The indiscriminate use of the term “Jihad” to incriminate a particular community, as particularly linked to the December 2024 broadcast by NDTV that used “thook jihad” while reporting on a man falsely accused of spitting on rotis during food preparation, has drawn censure from the News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority, which held that the channel had breached the code of conduct.
“Thook jihad” is a term rooted in a Hindutva conspiracy theory alleging that Muslims deliberately spit into food to infect Hindus.
The complaint against the broadcaster had been filed by advocate Utkarsh Mishra, who contended that the channel communalised the conduct of an individual by employing the incendiary phrase “thook jihad” and by insinuating that similar incidents formed part of a wider pattern.
Mishra further argued that the repeated invocation of the term “jihad” in such contexts violated broadcasting norms intended to prevent hate speech and the religious stereotyping of criminal acts, while also objecting to the manner in which the accused was subjected to what resembled a quasi-police interrogation during a televised interview conducted by a private individual.
In its defence before the authority, NDTV asserted that its reportage centred upon issues of public hygiene and anti-social behaviour rather than communal provocation, while maintaining that the terminology reflected expressions already circulating in public discourse.
The channel also informed the regulator that the contentious content had subsequently been removed voluntarily.
However, in an order dated May 19, NBDSA chairperson AK Sikri dismissed the broadcaster’s justification, observing that the very deployment of the word “jihad” carried an unmistakable communal insinuation even in the absence of explicit reference to any religious group.
While acknowledging that the alleged act itself possessed undeniable news value, the authority concluded that portraying the incident as evidence of a broader phenomenon of “thook jihad” without substantiated proof amounted to an impermissible and sweeping generalisation that violated the code governing racial and religious stereotyping.
Although the regulator refrained from imposing a monetary penalty owing to the prior removal of the programme, it issued a formal caution directing the broadcaster to exercise greater editorial restraint and to desist from employing communal generalisations in future reporting.
The ruling has once again intensified scrutiny of sections of India’s television media, where expressions such as “love jihad”, “food jihad”, “land jihad” and “mehndi jihad” have increasingly been weaponised to cast ordinary disputes and isolated criminal allegations as manifestations of orchestrated Muslim conspiracies.
In a series of rulings between 2023 and 2026, the NBDSA cautioned or penalised broadcasters, including Zee News, Times Now, Navbharat and News18 India, over content alleged to have violated norms relating to communal harmony, accuracy and hate speech prevention.
Earlier this year, the authority directed Zee News to pay a fine of ₹1 lakh over a programme that falsely linked a traffic congestion incident on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway to a truck driver offering namaz, holding that the broadcast had recklessly communalised an unverified occurrence.