India, June 16 -- https://tehelka.com/media/2025/06/FIGHT-1-1024x683.jpg
India is home to over 200 million Muslims, yet religious tensions have lingered since the bloody partition of 1947. In recent years, a new and troubling front has emerged: the rise of communal television debates. In the name of "dialogue," TV news channels routinely stage confrontations between Hindus and Muslims, often featuring religious figures and political spokespersons who shout at each other across the studio tables. These programmes are presented as rational debates, but in reality, they usually devolve into spectacles of outrage.
Rather than encouraging constructive discourse, these debates appear engineered to provoke. Critics argue that such shows serve a ...