The real story: Amongst a crowd of Indian Americans outside Madison Square Gardens who had come to watch Narendra Modi speak, Rajdeep started his coverage with comments like these: Narendra Modi has proven himself to be the pied piper of India ...or at least of Indian Americans (implying the hordes of Modi supporters in India and the American Indians are rats who are following him blindly) Then he asks the crowd, virtually all of whom are Modi supporters, questions like: Do you think one man can change India? One of them replies: If one woman can LOOT India, then one man can also CHANGE India Rajdeep turns away and goes to another section of the crowd and asks: Will you go back to India? (multiple times to multiple people..in tone that implied hey youre living a comfortable life in US. Why are you showing so much interest in the affairs of India. Will you even return to India?) It seemed to me that Rajdeep was deliberately provoking the crowd. The next question was totally absurd: Did you pay for your ticket? Did you pay for your ticket? Did you pay for your ticket? He asked this to many people who replied in the negative. Heres why. Madison Square Gardens has a seating capacity of 20,000...out of which 18,000 seats were given out free to anyone who wanted to view the event and registered for the same on time. The rest of the seats were donor seats with high price tags. So obviously a majority of the people wouldnt have paid for their ticket. What was the relevance of this question? Section of crowd gets irritated with his line of questioning and starts chanting Modi, Modi... Rajdeep turns around and asks some of the others in the crowd: Many people say Indian Americans talk a lot but dont do anything..why doesnt the Indian American community do more for India? OK, now what exactly is Rajdeep trying to do here? Who are these some people?. could you not give proper names Rajdeep? This is not a a government secret that you have to hide your sources. Anyhow, its clear by name that Mr Sardesai is simply provoking a crowd. For what reason? Is Rajdesai frustrated that the man who he rallied against for more than a decade in his news reporting and editorials is now the PM of India and getting a rockstar reception in the US? As more of the crowd starts chanting Modi Modi Rajdeep goes to that section, slightly intimidated and tries to engage them..but they show no interest in taking more of his questions. He blurts out: I am here..you are here...this is America I forgot what he asked next but it sounded funny. After the crowd got louder with chants of Modi Modi and Rajdeep Murdabad, Rajdeep turns around..visibly agitated, and asks them: Did Narendra Modi ask you to behave badly? Did America tell you to behave badly? In a subsequent short video released by India Today group (for which Rajdeep works now), they show that Rajdeep is pushed by someone in the crowd. Heres that video: https://youtube/watch?v=HfnoAMYWplk Almost all media outlets have covered this event in favour of Rajdeep and against the crowd, saying the crowd had no right to turn violent, whatever the provocation. But thanks to cellphone camera and ever vigilant citizen journalists, we now have the complete video of the scuffle, where Rajdeep calls someone in the crowd an asshole, gets called asshole in return. Then that someone says something to Rajdeep which provokes him enough to physically hit that person. Its then that the other person retaliates by pushing him...Yup, it was Rajdeep who initiated the violence too. See the real video, and decide for yourselves: https://youtube/watch?v=HfnoAMYWplk & https://youtube/watch?v=qEDtyCqb7Sk
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:09:24 +0000
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