[Note: For photos/videos of protests across US at NYC, Atlanta, Houston, DC, California, London and other cities on weekend of March 11th, 2017 can be found on twitter handle #HinduLivesMatter ]
LETTER TO CNN PRESIDENT Mr. JEFF ZUCKER
Dear Mr. Zucker,
You must have heard the outrage on CNN Believer show aired on CNN last Sunday prompting rallies against CNN in coming days across several cities and many leaders speak against portrayal of ancient Hindu religion followed by nearly one billion people and known to be older than 5000 BC, as a disgusting, filthy and discriminating religion consisting of ascetics who eat human flesh, drink urine and even behead.
The show pictured the most sacred place of Hindus, Varanasi, India as a giant toilet. No matter what words are chosen the graphics are shown to propagate stereotypes by showing extremities of few hundred people as a religion of 1 billion known for non-violence, yoga, meditation. This is like focusing cameras at drug and crime infested Chicago areas and say this is United States? A detailed analysis of the show received 168K views in just few days https://www.facebook.com/RajivMalhotra.Official/videos/801624583324214/.
You chose to show this in spite of recent racial attacks and death of one person in Kansas and contributed to increase in attacks against Indian and Hindu Americans since the show has started. I do no know if you have children or grand children, when history teachers are using this show to learn more about religions they are not familiar with, what impressions would this give to our children? How would non-Hindu children and teachers treat Hindu American children? Do you recognize how they will be bullied based on these stereotypes which we are seeing numerous times where children are constantly being harassed? Will you take responsibility if children take drastic actions such as suicides or discard their religion? What kind of society we are building with children ingrained with such stereotypes? If you are really interested in showing religion, like National Geographic did in their recent show with Morgan Freeman, you would have consulted true religious experts and get their opinions and input.
In your pursuit for profit and sensationalism, you have chosen to ignore the truth, fairness and societal responsibility and showed racist, bigoted show during a prime time before millions of viewers, Do you recognize 20 years after Indiana Jones movie, non-Hindu Americans still ask Hindu Americans whether Hindus eat monkey brains (even today 70% of Hindus are vegetarians). You know very well these are powerful imagery and portrayal of stereotypes is very dangerous. It is sad that CNN fake news has extended now beyond politics, to religion and other areas.
Sadly, this is not the first time and this will not be last time. The racist, bigoted and profit pursuing at any cost can only be addressed only when people raise up and expose this. In the coming days, I understand there will be rallies not just in United States, India but also other parts of the world with calls to close down CNN.
Hinduism is a very peaceful religion and Mahatma Gandhi is product of his deep rooted Hinduism. It is deeply pluralistic in thinking with respect to all religions and constantly evolving and in today’s world we can all learn something from it. There is so much ignorance about the religion and we all will benefit from a objective analysis and study of it. It does not need lectures on caste discrimination and instead it is best to use our energies on racism, drugs, single parenthood and many other issues that is plaguing our society.
What world needs today is leaders that bring people together, to respect each other religion, to become better human beings. The least CNN can now do is to have a meaningful debate on Hindu religion with true religious leaders and not the so called leftist and perverted leaders who are today masquerading as experts on religions. I sincerely hope you want to be remembered as a decent rational human being long after you are gone.
Satya Dosapati is an activist based in the US working on causes for both India and US. He played an instrumental role in the introduction of paper trail for India’s Electronic Voting Machines called VVPAT that put Indian democracy on a strong foothold by bringing in top international experts and demonstrating the vulnerabilities in Indian EVMs working with local organizations and CEC Qureshi. He organized an All American Rally for Trump bringing in various ethnic communities together in support of Trump Presidential Election that was acknowledged by Republican party and then candidate Trump. The event was covered by most of the national media in Pennsylvania. He is well known for challenging 100 and 30 million dollar lawsuits from Sonia Gandhi proxies in the US when he coordinated a UN protest against Sonia Gandhi representing Mahatma Gandhi values at UN and taking a full page Ad in New York Times exposing her. He has several successes in an activist movement from forcing Andhra Pradesh CM YSR in 2007 in banning conversions inside Hindu temples, bringing attention to the plight of backward caste minor girls in West Bengal being kidnapped and thrown into sexual slavery through love jihad. He led a protest against University of Pennsylvania (Wharton economic forum) for dropping Narendra Modi from keynote speech because of allegations of some leftist professors and got a (private) apology from UPenn President . He initiated the first anti-corruption conference working with Ajit Doval and Dr. Swamy before Anna Hazare protest at New Delhi Vivekananda International foundation and brought in top international anti-corruption personnel from UN (UNODC) and Europe (Eurodad) and other institutions. His YouTube presentation on Plunder of India by Sonia UPA received nearly 2 lacs hits. He was also engaged in animal rights movements in the US for health, environment, and compassion. He received his bachelors from IIT Chennai with graduate degrees in US and is pursuing a career in Telecom in the US. He is a conservative and proud member of the US National Rifle Association (NRA). His Koo id is @SatyaDosapati and several of his articles were published in PGurus and OpIndia news portals. His blog is https://SatyaBlog.org.