Bhopal journalism school head accused of spreading bigotry against Muslims

The head of a Bhopal college’s journalism school has been accused of spreading hatred against Muslims, the Outlook magazine reported on Monday.

According to his students at Makhanlal Chaturvedi University, Prof Ashish Joshi sent them a WhatsApp message on July 30 with a link to a YouTube video and asked them to subscribe to that channel.

The link, one student told Outlook, was to a “hate-mongering, manipulative, anti-Muslim and provocative video”.

The video imagines what a film about the Tokyo silver medalist Mirabai Chanu would be like: it would show Chanu winning the medal because “Abdul Chacha” gave her meat and prayed for her success. It also talks about how a “particular community” is being endorsed by the Indian film industry and implies that secularism is a threat to India.

According to the magazine, the students have alleged that Joshi is inimical to a “particular community” and has “aggressively defended the right-wing extremist ideology and actions” in discussions with them.

Joshi, who was formerly CEO of Lok Sabha TV, claimed that he wasn’t imposing anything on his students. He shared the video, he claimed, because he believed that journalism students must “know every aspect”.