Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Organiser
Date: December 28, 2003
Introduction: "What drives the English
language journalists in India? Why are they always bent upon degrading
and belittling their own country, their own leaders? What kind of satisfaction
do they derive from looking down upon their own nation, their own culture
and their own society? Why do they spit so much vitriol on everything Indian?
Why do they laugh derisively whenever somebody talks of India's cultural
heritage, tradition and civilisations?"
No man in recent times-indeed since
Indepen-dence-has been more reviled, demonised and hated than Gujarat's
Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Since February 28, 2002 the English language
newspapers, especially, have gone at him hammer and tongs-and with very
little respect for truth or propriety-with a wilfulness that has had no
parallel in journalistic history.
Every possible weapon including
half-truths and downright lies were used both by the electronic and print
media to condemn Modi and his government as fascist, bloodthirsty and vicious.
The immediate cause were the riots that followed the incineration at Godhra
railway station of an entire carriage that resulted in the death of 58
innocent women and children.
The barbarous act was the handiwork
of a Muslim mob over 2,000 strong. The event took place on February 27,
2002. No paper expressed a sense of outrage, as if the burning of innocent
women and children was a daily affair of no consequence. It was only when
outraged Hindus started attacking Muslims that the English media woke up.
On March 3, 2002 one national paper
carried a front-page story accusing Narendra Modi of quoting Newton's law
for justifying the backlash to the Godhra carnage. Throwing all reportorial
norms to the winds the story that followed began with an accusatory line
that went thus: "Fish rots from the rop and if the ugly events unfolding
in Gujarat over the past four days are any indication...". It was bad,
mad, ugly reporting which provided not facts, but judgements. Another English
daily started a "Modi metre" of those killed (strangely enough that same
paper did not provide a Tarun Gogoi metre of Biharis killed in Assam).
Yet another English paper screamed:
"If Gujarat has to revert to normalcy, its C.M. must go". One English paper,
obviously totally ignorant of urban housing systems wrote: "In Ahmedabad,
if you are a Muslim, you cannot find a home for yourself in an upmarket
locality. People will not sell the property to you in a Hindu-dominated
area..." Do people in a Hindu locality whether in Mumbai, Chennai or anywhere
else normally sell property to a Muslim in that locality?
On March 3, 2002, a communist trade
union leader objected to the Commisison of Inquiry appointed by the State
Government on the ground that the retired Judge who was to conduct the
inquiry had awarded death sentence to some Muslims accused of burning alive
some Hindus during the communal riots in 1985. One story went as far as
to suggest that it was the Vishwa Hindu Parishad that had engineered the
Godhra massacre! Titles of major news stories carried by English dailies
focussed on the objective of exaggerating the plight of the minorities
and taunting the majority communality, such as: "No Secure Feeling Even
with 3 IPS officers as Neighours. Did Police Train Guns More on Minorities?"
As the saying goes: Anything goes.
And everything went. Lies, more lies and dangerous half-truths. The electronic
and English media had a field day running Modi down. When elections to
the State Legislature were announced, anti-Modi reporting reached fever
pitch. The massive crowds that were thronging Modi's Gaurav Yatra between
September and November 2002 were deliberately ignored. Congress meetings
were enthusiastically played up. Pygmies were projected as towering personalities.
Stories were slanted stealthily.
On December 10, 2002, just two days
before the voting was due, one daily paper which hated Narendra Modi's
guts wrote: "...Down and out in Gujarat until a few months ago, the Congress
party suddenly might be within striking distance of power and the credit
doesn't go just to its leaders..."
The article went on to quote unknown
and insignificant activists and talked of millions of pamphlets that had
"convincingly" outlined the "misdeeds" of the Modi Government. The halo
of the fallacy was maintained until the very last moment.
Much of this gutter journalism has
gone unreported in part because not many dare to criticise the English
language media. Such is the fear among the middle class of the power exercised
by the media lords and their henchmen.
Now one man has dared. S.K. Modi
is a graduate (Business Adminsitration and Economics) from BITS, Pilani
and has working experience of over 30 years. A widely travelled economist
and writer, S.K. Modi does not have to depend for his livelihood on editors
and proprietors and can afford to tell the truth. This book is a proper
study of the media and is the first of its kind. It tells the truth, which
can be more damaging than telling a lie. A lie can be exposed but the truth
has to be accepted. This book tells us the truth of the English langauge
media-or, at least, a good section of it-without blinkers.
This media needed to be exposed
and Modi has undertaken the task, not fully, perhaps, but in sufficient
measure to warn newspaper readers of what to expect in the paper they read
at breakfast. Modi asks: "What drives the English language journalists
in India? Why are they always bent upon degrading and belittling their
own country, their own leaders? What kind of satisfaction do they derive
from looking down upon their own nation, their own culture and their own
society? Why do they spit so much vitriol on everything Indian? Why do
they laugh derisively whenever somebody talks of India's cultural heritage,
tradition and civilisations?"
In this book, S.K. Modi provides
the answer, or at least part of the answer. There is an urgent need to
psychoanalyse a large number of senior English-language journalists, and
their attitudes and approaches to everything Indian. To one's utter shame
one national paper even went to the extent of asking a representative of
the European Union to issue a statement condemning the riots that followed
Godhra. Its hatred of all things Indian was so palpable. Writes the author
of this book; "the competition was for dubbing the Hindu community instrinsically
fundamentalist, the people of Gujarat as rapists and barbarians and Narendra
Modi a zealot and a bigot".
If there is one book on the media
that deserves to be widely read, it is this one. It tells us how hate aroused
by the English media corrupts. It is important that this misled posturing
of the English-language press is exposed. And the only way this can be
done is to faithfully report what the English media has done without adding
any frills. But to be accurate, it is only one segment of the English media
that deserves condemnation.
Many newspapers kept their cool
and trod warily. Gujarat has not only survived the hate-campaign let loose
against it but is actually drawing the support of NRI's and foreign capital.
The present work is an effort to undo at least some of the damage done.
It is a brave effort and for that reason deserves wide acknowledgement
and dissemination. Public money must be freshly aroused if only to tell
it how to defend itself against future media assaults on its sensibilities.
