Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power at the Centre in 2014, sections of both domestic and international Islamo-leftist media outlets have continuously generated biased reports and documentaries. These productions are designed to sustain a persistent narrative claiming that ‘Indian Muslims are being persecuted by Hindutva fascists’ alongside assertions that ‘Islamophobia on a rise in India’.

The newest manifestation of this campaign originates from the Turkish state-funded media network TRT World. On 10th August 2026, TRT World released a 21-minute and 6-second-long feature program carrying the title, “Inside the machinery of anti-Muslim hate in Narendra Modi’s India”.

Turkish Broadcaster Elevates Victimhood Narrative on Incomplete Facts While Ignoring Direct Violence Suffered by Hindus

The documentary produced by TRT relies on selectively curated individual accounts detailing allegations of mob clashes, anti-encroachment municipal drives, and state police interventions. Throughout the runtime, the production frames the actions of Gau Rakshaks as evidence to construct a narrative around a continuous ‘anti-Muslim hate machinery’ operating under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In doing so, the Turkish state outlet completely omits critical instances of communal violence targeting Hindus. Notably absent from the report is any reference to the murder of a Hindu resident, Tarun Kumar, in Delhi's Uttam Nagar area, who was beaten to death by his Muslim neighbours following a minor dispute involving a water balloon filled with Holi colours splashing near a woman from the locality.

Across India, major Hindu religious celebrations—ranging from Ram Navami, Hanuman Jayanti, Holi, and Diwali, to Durga Visarjan—alongside spontaneous street celebrations following cricket victories, have repeatedly encountered calculated ambushes. In multiple documented instances, stones and petrol bombs have been accumulated in advance to assault religious processions. A prominent example occurred during the 2025 Sambhal unrest, where organized mobs systematically pelted stones at law enforcement officers. Despite these documented events, the Turkish state-run broadcaster shows no editorial interest in presenting accounts where Hindu victims have lost their lives.

Instead, the production characterizes cow protection groups—known as ‘cow-vigilantes’—exclusively as aggressive outfits operating with the tacit backing of state authorities to intimidate minorities. In reality, Gau Rakshaks intercept and report individuals engaged in illegal cattle smuggling and illicit slaughter regardless of background, operating within the framework of state laws that prohibit bovine slaughter out of respect for public order and Hindu cultural sensitivities. The film fails to address the extensive illegal cattle trafficking networks operating in these regions.

Additionally, the broadcast suggests that Muslim men face systematic persecution by ‘Hindu extremists’ and a supposed ‘Hindutva regime’ led by the Prime Minister in matters concerning forced conversions. The narrative fails to examine the reality of grooming networks and coercive conversions—commonly referred to as 'love jihad'—and instead presents legitimate pushback from Hindu families as hostility toward all interfaith marriages.

Extensive records demonstrate a recurring pattern where individuals conceal their religious identities under Hindu names to initiate romantic relationships with Hindu women—ranging from school students to corporate professionals—only to subsequently exert pressure, blackmail, and force religious conversion upon them. While independent platforms like Satyaagrah and several mainstream media outlets have documented thousands of such coercive cases, left-leaning commentary frequently labels the issue a ‘BJP’s conspiracy theory’.

This phenomenon of using sexual exploitation and coercion to force conversions is not confined to regions like Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan's Beawar, Bhilwara, and Ajmer; similar systematic grooming cases have surfaced internationally in locations such as Rotherham and Telford in the United Kingdom. TRT World completely overlooks these documented realities, treating the plight of non-Muslim victims as inconsequential.

This editorial pattern reflects a broader double standard across international media networks. While incidents such as the 'Bulli Bai' app controversy triggered widespread global outrage despite involving no actual physical transaction of individuals, the actual physical grooming, trafficking, and online objectification directed at Hindu women are routinely minimized.

Furthermore, the broadcast adopts claims that state authorities are executing targeted demolitions against minority properties. This narrative conceals the basic legal context: the municipal actions targeted unauthorized encroachments on public infrastructure, government land, or private plots belonging to others, which frequently involved illegally erected mazars and shanties. The documentary makes no mention of the arbitrary property claims historically executed by statutory Waqf Boards over entire municipal areas, public properties, residential complexes, and private lands belonging to non-Muslim communities.

Ankara's Broadcaster Relies on Statements from Activists Sanjay Hegde and Aasif Mujtaba Regarding the 2020 Delhi Unrest

To construct its thesis, the documentary leans on commentary from legal and political figures. Among them is Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde, who argues that during episodes of ‘organised violence’, government administrations and law enforcement actively shield ‘Hindu perpetrators’.

Hegde's framing suggests that communal friction in India is unilaterally driven by the majority community. This reflects a persistent media tendency to shift responsibility away from violent mobs:

• When individuals celebrating a cricket victory pass adjacent to a place of worship in a specific neighborhood and are attacked with iron rods, stones, and weapons, the aggression is justified under the guise of an alleged provocation.
• When traditional religious processions playing devotional music encounter stone-pelting from rooftops, the blame is placed on the procession's route or celebration style.

When historical films, such as Chhava*—depicting the torture inflicted by Mughal ruler Aurangzeb upon Maratha King Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj after he refused forced conversion—provoke vandalism of public and private property, the resulting violence is attributed to the filmmakers rather than the rioters.

Hegde has long maintained positions critical of majority sentiment while advocating for the permanent accommodation of undocumented Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants, despite official security reports detailing their involvement in cross-border crime and domestic unrest.

The production also amplifies the statements of Aasif Mujtaba, who is presented simply as an independent social worker. During his interview, Mujtaba asserts that “justice is utopian” for Indian minorities, categorizing major communal events—including the 2020 Delhi riots, the 2013 Muzaffarnagar clashes, and the 2002 Gujarat riots—as one-sided anti-Muslim pogroms where justice remains out of reach.

Neither Mujtaba nor the producers provide the full historical record of the 2002 Gujarat violence, which began directly after a mob attacked and set fire to two coaches of the Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station, burning 59 Hindu pilgrims alive. A total of 31 individuals were convicted in court for their direct role in the attack. On March 1, 2011, a designated special court sentenced 11 convicts to death—specifically Abdul Razzak Kurkur, Ismail Suleja, Jabbir Binyamin Behra, Ramzani Binyamin Behra, Mehboob Hassan, Siraj Bala, Irfan Kalandar, Irfan Patadia, Hassan Lalu, Mehboob Chanda, and Salim Zarda—penalties that were later commuted to life imprisonment by the Gujarat High Court in October 2017.

Regarding the 2020 Northeast Delhi violence, the documentary ignores the involvement of local organizers such as former municipal councillor Tahir Hussain, who was prosecuted for coordinating violence that led to the murder of Intelligence Bureau officer Ankit Sharma, whose body was subsequently recovered from a local drain.

Similarly, the narrative ignores the fatal attack on Delhi Police Head Constable Ratan Lal, who was surrounded and killed by an armed mob on Wazirabad Road in the Chand Bagh area while executing his official duties on February 24, 2020, with the autopsy confirming a fatal bullet injury.

The film's voiceover additionally characterizes the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as inherently “discriminatory”. The legislation was enacted specifically to provide an expedited citizenship pathway for persecuted religious minorities—including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians—fleeing neighboring Islamic states such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh.

The exclusion of majority religious groups from these specific neighboring nations is a matter of statutory scope rather than sectarian bias:

• In Pakistan, theological disputes concerning Shia and Ahmadiyya communities remain internal legal and constitutional matters of that Islamic Republic.
• Rohingya individuals entering India via Bangladesh do so as economic migrants through third countries rather than direct cross-border refugees facing immediate state persecution, placing them outside the mandate of the Act.

Mujtaba’s institutional background is also kept out of focus. As the founder of the Miles2Smiles Foundation, he organized funding for settlements and learning centers catering to Rohingya migrants in the Nuh district of Mewat, Haryana—a region that has frequently been referenced as a “Mini Pakistan” due to recurrent reports of lawlessness and forced conversions targeting local Hindus. In December 2022, Mujtaba publicly declared that Jamia Millia Islamia was established not primarily as an academic center of excellence, but for “Muslims to learn to resist.” Furthermore, investigative filings in the 2020 Delhi riots cases note that Mujtaba was named as an associate by central accused Sharjeel Imam.

To create a veneer of neutrality, the TRT production briefly features members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and local cow protection groups. However, their inclusion is framed solely to characterize their grassroots advocacy as overtly hostile and intolerant.

This partisan framing is consistent with the editorial history of the Turkish state broadcaster, which routinely runs critical coverage on Indian domestic policy while downplaying Turkey's own domestic records concerning the suppression of Kurdish populations, political secularists, and the broader post-2016 crackdown on Gülen movement affiliates.

The broadcast concludes by relying on online comments to validate its narrative, where users claim that “as an Indian Muslim, it is true”. Despite having access to full constitutional rights, statutory equality, economic opportunities, and targeted social welfare benefits, the discourse presented by TRT World reinforces a recurring narrative of institutional grievance and victimhood for an international audience.