Lina M

Accounts like Arnaud Bertrand told millions a Hindu group BAPS forced the Eiffel Tower to hide every woman, so a 93-year-old guru would not have to see them. Then they tied it to India and PM Modi. Paris City Hall’s own inspectors say that demand was never made. Le Parisien reports the finding: no explicit request to exclude women. No email. No written order. Not one document. What reached the tower operator was a request for no physical contact between the monks and women. Staff passed it by word of mouth. It turned into men on the security posts and women moved off their stations. Inspectors called it a collective dysfunction. A Paris official compared it to the children’s game “telephone”. Women were sidelined. The tower’s management did that, and the director is stepping down. The story that travelled was the lie: a Hindu sect ordered women erased, and India was to blame. Three weeks of headlines. Almost none of the accounts that ran the first version have run the finding. Outrage was the product. The correction is not. This is the method. A bad headline about India is launched, stripped of context and pinned on the country, the faith or the government. By the time the facts arrive, the smear has already done its job and the people who spread it have moved on to the next one.