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Our two-faced media

Our two-faced media

M.V. Kamath
The Organiser
January 9, 2000

Title: Our two-faced media
Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: The Organiser
Date: January 9, 2000

When the Australian missionary, Staines, was along with his two young sons torched to gory death while sleeping in a van in the midst of an Orissa jungle there was understandably a lot of hue and cry in the country. A Christian missionary who was serving the sick and the poor in tribal Orissa naturally evoked a great deal of sympathy. The crime had been compounded by the fact that two innocent young children had also been mercilessly killed. A wave of shock and disgust swept over the country. The alleged killer, one Dara Singh, was quickly identified. It was rumoured that he had links with the Bajrang Dal which is associated with the Sangh Parivar. The killings soon came to be associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party and by extension with Hinduism as well. Word went round that Christians were in danger in India. The issue was compounded by the killing of another missionary, one Arul Doss, also in Orissa and this was attributed to tribals. About this time there were reports that in the tribal areas of Gujarat a few religious balls set up by missionaries had been set on fire. These reports did a lot of damage to India. One of the first to condemn the BJP which had nothing to do with these events was Shri Jyoti Basu, Chief Minister of the Leftist-led Government of West Bengal. Shri Basu was quick to describe the killings as "barbaric". It soon transpired that West Bengal-and Shri Basu's own party the CPM-was no less barbaric. The Calcutta-based The Statesman not long after reported two killings of no less barbarity. In one case a woman was torched to death in broad daylight in South 24 Parganas by CPM goons. In another case, also reported by the same paper, an armed gang of communists barged into the home of an elderly couple at night, and hacked to death the wife in front of her frightened husband. A maid who tried to protect her mistress had her fingers chopped off. There was not a word of protest from the media. The murderers in both cases were neither identified nor caught. Communist terrorism in West Bengal has come to be accepted with the same disinterest as Naxalite killings in Andhra Pradesh or caste killings in Bihar, in circumstances of even grater cruelty than the Staines murders. The English great media has remained unmoved. There have been no harsh editorials. Indian lives are apparently expendable. And equally apparently, the CPM is beyond reproach, on ideological grounds' The BJP provided an easy target. Charges of anti-minorityism could easily be tagged on to the BJP even if it was pointed out that Orissa has a Congress-led government and neither under the earlier Chief Minister J.B. Patnaik, nor under his successor, the tribal leader Giridhar Gamang, has Dara Singh been arrested. Now we hear of a series of killings, also by Communist (CPM) goons in Kerala, also under a Communist-led government and these killings excel in cruelty the murder of Staines. Not long ago, a dozen persons armed to the teeth with swords, axes and country bombs crashed into the class-room of an upper primary school in Kunnoor district in Kerala in broad daylight. Thereupon they hacked, cut and stabbed the teacher, K.T. Jayakrishnan, in full view of innocent children. The blood from his body spattered on the books and dresses of the horrified children who ran out of the classroom screaming. And what was Jayakrishnan's fault? He happened to be the Kerala State vice-president of the BJP-affrliated Yuva Morcha. A few days earlier, the Kunnoor district secretary of the BJP, one Panniannur Chandran had been similarly "minced" to death right in the presence of his wife and children. There has not been so much as a whimper from our media or our leftist intellectuals. Ask anyone who Staines is and there will be quick identification of the person as a saintly man serving the poor. Ask anyone in any newspaper office who Jayakrishnan is or who is Chandran and the likely reply will be Chandran who? That is the extent of our phony liberalism.

The people charged with the murder of Staines and his two children are tribals and they were reportedly upset over the activities, of Christian missionaries in their midst. The murderers in West Bengal and in Kerala, both Marxist-ruled States could not possibly have any such excuse. Kerala is 91 per cent literate. The State has the highest literacy in the country. It earns the highest foreign remittances and has the lowest level of infant mortality. What Kerala shares with West Bengal is utter-and ruthless-ideological lawlessness. Industry is scared to invest either in West Bengal or Kerala. Economic growth is negative. Terrorism is apparently State-sanctioned. Neither the killers in West Bengal nor those in Kerala have so far been apprehended. They will never be. The Left parties will see to that. According to available figures, the -number of political murders which have taken place in the district of Kunnoor during the last, say, 20 years alone range between 121 and 127. Killing in the name of ideology is apparently permissible in the eyes of our leftist intellectuals. Killing allegedly, in the name of religion is a crime. Arul Doss might have by his preaching and act of illegal conversion disturbed tribal unity. What crime could the two ladies in West Bengal and the two men in Kerala have possibly committed except to fight communism in one of its strongholds? Why are our intellectuals silent?

According to The Hindustan Times (10 December) the crisis in Kerala "is exacerbated by the closure of industries to labour-cheap Tamil Nadu" next door and' the percentage share of investment proposals received by Kerala in the period 1991-1998 is 1.1 worse than in Bihar and Orissa. Neither domestic nor foreign investors want to have anything to do with Kerala as they are chary of West Bengal. And no one apparently is bothered. Leftism is fashionable. BJP's honest nationalism is not.

The truth of the matter is that leftism is on its last logs and its days are clearly numbered. That is the reason why, in West Bengal for instance, the Trinamool Congress is rapidly growing in popularity. CPM goondaism is now seen for what it is: plain and simple goondaism without a shred of respectability. But as yet, our intellectuals are hesitant to call a bloody CPM spade as a spade. The CPM in Kunnoor does not want BJP intrusion in its stronghold. Kunnoor is its fief but the CPM is quick to condemn resident Hindus in the tribal areas whether in Orissa or Gujarat for protesting against missionary intrusions. The CPM's hypocrisy can be attributed to ideological exclusiveness. But what about our intellectuals in the media? Is what is right for the CPM goose wrong for the BJP gander?

The only answer is a ban on the CPM as a party hell-bent on murderous activities. The RSS was banned in 1948 without any evidence of its association with the Mahatma murder. Surely there is enough evidence to ban the CPM and associated leftist parties for the murder not just of one man but scores of men and women?
 



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