New Delhi: A Muslim woman in riot- and bulldozer-hit Jahangirpuri tells a TV reporter that she wants people to abandon religious divisions — “Hindustan ko abaad karo, barbaad nahin (Make India prosper, don’t destroy it),” she says.
The reporter, from Sudarshan News, responds with a torrent of outrage: “Patharbaazi toh aap kar rahe ho (You people are doing all the stone-pelting), madam… who is destroying the country? Us or you people?” The “ground report” soon devolves into a shouting match, complete with a few smacks of the hand.
देखो @NDTV के लिए भाईचारे का ड्रामा शूट हो रहा था
पर
सुदर्शन के शेरनी ने घुस कर सवाल पूंछा तो शांतिवादी मोहतरमा हमला करने लगी। #Bulldozer #JahagirpuriViolence #BindasBol में #जहांगीरपुरी #buldožer पर विशेष लाईव 8pm pic.twitter.com/64Fpu85B80
— Suresh Chavhanke “Sudarshan News” (@SureshChavhanke) April 20, 2022
Earlier this month, the same reporter created a ruckus inside an outlet of the food chain Haldiram’s in Delhi-NCR over the presence of “Urdu” lettering [actually Arabic] on a pack of snacks marketed to fasting Hindus.
#Haldiram के स्टाफ़ ने हमारी रिपोर्टर को लॉक लगाकर बंद कर दिया था और तथाकथित पत्रकार कह रहे हैं कि सुदर्शन की शेरनी @i_shivanithakur ने हंगामा कर दिया
हम विक्टिम कार्ड नहीं खेलते परंतु दुर्भाग्य है कि एक युवा पत्रकार लड़की का पत्रकार ही विरोध कर रहे हैं, क्योंकि वह सुदर्शन से है pic.twitter.com/ooCvE8Zsrz
— Suresh Chavhanke “Sudarshan News” (@SureshChavhanke) April 6, 2022
These news reports are fairly typical of the coverage favoured by Sudarshan News — loud, aggressive, designed to provoke, and with a decidedly anti-Muslim and pro-Hindutva flavour.
It’s not just the reportage of Sudarshan News that has been generating controversy, however.
The man behind the contentious content — the channel’s founder and editor-in-chief, Suresh Chavhanke — too has made it something of a habit to be in the news for all the wrong reasons.
These include an arrest in 2017 for “promoting enmity” on his show Bindas Bol, and allegations of making a hate speech at a packed Hindu Yuva Vahini event last December. Last week, too, he came in the news for describing a tweet about “secularism” and iftaar from the Army’s public relations officer in Jammu as “sadly” symptomatic of “disease”. The Army tweet was deleted.
Further, it now appears that Chavhanke also follows an unusual mechanism to raise funding — ThePrint has found that the official Sudarshan News website solicits aspiring “active journalists” to pay as much as Rs 2 crore for their way into a job.
Although Chavhanke denies the allegation and attributes the information to a “technical glitch”, the avowed RSS man — said to be a cause of division within the Sangh as well — defends his channel’s reportage, projecting it as the “voice of Hindus” in a “pro-Muslim” media landscape.
Also Read: No hate in Chavhanke’s speech at 2021 Delhi event, must practise tolerance, police tell SC
RSS roots, ‘inspired by Gujarat riots’
Ever since Suresh Chavhanke launched his free-to-air channel Sudarshan News in 2005, he has faced numerous allegations of instigating violence, stoking communal tensions, promoting hate speech, and propagating misinformation.
However, he appears to enjoy a huge following among Hindu Right-wing audiences. His Twitter page, for instance, which features an image of him with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, has nearly 500,000 followers.
Speaking to ThePrint, Chavhanke said he started his career as a city reporter in the Marathi-language daily Tarun Bharat, but even then, his ideological moorings were clear.
“I am a lifelong swayamsevak,” he said, maintaining that he was associated with the RSS right from childhood.
The 2002 Gujarat riots, he claimed, inspired him to bring his media background and ideology together.
“The Gujarat riots affected me a lot… and it inspired me to start the channel,” he said. “I thought representing Hindus and their plight would be a service. The media is always pro-Muslims, and no one speaks for the Hindus.”
This has translated into Sudarshan News propagating a strident Hindutva ethos and projecting an aggressive stance towards Muslims. And it has sometimes landed the channel in trouble.
For instance, a Bindas Bol episode titled ‘UPSC Jihad’, which ostensibly sought to expose the “infiltration” of Muslims in the civil services, had the Union Ministry of Information & Broadcasting complaining about its “communal” content in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court in 2020.
The Sudarshan editor-in-chief told ThePrint there were “at least 1,823 cases” against him across the country.
The allegations against him have come at a reputational cost, even when it comes to Hindutva organisations.
Chavhanke is believed to be close to some senior functionaries of the Sangh, but he does not have universal approval within its ranks.
“He has been a swayamsevak, but we have thousands of such volunteers. It does not mean that the RSS is associated with all of them in their private ventures,” a central committee member of the RSS said.
Another functionary of the RSS claimed that there are allegations of Chavhanke extorting from people using the name of the Sangh and also defaming the organisation by bringing its name into his blatant polarisation.
When asked about this, the Sudarshan TV head acknowledged that he had faced flak from many senior RSS members.
“People who are against us, and the foreign forces, attack me — which I understand. But I keep facing resistance from my own people too. They also think that I am playing the communal agenda,” he said. “It hurts but I will not be a silent spectator.”
‘Conspiracies and attacks affected business’
According to Chavhanke, his financials have seen a decline due to “conspiracies” and “attacks” against him.
“So many influential people are after me… they stopped the advertisements. But, I am still afloat and I will keep this channel running. My reporters are dedicated, I live a humble life, and I do not need a charter flight to travel,” he said.
According to the Registrar of Companies (RoC) data accessed by The Print, Chavhanke’s Sudarshan TV Channel Limited was incorporated in 2003. The company’s registered address is at Shirdi, Maharashtra, which is Chavhanke’s hometown. His wife Maya is also a director in the company.
The company started with an authorised capital of Rs 15 crore, and the same amount is its paid-up capital too.
According to a News Laundry report, the channel’s advertisers have included the social media app Koo and, at least as of 2020-2021, the Uttar Pradesh government.
On his personal website, Chavhanke claims that he has always been committed to “national interest… even if it comes at a price of losing sponsorships” of his channel.
The curious case of ‘money for jobs’
Currently, Sudarshan TV appears to be exploring some alternative streams of funding. For instance, Chavhanke has shared videos in which he promotes a brand of ayurvedic products as a way to raise funds, since he does not want to air ads by “multinational” companies that he has told “Indians to boycott”.
Further, ThePrint has viewed pages of the Sudarshan News site asking for money on a page for the recruitment of “active journalists” as well as one that invites visitors to join as a “general member”.
The former category is particularly intriguing. The channel’s website features a tab that invites visitors to “Join as an Active Journalist”. This tab leads to a signup page, where aspirants can pick a “joining location” using a dropdown menu. Once this is done, the page reveals details of “membership availability” as well as the “amount to be paid”.
At the time the ThePrint explored this job-search feature, a spot in Delhi was “available” for Rs 50 lakh, and another in Gujarat for Rs 1 crore. The active journalist position in Uttar Pradesh (Rs 2 crore) was “already occupied” by a “Vivekanand Dixit”. Maharashtra (Rs 2 crore) and Bihar (Rs 50 lakh) weren’t available either, but Tamil Nadu was, free of cost.
When ThePrint asked Chavhanke about this, he denied charging job aspirants any money.
“We do not charge any money from reporters… it might be for advertisements. This page must be a technical glitch in the site or some printing mistake,” Chavhanke said. However, 11 days after Chavhanke claimed this to possibly be an error, the page seeking money from job aspirants remained on the channel’s website.
The terms and conditions linked to the active journalist page make overt mention of funds and payments, including in connection with “journalism” and “news collection”.
For instance, those who sign up on the site must agree to the condition that “the amount of money which I have deposited with [Sudarshan] is purely non-refundable and can only be recovered by way of advertisements on the television only”.
Another condition stipulates that “the airtime amount is non-refundable”. Active journalists also must agree to “bear all the expanses [sic] of training and other things”.
Applicants must also confirm that “apart from my active journalism/news collection I will also indulge myself in solving the public problems…” and undertake that they will “give my best to make public aware of the government schemes and get benefited”.
Chavhanke, however, insisted that the word “journalist” had erroneously appeared on all the webpages cited.
“This is a format for advertisements,” Chavhanke said. “The journalist word can be a printing mistake. Our business is transparent and everything is in the public domain.”
Sagar Kumar, a senior journalist who has been working with Chavhanke for a decade, told ThePrint that Sudarshan News reporters were not driven by money. “Hum log watan ke liye kaam karte hain, paise ke liye nahi (We work for the country, not for money),” he said, adding that his boss always supported his journalists, including when they were confronted with FIRs and defamation cases.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Also Read: ‘How to save Hindus’ – On phones of Jahangirpuri teens tips to keep acid, knife, glass