Author:
Publication: www.vigilonline.com
Date: December 17, 2003
URL: http://www.vigilonline.com/reference/columns/columns.asp
Thoughts on issues of current interest
[my comments - as an Indian citizen - within square brackets], including
instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in
the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the
hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism) - Krishen Kak
[Post-Godhra Gujarat, on the one
hand, and Kashmir, on the other, exemplify to the fullest the double standards
of Nehruvian secularism. In Nehruvian secularism, "truth" is an anti-Hindu
political agenda, and so can be invented or embellished to further that
agenda.....]
----------------------------------------
"Pogrom, They Screamed! After Godhra"
by Udayan Namboodiri
The Pioneer,
December 14, 2003
Udayan Namboodri takes a look at
a book that records the facetious coverage of Godhra and its aftermath
by a genre of reporters for whom the "X" factor is more important than
facts on the ground
GODHRA: THE MISSING RAGE By SK Modi,
Ocean Books, Rs 195
.....Riot coverage is an extremely
sensitive form of reportage, calling for exceptional courage and objectivity
on the part of the reporter.....SK Modi's shocking account on how the most
basic tents of journalism were discarded by my colleagues to further a
pernicious agenda - to divide India forever along religious lines....
Academic objectivity, when applied
to media coverage on any issue, tends to get hopelessly bogged down in
rhetoric. Journalists who covered the Kargil war from the front were accused
of innocently toeing the Defence establishment's line. The much repeated
line, "truth is the first casualty in war" was repeated ad infintum to
the bewilderment of the newspaper reading public who were left wondering
where the real story lay. They were told that the dispatches from the war
zone was only maudlin. The "real" story was the "intelligence failure"
which the Vajpayee Government, thanks to the sentiment-dripping accounts
of valour and sacrifice in the Press and on TV, converted into a virtue
and, of course, votes in the 1999 elections. The authors of this stink
grudged the nation the feeling of betrayal which was legitimate. Almost
all invasions in history have caught the victim nation off-guard. The American
outrage over Pearl Harbour could not be diluted even though it was a clear
case of intelligence failure. So too were the Soviets fooled by the Nazis
in 1941. And, in recent times, there was 9/11. But while those nations,
in the view of our sceptic rationalists, were entitled to feeling violated,
India ought to have "behaved" when General Musharraf sent his armies and
Mujahideen auxiliaries over the Line of Control. And what should have been
India's appropriate response ? There is no clear answer from this tribe
on that. Perhaps some more self-flagellation, followed by the dismissal
of the Government of the day?
That was 1999. By the time Godhra
occurred, the Vajpayee Government was firmly entrenched in power..... Meanwhile,
two things had happened to the tribe of "objective" professionals. Firstly,
they had increased their numerical strength. And, most importantly, they
had taken over vast sections of the country's English language media. Or,
more appropriately, New Delhi's English language media. As a result Vajpayee-bashing
had transformed into something of a sub-culture. Resultantly, when Godhra
happened, it was just another massacre of innocents. Hundreds of people
die similarly in Jammu and Kashmir, in Laloo's Bihar and Naxalite infested
Andhra Pradesh each year. The Congress-led Opposition viewed it through
no special prism. So too did the flunkey Press ignore the ramifications
of this singularly horrifying incident.
In short, the "rage" was missing.
We had seen such a lacuna in Kargil. And when Godhra was followed by the
horrifying riots which tore apart Gujarat for the subsequent three months,
the newspaper reading, TV infotainment consuming classes were persuaded
to believe that Godhra was the Narendra Modi Government's excuse for organising
"ethnic cleansing". All the pent up feelings of the Left-Liberal chatteratti
against Hindutva, the BJP, the Sangh Parivaar, the "saffronisation" of
education overflowed into the receptacle offered by New Delhi's English-language
media.
This author has, in a unique way,
recorded the facetious coverage of Godhra and its aftermath by a genre
of reporters to who the "X" factor is more important than facts on the
ground. The tribe of journos who were let loose all over Gujarat in the
summer of 2002 was essentially different in character and composition from
those who went to Kargil in 1999. These were sensation mongers who were
willing to shed the last pretence of journalistic objectivity. Gut wrenching
incidents of violence were conjured up, based on which the police and administration
of Modi were pilloried for alleged participation in the violence (when
the most they could be accused of was ineffectiveness). Artistes, writers
(who included the hysterical Arundhati Roy) and a battery of sundry operators
descended on Ahmedabad to report on "Modi's excesses". Everything, from
Modi to Gujaratis to Hindus became bywords for terror. The same people
who are ever quick on the draw with "root causes" failed to recognise Godhra's
importance. Some even suggested that the train mass-murder could have been
staged to facilitate a riot....
The author singles out specific
instances of double-speak.....
--------------------------------
[V'mala 34 notes the doublespeak
of the "fact-finding mission" of the Editors Guild of India. And
here is some "doublespeak" by two favourites of Nehruvian secularists.....]
"Publicity relations" (Letters to
the Editor)
The Pioneer
December 6, 2003
.....Reading the writings of...Swami
Agnivesh, and Reverend Valson Thampu, I took their concern for social reform,
human rights and communal harmony as genuine, especially after they visited
the widow of Graham Staines, the Australian missionary burnt alive in a
village in Orissa. After much effort, I met the Reverend and told him about
the Kashmiri Pandit-like plight of the Reangs (Bru), members of a tribe
driven out of Mizoram by the majority Mizos-who are Christians -after large-scale
violence in October 1997. Over 30,000 were languishing in several refugee
camps in Kanchanpur subdivision of Tripura (West). I informed him that
I had been doing my bit to push their cause with the NHRC, and in the courts
and the media. Finding Rev Thampu sympathetic, I suggested he undertake
a goodwill mission, meeting the refugees, church leaders and the authorities,
to facilitate the return of the Reangs to their homes. He told me he did
everything "with" Swami Agnivesh, who was in South Africa at the time.
He asked me to leave a set of press clippings. But nothing happened. A
year later, I met the Swami himself when he was staging a dharna in the
Constitution Club. I told him the same and he too asked me to give him
some material. I did-to no avail. Rev Thampu is a member of the Delhi State
Minority Commission, so I thought he would be moved by the issue I had
raised. You can guess my opinion of the Reverend-Swami duo: The Reangs
were not 'publicity-rich' enough for them.
Surya Narain Saxena
Swasthya Vihar, New Delhi
------------------------------------------
[Valson Thampu unhesitatingly
signs a petition against the "forces of fascism ruling Gujarat today" ((V'mala
28). Mind you, this is after the Lygdoh-supervised election.
But he is a member of the Delhi State Minorities Commission - what has
he done for the Sikhs still denied justice against the 1984 State-justified
pogrom in Delhi? Recall that Thampu is also chaplain of St Stephen's
College which activately supported that secular fraud Harsh Mander (http://esamskriti.com/html/inside.aspcat=643&subcat=642&cname=hindustan)
Consider the context of the notorious
Ansari photograph (V'mala 2) that gets curiouser and curiouser. The distressed
Mr Ansari still pleads for anonymity: "`Rescue me from a life-time of fears,
one last time, through the columns of your newspaper. I want to be left
alone," he requests The Hindu" (Marcus Dam, "Ansari pleads for anonymity",
The Hindu, Dec 6, 2003) - though why he should approach the Chennai-based
Hindu instead of a Kolkata paper is not evident. He declares he did
not even know till "much later" that he had been photographed, though he's
looking straight into a camera that does not show anyone else around.
It is ironical that the same issue of The Hindu on another page notes "That
Thanksgiving bird was another turkey" - "the homely photograph" splashed
across the world of President Bush personally serving roast turkey on a
platter to American soldiers in Iraq was a "a model"!
So, was Mr Ansari created by Nehruvian
secularism as a "model" for the Gujarat violence?
Consider the Press Council of India
nailing the lies of Harsh Mander and censuring the Times of India (its
decision 14/106/02-03 dt.30/6/03).
Consider that in the Best Bakery
affair, Ms Zahira Sheikh's own sister-in-law called Ms Sheikh a liar (V'mala
1). Unsubstantiated reports floating around that Ms Sheikh was paid to
change her story were, at a workshop in Gurgaon on Dec 8, 2003, given unimpeachable
authority by an eminent "secular" academic who (later requesting anonymity)
communicated the following datum to the participants of the subgroup on
"Conflict & Reconciliation": he'd personally interviewed the (Hindu)
lawyer against and the two (Muslim) lawyers for Zahira Sheikh and one of
the latter told the interviewer he was convinced his client had taken money
to change her story.
The eminent academic urged that
the first step towards reconciliation is the telling of the truth. Yet,
to promote the Nehruvian secular agenda, Ms Sheikh's lie was seized by
the National Human Rights Commission and sundry leading Nehruvian secularists,
and given verity to by the secular Supreme Court of India. And, this is
just as significant, Ms Sheikh's lawyer has no qualms defending a person
he's satisfied is a liar, and no Nehruvian secularist is raising any questions
about the perjury.
That's because, for Nehruvian secularism,
the anti-Hindu political agenda is more important than the truth.
So the censured Times of India will
still publish the extenuation by the thoroughly discredited Harsh Mander
(V'mala 30) of Muslim violence against Kashmiri Pandits because, in the
KP case, the government has "appropriately established relief camps" for
KPs and extended relief "according to international standards" ("State
Subversion", The Times of India, Nov 22, 2003). The State Government
has a long history of discriminating against KPs and enabling the violence
against KPs, but that is all to be winked at because - after getting rid
of them from the Valley - it has at least housed some in Jammu in camps
of an international standard! The Hindu treats Muslim violence against
the KPs as an art form (V'mala 9), and the TOI boasts that camps that have
been described as "a hell" (V'mala 15) are of international standard!
Latika Padgaonkar can write a long
review of the Simon Wiesanthal Centre's Holocaust exhibition ("The Midnight
of Man", The Pioneer, Dec 1, 2003) and, of course, must connect Gujarat
to it, but not Kashmir. Shubha Mudgal can sing for a Muslim tomb
allegedly destroyed in the Gujarat violence, and Teesta Setalvad, Girish
Karnad, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi and others can protest for a dargah
in Karnataka that they claim is "is one of the shining symbols of the composite
socio-cultural tradition of Karnataka" ( http://oneworld.net/article/view/74892/1/
)
Certainly. But what of songs and
protests by them for well over a hundred temples razed by Islam in
independent India's Kashmir?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, critical of
Hindu resurgence as "fanaticisn", writes glibly that "any nation that is
built on a politics of resentment and on the marginalisation of the minorities,
as Hindutva inevitably is, cannot endure long and prosper" ("Of Hindutva
and governance", The Hindu, Dec 15, 2003). The "inevitably" is gratuitous,
since the historical record shows no such politics in significant measure
when Hindu kings ruled in the subcontinent. On the contrary, such politics
was significant when Islam and Christianity dominated the subcontinental
polity,and the majority people were treated as infidels and heathens.
And has not that mecca to where our Nehruvian clergy rush for recognition
(e.g., V'mala 16 and C(ii) in http://esamskriti.com/html/inside.asp?cat=649&subcat=648&cname=hindustan
1 ) - the United States of America - enjoyed great prosperity and
power for 225 years, though this prosperity and power was built on "a politics
of resentment and the marginalisation of the minorities" (including Black
African slavery and American Indian genocide)? And what about the
Vatican State which, for over a millennium, has very effectively - and
prosperously - implemented a worldwide strategy of Christian nationalism
by marginalising and demonising those who believe differently.
Vijay Tendulkar boasts that if he
had a revolver he'd kill Narendra Modi (The Hindu, Dec 15, 2003). Yet the
"secular" Tendulkar does not dream of likewise assassinating Mufti "Butcher
of Anantnag" Sayeed.
Why the double standards?
Because that's Nehruvian secularism.]
