Our intellectual Cossacks!

Non-stop rant against Narendra Modi!

The Left-liberal commentariat has gone to extraordinary length to prove Narendra Modi's three-day fast as part of his 'Sadbhavana Mission' was "meaningless" and "lacked credibility". In a democracy, opinion is free (though facts remain sacred) and we must learn to live with such outpouring of vitriol by those who claim to be 'unbiased' and 'bipartisan' but are exactly what they say they are not.

True, the hate-steeped commentary denouncing Narendra Modi is anything but fair criticism. It is hate speech aimed at vilifying, defaming and maligning a visionary leader who has changed the face of Gujarat and, if given the opportunity, will change the face of India by putting the country on the path of rapid development and equitable growth. But our commentariat thinks crass abuse is criticism. So be it.

Narendra Modi believes in India, he is proud of the nation and enthuses the country's youth. That rankles with the commentariat and activists, and understandably so.

But if Narendra Modi's three-day fast, which ended on Monday evening, was truly "meaningless" and of "no consequence", why did his critics, especially in the 'secular' media, expend so much time and energy in denouncing it? Logically, they should have just ignored the event.

The fact of the matter, as the cliche goes, is that the louder their criticism, the shriller their denunciation, the greater is their alarm and panic. The raucous cacophony of voices we have heard in media these past three days is a measure of the frustration among the self-righteous, sanctimonious critics of Narendra Modi.

Why else would they quote Ramvilas Paswan in their defence?

In my Sunday column, Coffee Break, of January 22, 2011, headlined 'India awaits the NaMo model', I had recalled a Cossack folktale while commenting on Narendra Modi's critics who can see nothing good or right about him:

A young Cossack, who was a gifted horseman, dreamed of owning the best steed in the village where he lived. So he toiled and saved money to buy his dream horse, and eagerly waited for the annual animal fair that was held in a nearby village. At last, the big day came and our young Cossack set off for the fair, dressed in his Sunday best. He inspected all the horses on sale and finally found a stallion with a flowing mane, flaring nostrils, rippling muscles and a glistening white fleece. This was the horse he had dreamt of and toiled for! The owner asked for a huge sum, our young Cossack paid the money without even bothering to haggle over the price. Horse bought, its proud new owner mounted the steed and cantered home. He rode straight to the village square where his fellow Cossacks gathered every Sunday evening for raucous drunken revelry, dismounted and called them over to show off his new horse. A collective gasp was heard as the Cossacks gathered around: None had seen a more handsome stallion than this. One of them patted the horse and praised his strength; another counted his teeth and declared he couldn’t be more than a year old; a third ran his fingers through the mane and sighed. The village elder was so impressed that he declared the stallion the official stud of the village horse collective and ordered a fresh round of vodka for everybody. Then along came the village cynic, who was also the local correspondent of Pravda and the designated Cossack ‘intellectual’. He walked around the horse, went back to where he had been sitting sipping vodka, struck a pose similar to Rodin’s Thinker, got up after a while, walked back to the horse, lifted its tail, sniffed and declared, in a stentorian voice similar to that in which judges give their final verdict, “The horse stinks.”

The non-stop rant in newspapers and on news telly these past three days shows the comparison between the Cossack in the folktale and our intellectual-activist Cossacks was not misplaced.

But as I said, we live in a democracy with plural voices. Freedom of speech is integral to our liberty. And the right of Narendra Modi's critics to make fools of themselves is their inalienable right.

Do let me know what you think.

RIP, News of the World

But what about our desi media?

When it was launched in London on October 1, 1843, the promoters of News of the World were absolutely clear about what the paper would not be: A dull, high-brow publication meant for the country squire and his fox-hunting mates to pander to their snobbery and pretentious intellectual superiority. The toffs had their The Daily Universal Register which later metamorphosed into The Times and The Sunday Times and other such newspapers that catered to the posh. What was needed was a Sunday tabloid that would connect with the masses, or more specifically, the neo-literate working classes, and fulfil the need to titillate their imagination and their curiosity about salacious details of the personal lives of those who lived the rollicking high life, as well as stuff that the vicar would rant against during his Sunday sermon and admonish his parishioners about, unfailingly reminding them of the Biblical warning that strait is the gate and narrow is the way. If he knew of the tasteless, ale-sodden jokes that were spun around ‘strait’ and ‘narrow’ and which would raise guffaws of crude laughter during drunken revelry at pubs on Sunday evenings, he preferred to ignore them.

Hence was born the News of the World which grew into Britain’s largest-selling Sunday tabloid, flush with more than raunchy tittle-tattle about the rich and idle and the naughty deeds of ‘street walkers’ and ‘immoral women’ with appetites that would shame both Samson and Delilah. And so it remained till its closure today (July 10,2011), a full 168 years after its launch, in circumstances that either the paper or its owner, the redoubtable media baron Rupert Murdoch, could have ever imagined. The tabloid remained true to its creed till the end — News of the World: The Best for News, Showbiz and Sport Exclusives... Just that there was little or nothing of ‘news’ as most people understand the word, and a lot of ‘showbiz’ — who’s sleeping with whom — and ‘sport exclusives’ — what the footballers’ wives have recently been up to while their husbands chased skirts at Chelsea.

Here’s a sample of headlines from the paper showcasing ‘showbiz’: “Broke star Katona is going back to ex Dan Foden”, “Single parent Elizabeth Pearce made history by having the first IVF tot paid for by NHS — but is it right?”, “Birthday pic proves Cheryl’s taken Ash back; She does sexy lap dance for cheating ex-husband before they disappear to hotel room”. And, not to forget the ‘sport exclusive’ for which the paper’s readers presumably eagerly waited for Sunday to dawn, “Cheeky mates show off Lamps’ Chelsea buns; Footie ace’s pals pull down his swimming trunks while on holiday with fiancee Christine”. Sunanda K Datta-Ray, a columnist with this newspaper and my editor at The Statesman, descended from The Englishman and whose pages were used for wrapping fish-and-chips at the annual Calcutta Rowing Club race in an in-your-face display of inverted snobbery every time the ship carrying the month’s copies of The Times was late, had the perfect description for tabloids like the News of the World and the Sun given to servicing the base urges of the lowest common denominator of the British underclass: He would call it tits-and-bums journalism.

Read the rest of this article here, my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer…

Media's campaign of calumny

All are equal, media is more equal than all!

Interviewing prospective students for a media school can be a useful experience. It provides you with an insight into how media is perceived among the young who shall inherit the world from us. I usually begin by asking the applicants whether they want to pursue a career in print journalism or in the audio-visual media. During one such interview recently, a young woman told me, “I want to join a news channel.” And do what? “I want to become an anchor.” Why? “I have many things to say and as an anchor I can say anything I want.” What makes you think so? “I watch television regularly. I know.” And why do you think you can actually say whatever you want? That left her slightly flustered. “But we have freedom of expression, right? And media is free in our country, right?” I seemed to have planted doubts in her mind and she wanted me to disabuse her of them. I asked her to tell me about her other interests in life.

I was reminded of that conversation on Friday evening when editors of television news channels, feigning great outrage, queued up to condemn the smashing of glass panes and upturning of potted palms in the lobby of Videocon Tower in Delhi, where the offices of Headlines Today, Aajtak and Mail Today are located, by a crowd of people protesting against the ongoing campaign of calumny against the RSS which is being accused of promoting ‘Hindu terrorism’. The violence was uncalled for, unfortunate and unacceptable. The protest could have been peaceful. Indeed, those leading the protesters should have ensured that no damage was caused on account of the demonstration. Having said that, let us look at what was said in condemnation by editors of other channels.

“This is an attack on freedom of expression. The media is being muzzled. Ideas must be combatted with ideas, not violence. It is despicable and deplorable,” said a news channel editor, virtually frothing at the mouth. Others pitched in with elaborate denunciation of “goons” and “hooligans” — the protesters did not look like either category of social malcontents — and condemned the attack. What was most amusing was to see Ms Ambika Soni, Minister for Information & Broadcasting, waxing eloquent on how the cherished values of our democracy are under assault. Ms Soni heads a Ministry which is a relic of our fake Socialist past when the Government controlled newspapers (there were no news channels then) and information flow by adopting strong-arm tactics — newspapers critical of the Government were denied newsprint quota — and by regulating the release of advertisements — obedience fetched you a greater share. More importantly, her entry into politics was through Sanjay Gandhi’s Youth Congress during the Emergency, when all freedoms and rights, including the right to life, were suspended and journalists who didn’t extol the virtues of the Great Leader were sent to jail. All that and more seems to have been forgotten.

However, we need not be distracted by what certain practitioners of the world’s second oldest profession have to say in defence of their emulating the practices of the world’s oldest profession. It’s a free country and people have the right to say whatever they want. But what is objectionable is the attempt to disguise biased writing and distortion of the truth as “freedom of expression”. The ongoing campaign of calumny to demonise the RSS and denigrate Hindus by painting the first as a sponsor of terrorism and the second as a community of terrorists is by no stretch of the imagination ‘freedom of expression’. Nor does media have the freedom to malign or defame individuals and then seek shelter in its presumed immunity from scrutiny.

Without going into the specifics of the campaign that has been launched to tar the RSS and label Hindus as terrorists, I would like to make three points. First, neither the stories published by some magazines and newspapers nor the reports that have been telecast by some news channels present even a shred of evidence. What we have read, seen and heard so far are aspersions, accusations and alleged admissions, all of it attributed to unnamed sources in the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation. These have been neither cross-checked nor corroborated with indisputable facts. Second, it is amazing that in a country which is supposed to be governed by the law of the land, there should be such organised trial by media which is really trial by insinuation. Years later, if nothing is proved in a court of law, media will conveniently choose to forget that they had already declared individuals guilty of horrible crimes. Third, since when has speaking to someone on the phone, irrespective of whether or not that person is guilty of having committed a crime, a crime in itself?

There is, of course, the other aspect about the IB and CBI leaking like sieves with a billion holes. If the alleged offence of planting bombs in Malegaon, Ajmer and Hyderabad is to be treated seriously, shouldn’t the agencies be conducting their investigations in absolute secrecy? If they must go public with titillating tid-bits, then IB and CBI offcials should formally brief the media on record. If they are planting stories, as they are doing, then this is no investigation but a political conspiracy: The RSS is being targeted to weaken the BJP. The conspiracy to defame and demonise Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has now been enlarged to hobble the BJP at the national level. There are no prizes for guessing who are the conspirators. Sadly, sections of the media have offered to play the role of co-conspirators. During Mrs Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, few editors stood up against the criminal abuse of power. Most of them chose to crawl when asked to bend. Tragically, many editors have kept up that tradition, offering space on the front page and time during prime-time news bulletins to the Establishment’s dirty tricks department.

This is not about ideology. Nor is it about political loyalties. To suggest so would be as bogus as those crying themselves hoarse that media’s freedom and freedom of expression are under attack. If anything is under attack, if anything is being questioned, is the peddling of fiction as fact under the garb of ‘investigative reporting’. Had it not been so, our ‘free’ media, a large section of which thrives on ‘paid news’, would have reported that the investigating agencies have failed to come up with any evidence to make their charges against Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Colonel Srikant Prasad Purohit stick. That the courts have refused to let them be tried under MACOCA, saying there was nothing on record to justify such a trial. That it’s been two years since they were arrested and have been in jail without being prosecuted or formally charged.

Or shall we just burn them at the stake because ‘free’ media has pronounced them guilty?

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on July 18, 2010.]

The secret diary of Hamid Mir

Or why news telly in India is so insensitive!

If Saturday morning’s crash of an Air India plane in Mangalore that resulted in the loss of 159 lives was shockingly tragic, the coverage of the horrific incident by television news channels was appallingly callous. Chasing TRPs, some channels tripped over each other to be the first to get ‘exclusive’ tid-bits of the accident, and took ghoulish delight in presenting macabre details. What was most insensitive was television reporters thrusting their mikes into the faces of survivors and asking stunningly bovine questions. Actually, they were not asking, but demanding replies to questions that were uncalled for. So we had these shaken and injured survivors, too traumatised to think straight and possibly still in a daze, unable to comprehend what had gone wrong in the last few minutes before the plane they were travelling in from Dubai was to have come to a halt on the runway and then slowly made its way to the parking bay, recounting their horror for the benefit of television news channels. What they (or grieving families) said made little sense, which is understandable. Our smart alec anchors would have been far more incoherent and incomprehensible had they been through something far less traumatic and life-threatening.

Make no mistake. The survivors, who were in need of immediate medical assistance and could do without television cameras at their moment of ordeal, were not being brought to the screens of your television sets to inform you about what happened, why it happened, how it happened. In any event, none of the few who survived the crash could possibly throw any light on what went wrong with a landing that was supposed to be smooth — the commander and his co-pilot had landed the same aircraft on the same runway innumerable times in the past and are believed to have known the terrain like the backs of their hands — but proved to be fatal. The survivors were pounced upon by camera crews because it gave them a great high (they were able to get ‘exclusive’ grabs for their channels) and their bosses an opportunity to claim that they had it before anybody else did. That in the process all norms of decency, dignity and discretion were rudely trampled upon, and editorial caution that should have been exercised was thrown to the wind, matters little to our television channels.

Which, of course, is nothing new. Why else would our television channels have sought out Hamid Mir, the now disgraced ‘star’ of Pakistani television and chief of Geo TV, for his comments whenever issues related to that country or India-Pakistan relations cropped up? That Hamid Mir has a dubious past is known to everybody on either side of the Radcliffe Line. Nor is it a well-kept secret that Hamid Mir’s sympathies have all along been with the Islamists and not the modernists of Pakistani society and politics. By extension, his association with the ISI and the Pakistani Army has often been a subject of animated discussion. Yet, what is known as ‘mainstream media’ in India had no compunctions about showcasing Hamid Mir and presenting his views as those representing ‘mainstream opinion’ in Pakistan!

Well, mainstream opinion in Pakistan, at least that which reflects what the educated, thinking classes of that country think, is at the moment heavily loaded against Hamid Mir. Recently, a tape surfaced on Facebook which had him talking to a member of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or what is popularly referred to as the ‘Punjabi Taliban’ by Pakistanis. The conversation had nothing to do with news-gathering: It amounted to Hamid Mir instigating the TTP to kill Khalid Khwaja, a former ISI agent known to be close to the Americans who had been kidnapped by the Punjabi Taliban. The tape reveals Hamid Mir accusing Khalid Khwaja of having links with the minority Ahmedis and the Americans, both sufficiently sinful in the books of the Pakistani Taliban to merit the death sentence. Subsequently, Khalid Khwaja was killed. Hamid Mir tried to disown the tape, saying it was not his voice. Strangely, the ISI has confirmed that it was indeed Hamid Mir’s voice on the tape; senior journalists who have known Hamid Mir for years have also confirmed the tape’s authenticity.

A debate is now raging in Pakistani media circles about who taped the conversation between Hamid Mir and the TTP, and why was the tape leaked. According to some journalists, the outing of Hamid Mir also exposes the deep rifts within Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, namely the ISI, the Military Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau. Any one of them could be trying to embarrass the other as Hamid Mir is said to have had livewire links with all of them. Another theory has it that the whole purpose was to expose the Islamists within Pakistan’s intelligence agencies by those sections in the ISI, MI and IB aligned with the either the US or China — sort of an ‘ideological’ war which has now come into the open. This is discounted by knowledgeable members of Pakistan’s commentariat who believe, and perhaps rightly so, that there is little that divides Pakistani intelligence agencies and their operatives ‘ideologically’; any alliance with either the Americans or the Chinese is purely tactical and does not automatically denote rejection or repudiation of Islamism.

The fine print, really, is inconsequential. The fact remains that Hamid Mir is more than just chief of Geo TV; he is also in cahoots with Pakistani intelligence agencies and has strong links with organisations like the TTP which are considered ‘strategic assets’ by sections of the Islamabad-Rawalpindi political-military-jihad complex. What is also of some importance for us is that Geo TV belongs to Independent Media Corporation, which owns the Jang group of newspapers. And as we all know, the Jang group is the Pakistani partner of a well-known Indian group of newspapers in a joint venture called ‘Aman ki Asha’ which aims to promote cross-border harmony and peace. It would be perfectly in order to ask how can a media group that has die-hard Islamists with links to terrorist organisations vehemently opposed to peace with India in senior positions be a trans-border peace partner. It would also serve some purpose if we were to be told as to why the Jang group was selected over other newspaper groups or independent dailies like the Daily Times, which has played a leading role in exposing and outing Hamid Mir. Chinese whispers are not exactly reliable. But there could be some truth to the story doing the rounds that it was neither aman nor asha that prompted the partnership between the two media groups.

[This appeared as my weekly column Coffee Break in Sunday Pioneer, May 23, 2010.]

Do we need to know what Carla does in bed?

Where do you draw the line?

British tabloids invented the concept of Page 3, which would be dedicated to a barely clad, if at all clad, woman to titillate the working class. They also mastered the art of shocking, stunning, smashing headlines -- the late lamented Private Eye had a rollicking time with the pick of the week, spinning spoofs around them. I couldn't stop laughing at Private Eye's interpretation of a very memorable headline which most probably appeared in the inimitable Sun: 'My boyfriend ate my hamster!'

Political correctness has killed much of good-natured humour. We now live in an increasingly joyless world where anything that we say is open to perverse interpretation. The Feminazis are an unhappy lot; they make it a point to make others unhappy too.

But there are times when I am appalled by the trivialisation of 'news' and the pathetic attempt by media to palm off obnoxious tid-bits about the personal lives of movers and shakers as 'entertainment news'. Sex sells, but must we elevate it to the columns of mainstream dailies? Indian newspapers have been putting out stories on Carla Bruni that are neither funny nor interesting, but revolting. It's copycat journalism at its worst. Here's an example:

"The Sarkozys once kept a head of state waiting while they enjoyed a passionate love-making session..." And the details are nauseating.

Decide for yourself!