varnam

The other day I chanced on a blog called the Great Separation which had an entry titled Christians in India Threatened with Death by Hindu Fundamentalists. Christians are about 24 million people, a numerically large number. So were all those Christians threatened by Hindu Fundamentalists ? No, on reading the entry, this title was put by the site owner based on an article whose title was "Christian Adivasi victims of violence and forced Ã?â??re-conversionsÃ?â?? in Amravati". A bit of sensationalism for the Lord.

The article quoted is based on the statement of Edwin Cola�§o, Bishop of the diocese of Amravati, who claims that some one came from Ayodhya and asked people to convert to Hinduism or else face the sword. The story also mentions Uddhav Thackeray issuing warnings to Christian missionaries.

This story dated Feb 3 is not mentioned in any other newspaper. The Bishop felt that Asianews.it (Motto: Asia, our common task for the Third Millennium) was the right medium to tell his story and not other Christian newspapers like Malayala Manorama or Deepika. Prominent "secular" newspaper like The Hindu or the newspaper from Maharashtra, Times of India did not have any report on this event.

But two days later the story was picked up Catholic World News with the title Hindu mobs intimidate, threaten tribal Christians.

Is this how stories are manufactured ?