Islamophobic Remarks :
Editor-in-chief of the Hindu far-right propaganda website OpIndia, which actively promotes hatred and violence against Muslims and other minorities in the nation, is the militant Hindu Nupur J Sharma.
Her articles for OpIndia are the epitome of Islamophobia and wholly based on anti-Muslim propaganda. Any chance reading of one of her editorials would attest to the truth of the statement.
Her full-time job is to undermine the fundamental principles of Islam and every Muslim desire for justice, equality, and a dignified living. Sharma, who describes herself as a “accidental journalist,” has devoted much of her time to using OpIndia to incite anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia.
She has made it one of her specialties to use the stereotype of Hindu victimhood to minimize the hardships of Muslims in modern-day India. Sharma provided a “ground report” based on the “Delhi riot” nearly three years after the anti-Muslim pogrom in Delhi in 2019. The research came to the conclusion that the Delhi Riots were not an anti-Muslim pogrom but rather a “well-oiled plan against Hindus” while transposing the offenders to the position of victims and vice versa. More than 50 people were slain during the pogrom, predominantly Muslims.
She has deliberately spread the false rumor that Muslims are responsible for a “concerted” demographic change in the nation. She asserts that her team has evidence showing how Muslims are ‘Islamizing’ India through “love jihad,” Mazars and Madrassas, and the forced circumcision of Hindu males.
She promotes the idea that “India is a land with Hindu consciousness, which will forever be a natural home for Hindus” as a follower of Hindu majoritarianism. The politically correct story of’secularism’ has poisoned our discourse, making it difficult to embrace the truth, but the reality is that Islam as a religion was introduced to India through bloody conquests and brutal Islamic rulers who were foreign to the country.
She promotes intercommunity animosity and terror by peddling conspiracies like the Land Jihad and the Love Jihad. These “conspiracy theories” are properly covered in the OpIndia website’s archives. Sharma has attempted to reframe some of these offensive terms in addition to endorsing others. She argues why “Love Jihad” should actually be named “Grooming Jihad” in an OoIndia article from November 18, 2020. She comes to the conclusion that non-Muslim women are being prepared to accept their slavery at the hands of Muslim males after defining the phenomenon of love jihad into five types. They raped, lured, kidnapped, executed, brainwashed, converted to Islam, and punished people. In these crimes against humanity, there is no “Love.” There is no doubt that jihad is a type of action. It’s time to label this phenomenon as grooming jihad.
Her editorial board spread anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric at an unprecedented rate during the COVID pandemic, accusing Muslims of being the cause of the disease’s emergence in the nation. Her editorial team was appalled by the action and labeled it “arbitrary” when Twitter banned ugly hashtags including #TablighiJamaat, #CoronaJihad, and #TotalboycottofMuslims on the Telangana High Court’s instructions.
The OPIndia report that Sharma shared on Twitter celebrated the moment when the Haryana police removed the name of Monu Manesar (the main suspect in the Haryana lynching case in which he and his gang burned two Muslim youths alive) from the FIR (First Information Report) by portraying the infamous cow vigilante Monu Manesar as an innocent who was implicated as a result of some sort of conspiracy. Notably, Manesar is still wanted by the authorities for a number of other violent and murderous incidents.
Sharma’s proclivity for extreme Hinduism is well known. You can look through her Twitter accounts, where she frequently posts her bile and lists tributes to infamous Islamophobes, hate speech proponents, and genocide accomplices. She expressed her dismay at Kalicharan Maharaj’s detention for expressing the evil aspirations of Hindu fundamentalism in public, another known hate monger.
Sharma quickly snags anything that floats her boat, from fabricated conspiracy theories to false news. She has been charged more than once with distributing false information and inciting hate and terror, despite the general impunity she enjoys in her propaganda campaign.
As the UK-based Stop Funding Hate campaign brought attention to OpIndia’s prejudiced and demeaning coverage of Muslims in 2020, some companies claimed that they had removed their advertisements from the website.
In West Bengal, numerous FIRs were filed against her due to her biased and aggressive reporting on the communal unrest in Telinipara, Bhadreshwar, West Bengal in 2021. Sharma had gone to great lengths to portray Hindus as the victims of the anti-Muslim rioting. Infractions under Sections 153A (promote animosity between religious groups), 504 (intentional insult with intent to cause breach of peace), and 505 (statements conducive to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code were the basis for the filing of the FIRs against her. However, emphasizing the value of a free press, the Supreme Court ordered the West Bengal government to drop the FIRs against her in July 2022.
In March 2023, the Tamil Nadu Police filed a complaint against Sharma under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups) and 505 (statements conducive to public mischief) for disseminating false information and instilling panic among migrant workers in the state.
As stated in an OpIndia post, “They (migrant laborers from Bihar) have alleged that as many as 15 people have lost their lives in the “Talibani” style attacks being carried out against the Hindi-speaking migrant laborers in the state.” The news item was fabricated and intended to scare off migrant labor, it was discovered. Sharma might be detained in this situation.