prime-time news segment, the Editor-In-Chief and News Anchor Sudhir Chaudhary states:

They have their own agenda and laws. They do not obey even the Supreme Court of India. We should realize the true color of these people. They have betrayed and lied to the entire nation. They have brought danger to many of us and have ruined our lives. They brought foreign Muslims from East Asia to India through dubious means. They, in the name of their religion and in their attempt to spread their religion, have put India in danger. They are unruly, and they openly proclaim and practice unlawfulness. These people do not want to follow our country’s law

In this part and the rest of his monologue, the anchor attributes traits and characteristics like deceit, disloyalty, irresponsibility, irreverence, violence, defiance, fanaticism, and mischief to Indian Muslims. In predication strategy, the proponents of discourse formulate a discursive characterization of the actors and their actions by using qualifying labels or attributes. As Table 1 shows, in the case of Muslims, other news texts analyzed in this study used negative labels including ‘dangerous people, ‘violators of national interest,’ ‘lockdown cheats’, ‘unruly’ ‘fundamentalists’, ‘cult followers’, and ‘radical tribe’. They contain negative attributes that qualify actions of Muslims. These attributes build an argument that Muslims brought the virus to the country in order to endanger the rest of the population.

Argumentation attempts to persuade viewers and readers of the validity of attributions by justifying those attributes. This could be achieved through presenting specific instances or events and claiming them to be true irrespective of the veracity of that claim. The monologue given above imagines Muslims as a homogeneous outgroup, who betrayed the nation. It claims the outgroup is ready to go to any extent and engage in any mischief to bring destruction to the nation. They, who initiated the infection outbreak by bringing infected foreign nationals to the country through ‘dubious means’, engages in deceit and open defiance of a law that was introduced to protect the nation from harm.

The fourth strategy, perspectivization, seeks to understand from what perspective these nominations, predications and argumentations are expressed. Ideologies underpin discourses. Social groups, which possess capital and power, disseminate their ideology to promote their own interests (Flowerdew and Richardson, 2017). A contextual and historical analysis showed that these news narratives positions themselves from the ideological positions of Hindutva – the right-wing exclusionary movement. The later sections will further elaborate on the origin and current state of this ideological movements.

Mitigation and Intensification strategy, is used to articulate and intensify their arguments explicitly. All the news text reviewed in this study contains this strategy. For example, after accusing the Muslims of breaking lock down rules, the news anchor of Republic TV go on to says ‘Not only did they break the law, they asked their followers everywhere to break the lockdown! Can you believe it, viewers? They used religious teaching (to make sure) the lockdown rules imposed by Narendra Modi (India’s prime Minister) are defeated’. These kinds of repetition with explicit claims intensify the arguments that were already set in motion by the same discourse. Similarly, other news texts analyzed in this study make such claims of truth on event of virus outbreak, causes of virus outbreak, and violation of national lockdown rule. In one instance, an opinion piece in the Times of India claims:

To find them and quarantine them is a mammoth task as our doctors and health workers realized in Ahmedabad and Jharkhand where they were pelted with stones and shot at. The ones taken to the various hospitals around Delhi created a bigger problem. They refused to have their medicines; behaved lewdly with the nurses; spat all over the place and even urinated outside urinals or just outside the toilets.

Through such graphic illustrations of events, the authors justify why the outgroup is such an uncivilized brutes who cannot maintain basic decency during a health emergency. By describing indecent acts like ‘urinating outside the toilet’ and ‘spitting all over the place’ intensifies the arguments of Muslims as ‘lockdown cheats’ and super ‘spreaders of the virus’. This also intensifies the core argument that the infected Muslims are deliberately spreading the virus.

The utterances discussed above do not stand on their own. They get developed in readers’ memory, background knowledge, and intertextual and interdiscursive experiences. The discursive strategies, nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization, mitigation, and intensification, when consistently employed in media narratives, contribute to the construction and reinforcement of particular social and ideological narratives. In the case of the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stigmatization of Indian Muslims, the repetition of negative attributes and generalizations about the outgroup not only shapes how they are perceived but also influences public opinion and attitudes toward them.

Two core notions lie at the heart of Indian news media discourse. The first is the notion that infected Muslims are deliberately spreading the virus, which holds significant consequences, as it not only falsely attributes malicious intent to an entire religious community but also perpetuates harmful stereotypes and fuels discriminatory practices. This idea contributes to the stigmatization of Muslims, portraying them as a threat to public health and safety. The second notion is the criminalization of Muslims. This emphasizing their alleged violation of the law, carries profound implications for both individual and collective perceptions. It reinforces negative stereotypes, portraying Muslims as inherently prone to criminal behavior and disobedience. This depiction contributes to the reinforcement of discriminatory attitudes and prejudices, creating an unjust association between the Muslim community and criminality. Framing Muslims as lawbreakers in the context of a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic amplifies the perceived threat they pose to societal well-being. By emphasizing instances of alleged non-compliance, media coverage contributes to the stigmatization of Muslims as a group that poses a danger to public safety. Both notions can create real-world consequences, leading to increased discrimination, hate crimes, and social exclusion against the Muslim community. For instance, The Guardian reported that multiple attacks and boycotts against Muslims escalated across India after they were blamed for spreading the virus (Ellis-Petersen and Rahman, 2020).

These two core notions and the consistent depiction of Muslims as the other, as deceitful, dangerous, and anti-India in Covid-19 press coverage are not new. It reflects a broader ideological position Hindutva nurtured historically for over a century. In their analysis of COVID-19 news coverage in India, Amanullah et al. (2023) found that four Indian daily newspapers constructed a Muslim ‘other’ – a representation that aligned with Hindutva’s aim to criminalize and ostracize Muslims. In another similar study, Nadaf (2022) argued that Indian media narratives dehumanized Muslims and their faith while reinforcing existing prejudices and Islamophobia in the country. The following section looks into the origins and contemporary manifestations ideological positions of Hindutva.

The pandemic and ‘the Enemy Within’

This section contains an analysis of how the portrayal of Indian Muslims in the news aligns with Hindutva and its historical discourse. It explores the fallacious claims constructed by the ideological orientation, historical narratives, and their interdiscursive relations that overlap with the current news discourse.

In the press coverage of COVID-19, interconnected discourse topics have emerged, all of which contribute to framing Indian Muslims as ‘the enemy within the nation.’ These topics include the narrative that Muslims brought COVID-19 to India and intentionally spread it, the suggestion that spreading the virus is part of a larger conspiracy by Muslims against the nation, and the portrayal of the Indian government and the majority community as committed to saving India from the virus.

These three discourse topics, along with the discursive strategies discussed in the previous section, employ persuasive language with the aim of constructing, establishing, and perpetuating specific national identities. Discourse plays a pivotal role in shaping, producing, and reproducing social conditions while molding these national identities (De Cillia et al., 1999). Central to this identity construction is the process of identification and solidarity with the ingroup, juxtaposed with the vilification and marginalization of the outgroup. This construct portrays the Muslim identity as a unified entity – an internal enemy – willing to engage in malevolent actions to harm the nation.

Ideologies serve as the foundation for identity creation (Van Dijk, 2009). The construction of Muslim identity through Islamophobic discourse is engineered by Hindutva – India’s dominant ideology. Emerging as a political movement in colonial India during the early 20th century, Hindutva found its roots in anti-colonial sentiments, drawing inspiration from German romanticism and Italian fascism (Leidig, 2020). Hindutva’s historical contention with Islam’s expansion in India, spanning various modes, periods, and traditions (Asher and Talbot, 2006), contributed to the early production of Islamophobic discourses. Hindutva historians often cited the conquests and violence perpetrated by Muslim rulers as primary reasons for the spread of Islam, cultivating narratives of forced religious conversions and bloodshed in the subcontinent (Rao, 2011). This simplistic historiography, rooted in blame, became a fertile ground for the development of Islamophobic discourse. This discourse consistently referenced Medieval Muslim rulers, including the Mughals, constructing a distorted history of persecution against which they sought redemption (Anderson and Jaffrelot, 2018; Truschke, 2021).

In the early 20th century, Hindutva ideologues and their writings captured the imagination of millions of Hindus with narratives of violent invasions, mass killings, and forced religious conversions by Muslims. These narratives revolved around discourses of demographic dominance of Muslims and the declining number of Hindus in India. In 1909, U N Mukherji published the book ‘Hindus: A Dying Race,’ claiming a dramatic decline in the Hindu population in India while highlighting the perceived increase in Muslims, attributed to their higher fertility rates (Datta, 1993). The discourse continued to develop. In the 1920s, a decade that witnessed the rise of Hindutva and a string of violent religious riots across the Indian subcontinent, Hindu revivalist organizations like Aryasamaj launched a well-orchestrated propaganda campaign with anecdotes of Muslim goons abducting, raping, and forcefully converting Hindu women to Islam after killing Hindu men (Gupta, 2009).

Utilizing this discourse, the Hindu Mahasabha, an umbrella organization encompassing various Hindutva grassroots movements, actively shaped the Hindu identity. This identity was defined in opposition to two distinct adversaries: the internal enemy, represented by Muslims perceived as foreign invaders on Hindu soil, and the external enemy, symbolized by the British colonial rulers (Bhatt, 2001). When colonial rule ended, the British departed, leaving behind two new nation-states: India and Pakistan. In the absence of the British, the mutual genocide that bloodied the Indo-Pak border during the partition (Zamindar, 2010) created and reinforced a new external enemy for India: Pakistan. Yet, Hindutva retained Indian Muslims as the internal enemy, considering them an extension of Pakistan within India (Manchanda, 2002).

Hindutva’s historical discourse regarding Muslims is undeniably linked to the Islamophobic discourse found in Indian news media’s coverage of COVID-19. In news production, journalists draw from pre-existing discourses (Van Dijk, 1988b) and integrate them into narratives that adhere to the conventions of news reporting (Carlson, 2009). The historical intertwining of Hindutva ideology and the portrayal of Indian Muslims as the internal enemy continues to influence journalists and news media. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they draw from these pre-existing discourses to shape their coverage, particularly during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. This alignment of media discourse with Hindutva ideology in the context of COVID-19 has exacerbated existing prejudices against Muslims. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as the discourse about Muslims being responsible for the spread of the virus gained traction, attacks on Muslims, including individuals, mosques, and Muslim-run businesses, increased in various parts of India (Menon, 2020).

‘The enemy within’ is a product of a process that involves the strategic, perpetual use of historical narratives by Hindutva to construct a dichotomy between the in-group (Hindus) and the out-group (Muslims). Contemporary media, being part of the process, further reinforces this antagonism. This process not only serves to sustain a sense of threat from the out-group but also aims to establish and maintain the cultural dominance of the in-group thereby nurturing Hindutva’s ideological goals. It helps Hindutva consolidate its vision of a homogenous national identity by framing the Muslim identity as an existential threat. It marginalizes Muslims. This process also undermines the pluralistic fabric of the nation and legitimizes discrimination against Muslims. It perpetuates a cycle of fear and mistrust, further entrenching societal divisions.

An invidious news discourse

Despite the Indian constitution’s assurances of social, cultural, and religious equality for its citizens, the largest minority community in India, the Muslims, have faced systematic oppression, bias, and violence since the country’s independence (Maizland, 2020). This discrimination against them escalated following the rise of a Hindutva ideological wave in 2014 when the central government introduced national policies that violate Muslims’ rights and potentially disenfranchise them (Maizland, 2020; Roy, 2020). The discriminatory atmosphere intensified by governmental policies resonates in the Islamophobic news discourse perpetuated during the first wave of COVID-19.

In this section, I aim to make sense of the discriminatory news discourse discussed in this study, which I refer to as ‘invidious news discourse’, by providing a brief critique and comparing it with a normative news discourse. The base layer of invidious news discourse consists of ideologically driven news text, embodying macro dimensions of history, social structure, and culture. The construction of invidious discourse is shaped and maintained through five discursive strategies: nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization, mitigation, and intensification. To provide a clearer critique of the discourse, I will evaluate it based on the axiological commitment of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) – which seeks to critique discourse using democratic and ethical principles of equality, justice, and empathy (Reisigl, 2014, 2017). DHA aims to reveal deliberate prejudices in representations of the other (Reisigl, 2014). The analysis in this study indicates that invidious news discourse violates democratic and ethical principles, which seek to ensure that people are valued equally without discrimination based on race, religion, ethnic group, gender, or sexual orientation (Rawls, 1971). It also reinforces the structural and ideological dominance of the majority, discriminates against the minority based on their identity, and incites bigotry.

To locate its position, invidious discourse needs to be compared with a normative news discourse. To envision a normative news discourse, produced through journalistic practices adhering to core journalism ethics and democratic principles, I turn to a type of journalism that upholds values such as equality and fairness (Ward, 2019). This practice strives to avoid harm and generates empathetic content that highlights the injustices faced by marginalized sections of society (Ward, 2019). It goes beyond empathy to humanize marginalized communities, appealing to collective solidarity (Varma, 2019). In other words, normative news discourse prioritizes the representation of diverse voices and promotes an inclusive narrative. It actively works to dismantle prejudices and foster a more just and equitable society by adhering to the ethical standards of journalism.

Invidious news discourse, on the other hand, emerges from journalistic practices devoid of universal media ethics and democratic principles. It intentionally reinforces prejudices against minorities, driven by the collusion of a dominant ideology and the press. This type of discourse plays a significant role in public discourse within populist, majoritarian political landscapes, where political power is often maintained through societal division and even violence. Societal divisions here refer to the deepening rifts within a society that separate groups based on identity. Invidious news discourse can thrive in countries experiencing democratic backsliding, where deliberative processes are overshadowed by emotions and fear, influencing the masses. Functioning as a feedback loop ideological mechanism for discriminatory populist politics, it nurtures extreme populism, democratic backsliding, and an information disorder in society. This means that invidious news discourse, marked by biased and prejudiced reporting, plays a role in sustaining and amplifying the ideologies of populist politics. This, in turn, contributes to the sustenance and reinforcement of discriminatory practices, democratic backsliding, and an information disorder within the society. It could accelerate during a national crisis and induce mass anxiety. Invidious news discourse can also sustain and complement the pervasive hate ecosystem, which is constructed by fringe groups on social media and politicians using their speeches in populist countries.

Conclusion

This study explored how the Indian mainstream press constructed an invidious new discourse while covering a major health crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. The representation of Muslims in that discourse illustrates how Hindutva’s ideological core is reproduced and legitimized through ostensibly factual reporting. The media, through the invidious new discourse, reinforces Hindutva hegemony, marginalizing the minority and normalizing exclusionary practices. This hegemonic function sustains existing power structures and presents them as natural.

Invidious new discourse shapes societal consciousness and identity. It distorts reality, perpetuates division, and undermines democracy and human dignity. It contributes to direct and harmful real-world consequences. Nadaf (2022) noted that Indian media’s coverage prompted widespread calls for a socio-economic boycott of Muslims in the country, resulting in significant suffering for many Muslim-led businesses and services during the pandemic. Sharma and Gupta (2022) pointed out that media reports exacerbated religious tensions and increased violence against Muslims, threatening social harmony in different parts of India.

Understanding news through the framework of invidious news discourse allows for a more nuanced critique of media practices, underscoring the role of journalism in shaping social relations. Such a framework has the potential to inform media reforms and educational programs aimed at promoting ethical journalism. It contributes to broader discussions in communication theory regarding the role of media in democracy and its impact on societal cohesion and discord. This approach challenges existing media practices and advocates for a transformative shift toward more equitable media coverage.

Invidious news discourse implicates the media in eroding social cohesion and amplifying hate. It signals a deeper crisis of moral integrity in journalism. It underscores the need for a new media ecosystem committed to equity, fairness, and the humanization of all communities. The Construction of invidious news discourse by the mainstream press points to the need to envision a journalism that fosters inclusive news discourse and promotes a just society where media serves as a platform for democratic deliberation and representation of diverse voices.

This study, although centered on India, opens avenues for exploring similar discourse in other nations grappling with social divisions and political complexities, such as Sri Lanka, Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia. Analyzing such contexts can reveal how media either exacerbates societal divisions or bridges them. Further research can also examine how to construct normative news discourses drawing on media ethics, human rights, and democratic principles. This would further our understanding of the media’s role in acting as a catalyst for improving social cohesion through responsible reporting and ethical journalism.