[nukkad] nice article

[Bhavin Bhatt / PCS <>]

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Tip of the day:  Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
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This article is taken from samachar.com

A tragedy compounded by petty politics, biased reports and poodle journalism

By Sumer Kaul 
Source: Free Press Journal
May 10, 2002 
Even as the colossal tragedy in Gujarat has held centrestage in the national
consciousness, and even as we introspect and see what needs to be done to
eliminate such ghastly aberrations from our justly proud social landscape,
we must not overlook or underrate certain attendant doings and happenings at
home and abroad that can distort our perspective and cause us to compromise
our civilisational essence and our future. I am talking about the rank
opportunism of our political parties, the busybody and hypocritical attitude
of certain western powers, the biased and negative sensationalism of their
correspondents in India and, last but not the least contemptible, the
growing poodle-ism in sections of our own media. 
I have dwelt before ( in these columns and elsewhere) on the nationally and
socially debilitating politics of our parties, their quick-on-the-draw
opportunism unholstered by any ideology or scruple. Their myopic postures
and pronouncements, their low-level harangues and moth-eaten cliches that
passed for a debate in the Lok Sabha revealed, once again, their common and
all-consuming aim to make electoral capital from national tragedies. This is
politics on daily wages and it has no room for morality, for a long-term
vision for the country, for an uncompartmentalized Indian identity, and for
taking a sane and concerted stand on how to combat the Gujarat situation and
ensure that such barbarism does not recur. 
It is this fragmented and mutually accusatory picture of the Indian
political leadership that has encouraged certain western governments and
their organisations to tut-tut us on the Gujarat happeningsand issue
demarches. Not that they need any encouragement to see or show us in poor
light. Given half an excuse their subterraneous inimicality towards this
country comes to the surface. They just haven't reconciled themselves to
this old and resilient civilisation, this mosaic of diverse religions and
cultures, this mass of one-sixth of humanity, half of who may be unlettered
or undernourished but who have put satellites in space, whose scientists and
engineers are as good as the best anywhere, who have a powerful defence
apparatus with modern arms, who despite all their systemic ills and the ills
of their politics, are destined to re-emerge as a great nation. 
So, whenever things go wrong, as in Gujarat, or whenever we do something
they perceive as wrong for mere natives to do, as in developing nuclear
capability, the inherent and intrusive arrogance and hypocrisy of these
powers come into play. Aiding them in their consequent posturing and
sanctimonious humbuggery are the reports that their correspondents file.
Exaggeration and sensationalism are mild words to describe some of the stuff
that has appeared in western media, including frequent use of the word
"genocide" and comparisons with the holocaust! 
I don't want to lend further exposure to such despicable reportage by
reproducing from these despatches. Suffice it to quote what one of their own
tribe, a French journalist named Francois Gautier, has to say about them:
"We, the foreign correspondents, have been propagating in the last few weeks
a picture of an intolerant Hindu majority ruthlessly hunting down the Muslim
minority." Not only has this "falsified public opinion abroad" but it has
given a handle to some governments to bring out "so-called human rights
reports" on Gujarat. 
The enormity of the mis(chievous) reporting on Gujarat is matched only by
the average western correspondent's habitually slanted reporting on other
similar happenings in India. There are examples galore but I shall cite just
two.One, the Bombay blasts which were, in Gautier's words, "orchestrated by
Indian Muslims with the active help of Pakistan and silent approval of Saudi
Arabia, which took the lives of hundreds of innocent Hindus". Conspicuously
missing in the despatches by foreign correspondents at that time were words
like slaughter, fundamentalism, fascism used in their Gujarat reports. 
The second glaring example of dishonest reporting relates to the killing of
tens of thousands of Hindus by Muslim terrorists in Kashmir (and elsewhere
in India) and the virtual silence on their bloody depredations against the
Kashmiri Pandits, the original and rightful inhabitants of Kashmir, more of
whom have been killed by Islamic fanatics than the number of Muslims killed
in Gujarat. At the time of independence there were more than 400,000
Kashmiri Pandits in the state. There are fewer than 400 of them now; the
rest of them, those who survived, are scattered as refugees in their own
country, thousands of them in inhuman conditions in camps. Yet, show me one
report by a foreign correspondent which uses such words as genocide, ethnic
cleansing, human rights - words they could have legitimately used to
describe the plight of Kashmiri Hindus. 
Some foreign correspondent may turn round and ask: How many reports in the
Indian media itself have so depicted and commented on the killings in
Kashmir? Well, I will find it difficult to answer the question with any
extensive or weighty evidence - and that is a shame. It is a shame
ascribable to a misconceived sense of professionalism and a perverse sense
of secularism on the part of some of our media commanders. In their scheme
of things, communalism is a one-sided coin and anti-majorityism is courage.
Their task is not to inform the people of India and the world but to impress
their cosy circle of like-minded species at home and, even more, the great
white masters of the universe yonder in Washington and their 'pommy-ranians'
across the Atlantic. If and when something they say or write gets quoted in
American and British media, they find themselves floating on Cloud Nine. No,
it is not only a matter of receiving what they consider the ultimate
certificate of good journalism; involved here are frequent foreign trips for
self and admissions and fellowships and jobs for the progeny and other kin
and kith (and of course unending invitations to parties in the coveted
precincts of foreign embassies). 
In the case of the one-sided and inflammatory reporting on Gujarat, the "top
honours" may go to certain twinkle-twinkle little and not-so-little stars to
electronic journalism, but some of our print jockeys are not far behind.
While the former consider it high journalism to repeat gruesome visuals ad
infinitum, the latter want all one billion Indians to indulge in non-stop
self-flagellation.All this not because what happened in Gujarat is truly
shameful ( as are the unlamented killings of innocents in Kashmir and
elsewhere) but because it has "marred our image abroad". One columnist urged
the governments to forthwith undertake "damage control" to prevent drying up
of foreign investment in Gujarat and thus avert "disastrous results"! One
would imagine foreign investors are flooding Gujarat and if they stop coming
the people of Gujarat will starve to death! (It is the same breed of
journalists who - along with the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh government -
had decried opposition by saner elements to the entry of Enron, the gigantic
fraud that the company was and has proven to be.) 
Other commentators are deeply worried about the frowns of western
governments - so much so that when, in a rare exhibition of a bit of spine,
the Indian government asked the Nosy Parkers not to interfere in our
domestic affairs and save us their sermons on secularism, one editor went
hammer and tong against the MEA, calling our stand "dumb and dangerous". So
steeped is this worthy in his subaltern mindset that he wondered what
Jaswant Singh would answer if Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell (the two
`coloureds' in the Bush cabinet) ask him if the Indian cabinet has similarly
"empowered" the minorities and dalits. One can't imagine a more ignorant and
more stupid rhetoric! 
Never mind the extermination of the Red Indians, never mind the two hundred
years of black slavery, never mind the Ku Klux clan and others of the same
ilk - never mind history; look at the scene today: Not only do ordinary
white Americans suspect every Sikh to be an Osama, even shooting dead one of
them, official America has no qualms in stopping, interrogating and
humiliating Indians with Muslim or Muslim-sounding names, including Aamir
Khan and Kamal Hassan; why, the police even prevented an American Sikh
magistrate from boarding a plane because he wouldn't unwrap his turban! 
As for "empowerment", Powell and Rice are all very well, can the writer of
the despicable drivel quoted above tell us how many blacks (and never mind
other American minorities) have adorned the cabinet in U.S. history? And
will he have the honesty to compare it with the number of ministerial and
other high posts that the Indian minorities have held in government since
independence, not to mention in judiciary, armed forces, academia, business
and industry? Does he know that we have had two Muslim and one Sikh
President (of the nine so far) and that the President of India today is a
dalit? He can spot only George Fernandes and there too questions the
minister's loyaminister in a secular realm do so? Apparently because the
American President does so!! 
It is this mindset, this subaltern thinking, this scorpioid writing that is
more lethal to secularism and social harmony than the communal virus. 


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