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| Mehdi Hasan continues his battle with Hindutva trolls |
December 31, 2015, NewsCrunch
In the course of his work, Al-Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan has drawn the ire of many people.
The list includes, as he mentions, Nigerians, Israelis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Americans and Britons.
But none of them are any match to Hindu Nationalists, who are the world's worst trolls, he says.
Mehdi Hasan got trolled recently after he interviewed RSS and BJP leader Ram Madhav.
He mentions, in particular, Israeli settler leader Dani Dayan, atheist scientist Richard Dawkins and former Pakistani ISI chief Asad Durrani.
He says he has never experienced the sort of backlash that he was subjected to after the Ram Madhav interview.
He has been denounced and defamed as a “closet Islamist”, a “funder of ISIS”, and a “Pakistani”.
Mehdi Hasan says rather than a Pakistani, he is a child of India.
Though he was born and raised in the UK, his parents were from India. Mehdi Hasan spent most of his summer holidays as a child in Hyderabad and even got married there.
During the Head to Head interview, Ram Madhav made many controversial statements and was seen wilting under pressure piled on by Mehdi Hasan.
Mehdi Hasan denies that charge that Ram Madhav was ambushed. He says his producers had briefed the Hindutva leader about the gladiatorial format of the show.
Ram Madhav had reportedly said that he had enjoyed watching Mehdi Hasan's earlier confrontation with General Durrani and agreed to be interviewed.