Does YouTube patronize anti-India and anti-Hindu propaganda channels?

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

YouTube, an American online video sharing platform launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal which has been owned by Google since 2006 is accessible worldwide. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States, YouTube is the second most visited website in the world, after Google Search. It has more than 2.5 billion monthly users, who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos every day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of 2023, there were approximately 14 billion videos in total.

Unfortunately, for the past few years, a number of channels on YouTube are continuously violating its community standards, there is no action against those channels. One of these channels named “Pinaki Bhattacharya” with around two million subscribers is operated by an anti-India, anti-Hindu, and pro-Islamist individual named Pinaki. By taking undue advantage of his presence of YouTube, Pinaki Bhattacharya has been running vile, harmful and extremely disturbing propaganda against India and Hindus while he also has been playing the role of key-mouthpiece of ultra-Islamist forces, including Al Qaeda-connected Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) in these ultra-Islamist force’s anti-India agenda titled “India Out”.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, through his video contents has been giving instigation to Muslims in boycotting India and “Made in India” products, while he also has been passing extremely derogatory remarks on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other patriotic forces. In the opinion of Pinaki, members of BJP and RSS are “terrorists” while he attempts to portray India as an evil nation.

As part of his involvement in ultra-Islamist force’s “India Out” notoriety, Pinaki Bhattacharya has been calling for “boycott of Indian products” (including Indian medical services) while he also is calling upon people to destroy Indian economy, while he passes highly-objectionable comment on Indian nationals and Hindus on a regular basis. All of such actions are clearly against YouTube’s community standard policies including ‘Hate Speech Policy’, ‘Violent Extremist or Criminal Organizations Policy’, Harassment & Cyberbullying Policies, ‘Misinformation Policies’, ‘Medical Misinformation Policies’, and ‘Vulgar Language Policies’. For violating each of these policies, contents of the accused channel are removed while in the case of Pinaki Bhattacharya, where he has been violating almost all of the community standards and continuing notorious propaganda against India, Hindus and Indian business conglomerates, he should have been permanently banned from the platform. But until now, there has been no action against this individual either by video-sharing platform YouTube as well as social media platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).

As each of the video contents of Pinaki Bhattacharya on YouTube are against India, Hindus and Indian business conglomerates, by not taking any measures against his channel, YouTube authorities are becoming abettor of his crime, where Indian authorities, Hindu rights groups as well as Indian business conglomerates are lodge civil suit against YouTube demanding hundreds of billions of dollars for attempts of harming image of India, defaming and demonizing Hindus and continuous attempts of causing harm to Indian business conglomerates. In such cases, YouTube authorities cannot ignore or avoid their responsibility as Pinaki Bhattacharya’s activities are no secret because his channel has almost two million subscribers and his dangerous activities through these channels are already reported in Indian and international media outlets.

Who is Pinaki Bhattacharya?

Only a few years ago, Pinaki Bhattacharya was kicked-out of his family by his parents for leaving Hindu dharma and embracing Islam at the influence of Tablighi Jamaat. His father Shyamal Bhattacharya, a school teacher, writer and drama actor grew extremely annoyed at his son’s religious conversion and subsequently an angry father declared him abandoned and cut-off all sorts of communication with Pinaki. Pinaki was born in Bogra district in Bangladesh and graduated from Rajshahi Medical College in 1992. This medical college is known as the epicenter of Jamaat-e-Islami activities.

During his stay in Bangladesh, a “neo-Muslim” Pinaki under the garb of producing life-saving drugs in his pharmaceutical factory, was in reality, producing illicit sexual drugs, counterfeit medicine and ‘Yaba’ tablets – a dangerous drug containing a mixture of methamphetamine and caffeine and distributing these contraband items through underworld crime rackets in Bangladesh. As such illegal activities caught the attention of law enforcement agencies, Pinaki Bhattacharya fled Bangladesh and landed in France, where he sought asylum with the false claim of a “political victim” of Awami League government.

In France, Pinaki has two jobs – operating an illegal hawala business and running social media accounts including few YouTube channels – while his YouTube channel has almost two million subscribers. Majority of the audience of Pinaki’s YouTube channel are half-educated and uneducated people from Bangladesh and West Bengal, while he also has substantial viewers from within Bangladeshi laborers in various countries, including Malaysia and the Middle East. In France, he maintains three employees for his activities – one of whom is a Palestinian female member of Hamas.

Through his YouTube channel, Pinaki Bhattacharya, an asset of Pakistani spy agency Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) has been spreading venom and running vile propaganda against Bharat, Hindu dharma, Bharatiya Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as well as anti-Islamist and anti-jihadist forces in Bharat and Bangladesh. Other targets of Pinaki Bhattacharya are the United States, Israel, Britain, European Union and secularist forces. Pinaki has also been supportive of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir as well as other parts of Bharat. He has been one of the defenders of Afghan Taliban, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He openly runs propaganda in favor of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and even Al Qaeda.

It may be mentioned here that Al Qaeda-connected Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its ideological allies including Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) are funding, patronizing and running “India Out” notoriety in Bangladesh.