Shadows & silence

October 31, 2006

The Indian media turns a deaf ear to issues of caste and mass mobilisation

The Indian media has been by history and tradition a fairly independent voice, linked prior to independence to core struggles of emancipation and mobilistion. Today, with the advent and impact of television, it enjoys an influence that must lend itself to some rigorous rational scrutiny. During the past decade we have seen television (and private television channels where there was only government controlled Doordarshan earlier) enter our homes and dominate public discourse. We have also seen the burgeoning growth of Hindi journalism (which today enjoys the largest readership or viewership) as also a large number of alternate publications.

A restlessness with the direction the media is taking, coupled with an acknowledgement of its influence and role, forces us to ask some serious questions. In this issue of Communalism Combat we attempt to look at some of these ticklish questions. Has, for instance, the national ‘mainstream’ media turned its back on fair and adequate coverage of the lives and concerns of the large majority of the country and does this exclusion amount to a mere increasing elitism or something harsher, such as bias? And is this bias driven by class or does it also have a caste and communal tinge?

Rajdeep Sardesai, editor-in-chief, CNN-IBN and IBN 7, in an interview with CC admits that there has been a big shift in the media becoming "metro-centric" but denies anything more active at work than simply an urban bias. "The fact of the matter is that the media is metro-centric and as a result we do lose out on the less shining parts of the country. The reason for this however is much more the tyranny of distance than any bias."

The relative or complete absence of media coverage of issues arising out of Adivasi struggles in the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, or even the seven states located in the north-eastern part of the country, is matched by the dominance of frivolous and titillating coverage of ‘happenings’ in metros. Worse, the distinctly upper caste tilt and twist to the manner in which developments are viewed and interpreted can be gleaned, for instance, from the epithets that were used for a whole decade against a politician like Laloo Prasad Yadav. A survey conducted by the Delhi-based Media Study Group points to a distinct absence of caste diversity and a predominance of the ‘upper’ castes within the upper echelons of the Indian media (see "Media pundits", CC, July-August 2006).

Only last month India lost a politician who – like him or hate him – changed the course of this country’s politics decisively. The death of Kanshi Ram and the ensuing coverage by the media (barring a few exceptions) reflected a dismissive upper caste bias. The first quarter of 2006 saw the dramatic story of the shooting (and subsequent death) of BJP leader Pramod Mahajan by his brother and, a few months later, the unsavoury conduct of his son, Rahul Mahajan. Excessive and disproportionately wide coverage of the first episodes and later, a delicate dismissal of the son’s involvement with drugs by an otherwise vigilante media, do leave some questions unanswered.

Following the July 11 bomb blasts in Mumbai the media, especially television, came in for sharp criticism. Repeated images of police round-ups of youth in minority dominated areas created the public impression that dozens of Muslim suspects were being interrogated. The subsequent release of all these persons, save one or two, did not attract comparative coverage. This raised questions about the ethics of television channels that actively contributed to creating a public image of who the guilty are but then remained silent when the answer proved indecisive. A specific case related to a prominent Hindi television channel. The channel broadcast an inaccurate report relaying that after the bomb blasts firecrackers were burst at Padgah village, off Mumbai. The fact that the village is minority dominated and that it is home to persons allegedly accused of participating in earlier terror attacks, added spice if not truth to the broadcast. Agitated residents protested this coverage to the village sarpanch and registered an oral complaint with the police (who refused to register a first information report, FIR). A meeting was thereafter held with various members of the mohalla committee condemning the coverage. Several sarpanches and gram panchayat chiefs attended the meeting. However, the said channel carried no correction in its subsequent telecasts. Similarly, an accompanying story reveals local and national media coverage of the recent violence in Mangalore where the role of the police has also escaped any media scrutiny.

"If properties are sealed in Delhi I will have four OB (Outside Broadcast) vans stationed there to capture the story but if a much more serious issue arising out of farm labourers’ struggles erupts in Chhattisgarh or Jharkhand or the North-east, I am limited by the fact that I just do not have an OB van located there," says Sardesai. "How do I telecast a protest in Chhattisgarh or Jharkhand when I do not have an OB van stationed there? Therefore a protest in Chhattisgarh or Adivasis being shot at in Kalinga won’t make news the same way as workers being beaten in Gurgaon, just out of Delhi. It is the tyranny of distance at work here."

Barkha Dutt, managing editor of NDTV, strongly disagrees with the contention that the media suffers from any negative tendencies except an urban tilt or bias. "Whether it’s farmer suicides, judicial mistrials, corruption and government accountability, television in particular has been unsparing and relentless in its scrutiny. I would concede to a certain degree of urban bias – perhaps language and identification issues tend to make us highlight urban issues in a more focused way than rural stories. But this does not diminish the validity of either set of stories."

She adds, "I don’t think there is any motive or any necessary blackout. Several reports have been done on the mining controversy in Jharkhand. The cola issue is a perfect example where big corporates have been taken on in the media in the backdrop of the pesticide controversy. I do not buy the argument that some hidden relation with corporates defines editorial choices. Absences may go back to the one bias we are guilty of – urban oriented reporting. "

Increasing space given to religio-ritualistic stories is also a relatively recent phenomenon. It is not only the channels but also pages of the print media that are lending more and more space to festivals like Holi and Diwali and even customs like Karva Chauth! On October 2 this year, Dussehra day, 16 lakh persons (at the minimum – the outside figure is 20 lakh) converged at Nagpur to celebrate the golden jubilee of the mass conversion of Dalits, under the leadership of Dr Ambedkar, to Buddhism. While the local Marathi press did cover the event, providing its own colour and interpretation, the national media and television channels simply skipped the story.

Ignored by the media: Dhamma Deeksha, Nagpur, October 2006

"CNN/IBN did a forty-seconder on the event but it is true we did not carry the pictures. We did however follow this up with a panel discussion on the contribution of Ambedkar. There is a point there in the absence of coverage but it is the geographical factor – Delhi is easier but it is true that we must introspect on the issue. Maybe we are making excuses," reflects Sardesai. "I am not however convinced that there is a caste bias actively at work. There is a high degree of ignorance. Maybe ignorance and bias can often converge."

Besides these stark exclusions, celebrity and the glamorous lifestyle – page three journalism – have also eaten into public space. "Both media and society are also trapped in the celebrity fame game. We seem to be interested in titillating rather than informing," admits Sardesai, adding that this excessive coverage of parties or fashion shows in society prevent rational thinking. "They do not go beyond being titillating."

Dutt differs. "Page three was the invention of newspapers before it became an event on television. I think all of this stuff has its own place as long as it doesn’t diminish the core values of news gathering, as long as it remains the equivalent of the back pages of a magazine."

On September 29 a ghastly gang rape and mass murder at Kherlanji in Maharashtra’s Bhandara district left four members of a Dalit family brutally massacred with Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange, the father, being the lone survivor. The Maharashtra police and administration have continuously been making irresponsible statements (see accompanying story) and events so far already suggest a clear attempt to suppress evidence of the crime during the primary stage of investigations itself. The post-mortem report is a travesty of a document and despite the gory conditions in which the mother and daughter’s bodies were found, Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (which is applicable for the offence of rape) has not even been applied. Can or will the Kherlanji case become a Jessica Lal or Priyadarshini Mattoo case for the media? Will it symbolise the fight for justice or the need to critically revamp our criminal justice system?

Both Sardesai and Dutt agree that this could be a test case for the Indian media. "Justice for Jessica/Priyadarshini and the recent brutal killings in rural India is a test case for us. Will we run a sustained national campaign on it? Will there be sustained interest?" Sardesai asks. Adds Dutt, "We need to cross the glaring rural urban divide… and, more importantly, move our viewers out of that disconnect as well."

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 1

The protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news

October 31, 2006

Siddharth Vardarajan Courtesy: The Hindu

It is an unfortunate fact that both on television and in print the national media seems to show an increasing tendency to ignore the problems of working people, especially the peasantry and working class, and the poor in general. Coverage, when it occurs, is superficial and episodic. But what accounts for this bias? I think there are several distinct but interrelated factors.

First, is the effect so-called market forces have on the media. In general, the economics of the Indian media is driven by advertising revenues. This, in turn, means that editorial content must yield space to advertising because it is the latter which pays the bills! So there is a problem of real physical space – column inches or minutes on prime time – for all kinds of news. But excessive dependence on advertisers also means that advertisers get to have a say in both the content of specific news items (especially at particular moments of controversy) and also in terms of whether the overall ambience created by the news helps sell a product or not. And within this it is clear that an advertiser would not like to have a commercial for his or her product sandwiched by news of starvation, poverty, disease.

Second, the composition of the newsroom, particularly of the English national news media and even the electronic vernacular channels, leans heavily towards higher socio-economic demographic strata. So there is also a sense in which the sensibility of the average journalist may not really be attuned to the problems of the poor and marginalised.

Third, the established political parties, the government and those who wield economic and social influence play a very big role in defining what constitutes "news". What the prime minister says or does, for example, is always considered news. The same goes for statements and decisions by captains of industry. But news of people’s struggles and problems get dismissed as "activism", "NGOs" etc. We saw how farmers’ suicides were not considered news (except in The Hindu and a few other papers) but when the prime minister travelled to Maharashtra there was quite a bit of coverage. But as soon as the PM moved to other things, so too did the news coverage. Hardly anyone took note of the fact that farmers’ suicides actually increased after the visit.

As an institution, the media has bought into the myth that big business and the security forces can do no wrong, and that in any case, the protest of some poor folk being displaced in some “remote” part of the country is not news

So within the constraints of the market and of the social demographics of the media there is also bias and lack of professionalism. And I think these are the factors that account for vast aspects of the lived experience of the majority of Indians being considered irrelevant as far as "news" is concerned.

As far as your questions on page three kind of journalism is concerned, I am not at all against media coverage for "society" events, fashion shows, religious festivals and the like. Supplements exist precisely to cater to sectional interests and as society becomes more prosperous and variegated this is only to be expected.

Sadly, however, our supplements, instead of catering to the diversity of tastes which we know exists, have become homogenised around a shallow "golden mean" of celebrity news, gossip, astrology, vastu and other obscurantist cults, and a certain kind of film writing that has nothing to do with paying Bollywood the due it deserves. The same is true for what passes as "spiritual" writing, which is more akin to pop psychology than the exploration of philosophical issues and concerns.

And unfortunately, many of these kinds of things have begun to invade mainstream news spaces, further marginalising the problems and concerns of the majority of Indians.

The Kalinganagar struggle (in Orissa) is an interesting one and I’m glad you brought it up. Not only was the horror of the massacre of the protesting tribals played down – there was no live coverage, no breathless commentary of the type even the smallest terrorist incident provokes – and even though what followed was especially gruesome (the mutilation of the bodies of the dead tribals by the police) there was virtually no coverage. The reason I think Kalinganagar became a no-go area was because it came at the intersection of three media blind spots – first, the protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news; second, allegations of wrongdoing by the security forces are almost always ignored or played down whether they occur in Kashmir, the North-east or against the tribals in Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and elsewhere; third, the target of public opposition was an industrial project which the media sees as India’s passport to economic development. So as an institution, we have bought into the myth that big business and the security forces can do no wrong, and that in any case, the protest of some poor folk being displaced in some "remote" part of the country is not news.

I don’t think global finance has played a role in the Indian print media scene since other than on a very limited basis there is no foreign capital in newspapers. As for television, I am not sure our channels are so bad because of global finance. Star News is linked to Murdoch and CNN-IBN and Channel 7 to the AOL-Time Warner, I suppose. But the coverage of all channels is uniformly bad. But certainly, as the role of domestic monopolies and global finance increase, I think all these negative trends that I have spoken about will get magnified.

Can the Kherlanji case become a Jessica Lal or Priyadarshini Mattoo case for the media? You know, I doubt it will. The Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Mattoo cases became middle class cause célèbres not just because the men involved in the crime were powerful and influential but also because we as a middle class society could identify with the victims. She was one of us, is what every right-thinking person in Delhi would have thought when they heard the shocking news of the acquittals of the killers of Priyadarshini and Jessica. But when it comes to Kalinganagar or Kherlanji, there is not just a remoteness of physical distance but also of caste and class that kicks in.

Or even the BMW case. Had the Nanda boy killed "one of us", I don’t think the case would have gone the shocking way it did. At least not without the media kicking up a fuss. At the same time, I want to clarify that being a middle class victim of a crime committed by a powerful person does not now mean justice will be done. In our social hierarchy, the politician and the policeman are still top of the pile. But the Jessica and Priyadarshini cases have stripped them of a certain amount of immunity enjoyed. This is a good thing. But as in these two cases I would like to see our justified concerns being converted to all cases where powerful offenders target the weak and defenceless, the Dalits, Muslims and tribals. No doubt the media, including my paper, The Hindu, have a big role to play in sensitising public opinion on this point.

(As told to Teesta Setalvad/ Communalism Combat.)

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 2

Massacre in Maharashtra

October 31, 2006

Kherlanji massacre: September 2006

Dalit killings in Kherlanji

The murder of four members of a Dalit family in the village of Kherlanji, population 780, in Bhandara district, 120 kilometres from Maharashtra’s winter capital of Nagpur on September 29, was not merely ghastly. The killings, which followed the mutilation (in public), multiple rapes (of the mother and daughter) and parading naked of the entire family for over three hours, are an indicator of the impunity that the perpetrators believe they enjoy. Incidents such as these are not uncommon in states like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh but have sent shock waves through the Dalit community in Maharashtra.

The victims were Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange’s wife, Surekha, 44, his daughter, Priyanka, 18, and sons, Roshan, 23, and Sudhir, 21. Ever since this shameful incident took place, the local police administration appears to be doing its best to suppress evidence, lending strength to local activists’ demands for a CBI investigation. In what has now become a sorry feature of almost every incident of brutality in the country, the FIR is itself faulty and is being challenged by the lone survivor. The first post-mortem report prepared by government doctors does not even accurately record the injuries visible on the naked and mutilated bodies of the victims. While the Prevention of Atrocities Act has been applied to this case, Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code, the section related to the offence of rape, has, significantly, been omitted.

Meanwhile, statewide protests against the massacre have gained ground in Nagpur, Mumbai and surrounding villages and districts, finding a national echo the day the Nagpur bandh was called on November 10. Yet the state of Maharashtra appears determined to smother public outrage. From October 29 to November 6, the Youth for Social Justice, under an umbrella organisation, held a peaceful dharna near the Babasaheb Ambedkar statue at RBI Chowk, Nagpur. Day after day, as news of the dharna spread, Dalits and others began visiting the protest site in significant numbers, leading the local police to inexplicably and suddenly withdraw permission for the peaceful protest. Thereafter, when another protest turned somewhat violent, the state’s home minister, RR Patil rather dubiously stated that Naxalites appeared to be responsible for the protests. Locally, under the guidance of the commissionerate in Nagpur, policemen hauled up women protesters and beat them brutally. Even as we go to press, activists are possibly facing arrest.

Three days after the incident (which first drew local media attention on October 2), 16-20 lakh Dalits converged at Nagpur to celebrate the golden jubilee of the mass conversion of Dalits to Buddhism in 1956 (see accompanying story). Sensing the potentially explosive situation if news of the massacre leaked out, initially the administration did all it could to suppress events.

Surekha Bhotmange and her daughter Priyanka were humiliated, bitten, beaten black and blue and then gang-raped in full public view for an hour before their remains were thrown into a nullah. A local policeman told the first fact-finding team to visit Kherlanji (of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti which visited the village on October 6) that the marauders had pushed sticks into the women’s private parts while Bhotmange’s two sons were kicked and stabbed repeatedly. The assaulters had mutilated the men’s private parts too, disfigured their faces and tossed them in the air before the duo were flung to the ground.

As dusk settled on the small hamlet, the four bodies of this Dalit family lay strewn in the village chaupal (square) with the killers pumping fists in the air and still kicking at the bodies. But their rage was far from spent. In an even more macabre dance of death, some angry men went on to rape the badly mutilated corpses of the two women.

Only one woman from the village tried to intervene. Bhaiyyalal, cowering close by, was an eyewitness to events, as was Rajan, a relative of the Bhotmanges. A single policeman now offers protection to these witnesses who cannot return to their villages following the incident of mass terror. Rajan, who lives in a neighbouring village three km away, had his face slapped by a policeman when he went to record his statement as witness to the incident. Fortunately, sound advice by an active team of Nagpur-based lawyers led four witnesses and survivors of the carnage to record their statements under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, CrPC, before a local magistrate in early November.

The fact that the Bhotmanges owned land in Kherlanji where they had settled 18 years ago – land which they had reclaimed from landlords and which they tilled to live a life of dignity – coupled with the fact that Surekha refused to live a life cowering in fear, appear to be the main motives for the ghastly crimes. For months prior to the incident, open threats had been levelled against the family and an FIR in this connection had also been lodged. That the local police refused to take cognisance of the very real threat faced by this Dalit family living in a hopeless minority speaks volumes about the attitude of the local administration.

The first battle that the Bhotmanges fought was with the local landlord who had usurped their land and as a result of which the other castes had sworn revenge, claiming that the extermination of a Dalit family would cost them nothing. For over a decade police complaints lodged by the family had met with little response. Days prior to the massacre, on September 3 Surekha Bhotmange’s cousin, Siddhartha Gajbhiye, the police-patil of neighbouring Dhusala village, was badly beaten by Kherlanji villagers. It was then that Siddhartha’s brother, Rajendra, shifted him to Kamptee in Nagpur district, 100 km away. The offence related to the incident was lodged at Kamptee and the case was thereafter referred back to the Bhandara police for investigation. That is when offences were registered against 14 persons and when an identification parade was conducted by the police.

Both Surekha and Bhaiyyalal identified the culprits notwithstanding the reigning threat. Ironically, on the morning of September 29 itself, these 14 persons were arrested and produced before a Mohadi court and then released on bail. As soon as they been set free, these persons first drove down to Kandri, a village 10 km from Kherlanji, in search of Rajendra and Siddhartha. But when they were unable to find them, they rushed to their village, baying for the Bhotmanges’ blood. They reached the Dalit family’s hut to find Surekha and her children preparing the evening meal. And that is when they took their revenge.

CAMPAIGN
Can the Kherlanji massacre become a test case for the struggle for justice?
While the local media began its coverage of this incident from the first week of October itself, apart from the DNA newspaper published from Mumbai, the rest of the ‘national’ media awoke to the event only after a peaceful dharna was held by activists in November. As we go to press today, the real challenge is whether this incident of brutal mass murder in a relatively remote area can generate national outrage the way the Jessica Lal case or the Priyadarshini Mattoo case has.
Meanwhile, CC asks its readers to participate in a campaign to demand justice for the victims in Kherlanji. The campaign demands:

A CBI probe into the Kherlanji massacre.

A special court with a time-bound schedule to conduct a day-to-day trial to prosecute the guilty.

Serious witness protection to be provided by central forces.

Criminal prosecution of the policemen and doctors responsible for suppression of the incident.

A campaign against the suppression of protests against the incident by the Maharashtra government.

When I visited Kherlanji, the village wore a ghostly shroud of silence despite heavy police presence. Bhaiyyalal had packed up and removed his belongings from the family home – a cramped hut with nothing in it, really – to move in with his in-laws at Deulgaon village, 20 km away.

Kherlanji lies in Mohadi tehsil and the Bhotmanges were one of the two Mahar families that lived in a village dominated by OBCs, the landlord clans here. Bhaiyyalal moved to the village to farm his mother’s five-acre plot of land about 18 years ago but it was Surekha who tilled the fields and fought to regain the family’s hold over a portion of land grabbed by the OBCs, castes which are a decisive political force in these parts. The Bhotmanges’ cramped hut is proof of their abject poverty. Despite this, Surekha toiled hard to send her children to school and college. Priyanka was a National Cadet Corps, NCC cadet who dreamt of joining the armed forces.

The vicious massacre was clearly pre-planned. Village heads first attempted to tarnish Surekha’s reputation by spreading rumours that she was involved in an illicit relationship with Siddhartha Gajbhiye, the police-patil of neighbouring Dhusala village. Siddhartha Gajbhiye is actually Surekha’s cousin and a Dalit himself. The district superintendent of police, Suresha Sagar admits that the Andhalgaon police did not attend to the Bhotmanges’ calls, nor did they investigate the crime immediately after the incident. Siddhartha had in fact made a desperate call to the police station when he learnt that the Bhotmanges had first been attacked, at around 6.15 p.m. on that fateful day. While about 32 persons have been arrested so far, the victim survivors have stated that the main accused roam scot-free.

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 3

Caste out

October 31, 2006

Dalits and Dalit issues are largely absent in the Indian media

On Dussehra day, which fell on October 2 this year, the Dalits of India celebrated a great occasion. It was the golden jubilee of Dr BR Ambedkar’s Dhamma Deeksha (conversion to Buddhism). On the same Dussehra day in 1956, 15 lakh Dalits embraced Buddhism along with Ambedkar in Nagpur. The occasion was of such importance that Dalits who had embraced Buddhism arrived in lakhs, coming to Nagpur from all over the country as the jubilee neared. An estimated 16 to 20 lakh people thronged the streets of Nagpur and converged at Deeksha Bhoomi, the memorial constructed to mark Ambedkar’s great conversion.

A two-day World Buddhist Convention was organised as part of celebrations in the city along with scores of other programmes beginning several days prior to the actual celebration. The convention, which was organised mainly by a Dalit diaspora organisation, Ambedkar International Mission, included participants from 22 countries and comprised western scholars and experts apart from the monkhood from various countries.

In September 2006 the Western Buddhist Order, Birmingham, UK, held a Conference in London on "50 Years of Dhamma Revolution" and later organised an international meet at Nagpur as part of the weeklong celebrations in October.

One mammoth celebration was the "Dhamma Deeksha Suvarna Mahotsav" held by the Deeksha Bhoomi Committee of Nagpur at Deeksha Bhoomi, the site where Dr BR Ambedkar embraced Buddhism. The stupa at Deeksha Bhoomi, which was constructed as a memorial to the event, contains Dr Ambedkar’s ashes. Lakhs of Dalit Buddhists who arrived from all over India visited the stupa for a glimpse of the casket in which his ashes lie.

As Dalit Buddhists arrived two days in advance, Nagpur city surged with a sea of humanity paying tribute and in reverence to both Ambedkar and Buddha.

Even as all this was happening in Nagpur, there was no trace or news of these events in the electronic media, which normally scours the streets for news. The only cameraman present at the site belonged to a local city cable network that was covering the October 2 evening Suvarna Mahotsav live. Why did the Indian electronic media ignore this event and reduce it to a local event fit only for a local cable network?

Interestingly, in an October 2005 issue of The Times of India with writer Vikram Seth as its special guest editor the paper had predicted in its headlines that the golden jubilee of Dr Ambedkar’s Dhamma Deeksha would be celebrated as a big event in 2006. Unfortunately, the Indian media turned a blind eye to the celebrations in Nagpur, a central Indian city considered the second capital of Maharashtra. If such an event had taken place in Mumbai, would the media have covered it? Just as rainfall in Mumbai or Delhi or Kolkata makes news?

Although Dr BR Ambedkar finally decided to embrace Buddhism in 1956, he had in fact already made his famous announcement at the Yeola Conference as early as 1935: "Unfortunately for me I was born a Hindu Untouchable. It was beyond my power to prevent that but I declare that it is within my power to refuse to live under ignoble and humiliating conditions. I solemnly assure you that I will not die a Hindu."

Appropriating democratic terminology such as ‘we the people’, the media in fact treats Dalits as ‘who the people?’. Ignorance cannot be an acceptable excuse where such selective coverage of India and the Indian people is both misleading and dangerous

Dr Ambedkar eventually embraced Buddhism in Nagpur on Dussehra day in 1956, which fell on October 14 that year, and kept his promise made at the Yeola Conference in 1935. An interesting and little known fact is that the place initially chosen for the ceremony of Ambedkar’s conversion was Bombay (Mumbai). It was at the insistence of people from the Nagpur region that Dr Ambedkar shifted the venue of his deeksha to Nagpur. Later that year, on October 16 he converted another four lakh people to Buddhism at Chandrapur in Maharashtra. Even Chandrapur celebrated the event this year with a congregation of six lakhs gathering there on October 16. As usual the event went unreported. If Nagpur was too remote for the media gaze, Chandrapur was no doubt as remote as the Amazonian jungles!

Now, if Mumbai had been the venue for the conversion in 1956 and if the celebration were to be held in Mumbai, would the media have covered the event any more responsibly? This seems unlikely. About five lakh Dalits congregate at Chaitya Bhoomi, the site of Dr BR Ambedkar’s cremation at Dadar in Mumbai on December 6 every year, in much the same way that lakhs throng Nagpur to commemorate the deeksha event. Mumbai roads get blocked in early December every year with Dalits arriving days in advance to catch a glimpse of Dr Ambedkar’s ashes again at the city site. So far in all these years the lakhs of Dalits surging into Mumbai seem to have made no news. Since Dr Ambedkar attained mahaparinibban (death) in 1956, the year 2006 would mark 50 years of Dr Ambedkar’s mahaparinibban i.e. it would be his 50th death anniversary. The crowds are likely to be several times larger than the normal five lakhs that gather in Mumbai on that day. One can only wait and see whether this Mumbai event makes it to the news channels or not.

In an age where multiple channels vie for news, Nagpur did not figure as a newsworthy event. Even the annual Mumbai event of December 6, Dr Ambedkar’s Mahaparinibban day, has not been reported in all these years. What can one deduce from this? The media suffers from ignorance if not outright casteist sentiments.

Another event that also fell on October 2 this year was Dussehra, for which live television coverage of the Puja (read Pujo) pandals at Chittaranjan Park, in Delhi, in Kolkata, continued over days with glamorous anchor girls relaying events. News channels vied for live coverage from various pandals all over India. During all 10 days of Dussehra, viewers were also reminded, day-to-day, of the significance of each day of the festival. Media anchors, urban elite Oxbridge graduates oblivious to the happenings in the rest of the country among the masses of the Indian people, decided what to portray and how prominently and when to do so. Appropriating democratic terminology such as ‘we the people’, the media in fact treats Dalits as ‘who the people?’. Ignorance cannot be an acceptable excuse where such selective coverage of India and the Indian people is both misleading and dangerous.

October 2 is also the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. Even the birth anniversary of the ‘father of the nation’ ran into several pages of newsprint only because of the newly released film, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, which brought Gandhiism in contemporary packaging to film-goers. And yet Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday must voluntarily have been celebrated by only a few thousand Indians while hundreds of thousands of Dalits do not stop thronging to Nagpur, Mumbai and Chandrapur in reverence to Ambedkar every year. What will it take for the television cameras to gradually open their apertures to the brilliance of Ambedkar and Buddha, and report fairly on these events?

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 4

The last shall be the first

October 31, 2006

The social identity of the worker

The only condition the SAIL management put to us was please stop those drums and dancing outside."

Ten days in a struggle, Saranda Thekka Mazdoor Sangh, Megahattuburu 1983.

The scale on which working class1 activities are measured and interpreted varies from one extreme to the other. For some, especially left intellectuals and the workers themselves, the working class and their organisations are sacrosanct. For the rest of society the working class is either of little or no interest, considered a hindrance to the growth of industry or at times disrupters of ‘normal’ life. Propaganda of the establishment has consistently fanned the fumes of this latter perception.

A worker first and last?

An objective assessment is therefore urgently called for. This becomes imperative, as the working class is not only a perennial factor in the cycle of development but, more importantly, a critical factor for social stability. Historical negligence of this latter characteristic has brought into focus serious issues that need to be addressed, the eminent danger being the exploitation of the social and cultural weaknesses of the working class by fascist forces which inevitably work against the interests of social stability and prosperity.

One of the prime factors for the present state of affairs is the trade union leadership’s preoccupation with ‘economic benefits’ while neglecting the social identity of the worker. Evidence of this can be seen in industrial areas where at the factory gate the red flag flies while on the rooftop of the worker’s home the saffron2 one flutters. Unity is thus limited to the shop floor while at all other places where the workers interact i.e. on public transport to and from work, within their neighbourhood, etc. there are fist fights, scuffles, abuses and anything but activity that would enhance cooperation, a sense of community and lasting unity.

Thus the social and cultural strengths of the worker get overwhelmed by negative tendencies i.e. the workers’ role in social conflict or the agendas of the right. These negative tendencies are not the dominating aspects of their culture or identity. Most workers in India are first or second generation workers, all coming from agricultural, semi-peasantry, artisan, housewifery or other rural occupations. For generations brought up in a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Migrating from caste victimisation or landlessness, they are brought to the factory or the metro from the richness of their social life only to see it get discarded together with the effluents of industry. With the neglect of the social identity of the worker and the limiting of trade union activity to economics, he/she is tempered and limited to economic advancement and interest, this perception obliterating the important roles they are needed to play in social harmony and advancement. Besides this, he/she becomes another tool within the modes of production, which ultimately weakens his/her power as the force of production. Coming from a society of diverse cultures, he/she is reformatted into a mono-sapience. Thus the neglect of the social, cultural or gender identity of a worker amounts to strait-jacketing him/her, a known fascist strategy. Why then will the fascist forces not exploit it for their own ends and why will they not succeed?

The memorable slogan, ‘workers of the world unite’, has been misused rhetorically reducing it to a cliché. This is particularly unfortunate at a time when it i.e. international solidarity is most needed as a strategy to expose and combat the agenda of neo-liberal globalisation.

Despite these facts, at almost every place where workers sell their labour much of their social and cultural strengths is still retained. This phenomenon is particularly strong in Jharkhand3 where first generation Adivasis4 form the backbone of the unorganised sector/contract or daily wage workers. In this new milieu they are exposed to alienation in all spheres of their existence, putting them in a better position to understand the contradictions between a humane life and that of the civilised world. The history of the social movements here, right from the Santhal Hul (1855) to the present day movement5 of communities refusing to give up their lands for greenfield mining projects6 (www.firstpeoplesfirst.in) have created within the Adivasis a pride for their distinct identity, culture and homeland.

Oh bring back my Bonnie to me!

While politically and socially this is an encouraging situation, so far it has not been able to translate itself into bringing any benefits to the Adivasi people. In order to understand this ground situation it is important to understand the migration of Adivasis to outside labour sites historically. The Adivasi economy has been a self-sufficient one where labour is not a commodity to be sold. On the other hand, work or the ability to work is honoured. The very idea of selling one’s labour is considered mortifying and has no place in the Adivasi economy. This may be a bit difficult for the non-Adivasi world to understand and therefore we would better understand it in the way some of us or attitudes in general consider a sex worker selling his or her skills for a price. Economists have brushed this aside by considering the Adivasi economy as ‘primitive’, we will leave that for another debate, but it begs the question: Why then do the Adivasis migrate to sell their labour?

Colonisation of the Adivasi homelands dispossessed them of everything they had, their land, forest, knowledge systems, etc. Dispossession led to pauperisation, forcing them to other lands i.e. tea gardens in Assam and Bengal, forest labour in the Andaman islands, farm labour in the green revolution states and in the past decade, domestic labour in the metros7 . Pauperisation forced them to migrate in search of food to survive. One can only imagine the plight of this transition that they were forced into. If the above allegory of the sex workers is taken, the Adivasis had to psychologically undergo the plight of sex workers who are forced into the sex trade. There is a word we use to explain this situation but it would be insufficient to grasp the magnitude of the impact when we are talking of over a million people who undergo it as a community.

For the rest of society the working class is either of little or no interest, considered a hindrance to the growth of industry or at times disrupters of ‘normal’ life. Propaganda of the establishment has consistently fanned the fumes of this latter perception

Prior to the new economic policies of this reform era, the only jobs these migrant Adivasis could get was as contract labour in the steel cities, their captive mines and construction sites. With industries going in for bottom line economics, they have been cutting ‘flab’, as they would like to call their workers. Thus the much envied permanent jobs are being reduced and the services they did are being outsourced resulting in a big shift of non-Adivasis to the contract or unorganised sector. The meek will inherit the earth but the mighty grab the jobs and cities like Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Bokaro, etc. are seeing large migration of the unorganised sector Adivasis to wherever they can find work. Most of them return to their villages to situations of semi-starvation. Social tension in a hitherto harmonious society is on the increase. The weakest in these societies bear the brunt of it all – the ageing, women and children. Faced by these mounting problems due to the migration of Adivasis as labourers to the metros and other states and the return of jobless contract labour, social movements in Jharkhand took the next logical step which has the potential for bringing in benefits to the Adivasis.

Where were you my brother?

In April this year in the massive steel city of Bokaro in Jharkhand over 3,00,000 people, all related in some way or the other to industry, participated in a Mazdoor Adhikar Mela, MAM (workers rights festival). For three days they sang, danced, discussed and entertained themselves in a multicultural folk extravaganza. Designed on the template of the World Social Forum, MAM was a joint effort by Jharkhandi social movements and their human rights organisations, women’s organisations, trade unions and labour related set-ups. For the first time in the history of this eastern industrial belt, social movements joined trade unions to form a common platform not only for dialogue but together with their families, especially children, relatives, neighbours, etc., to participate in the fair/festival.

Come dance with me

The aim of MAM was to:

Bring the rights of unorganised and contract workers back on the political agenda.
Strengthen linkages among unorganised and contract workers of this eastern region.
Collectively look for innovative responsiveness – reinventing worker bargaining power.
Strengthen the trade union movement
Develop linkages between the social movements and the workers rights movements.

Inspired by a quote by revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg, "If I can’t dance, I do not want to be part of your revolution", they decided to have a mela.

A Central Organisation Committee, COC was formed, which was responsible for organising the event. The COC saw the present neo-liberal free market situation as opportunities:

1. While capital accumulation is @ 300 per cent, labour costs are being cut – a contradiction not attended to.

2. Spread and effectiveness of mass media is unutilised by the labour and the left.

3. Subaltern politics’ (people’s movements) linkages with worker’s issues are not addressed.

4. Potential of unorganised and non-permanent workers’ hold on modes of production are underestimated.

Swami Agnivesh was the chief guest at the inauguration ceremony where five live torches were lit by labourers from different states. He made one of the most memorable and fiery speeches I have ever heard from him. The entire speech is now on CD and is being played in hundreds of shanties where workers live. Over a hundred children organised by the Coordination of Child Labour came from West Bengal, Orissa and Jharkhand. Comrade Gita came from Tamil Nadu with 30 members of the construction workers union. A similar number of Adivasi domestic workers came from Delhi.

Five thousand delegates sat at 24 seminars in six tents during the two days. The theme of the event was "Letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred thoughts merge", adapted from the famous quote by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung8 who, incidentally, still inspires the subaltern classes here. Delegates took back this quote printed on red scarves that they display beside their gods in their makeshift huts.

Follow-ups to this historic event are now being organised all over Jharkhand. From November 22 to 25, 2006 an assembly on workers rights, Mazdoor Adhikar Sammelan, is being organised in Chaibasa. While hundreds of thousands of Adivasis find their voice and space, the Indian media renders them voiceless by refusing to portray their life and struggle to the world.

(Xavier Dias has worked as a trade unionist and human rights activist in Jharkhand for the past thirty years. He is currently the spokesperson of the Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee, JMACC, www.firstpeoplesfirst.in and editor of Khan Kaneej Aur ADHIKAR, a monthly bulletin for communities affected by mining, reachxdias@gmail.com.)

Endnotes:

My gratitude to Peter Waterman, editor of NILS (Network of International Labour Studies) and former head of Labour Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands, for the title of this paper and the inspiration he gave me to understand labour issues from the local to the international.

1 As the case of agricultural workers is not the same, for the purposes of this article worker means the worker in the industrial sector.

2 The colour of the parties of the Hindu right.

3 Jharkhand, for the purposes of this article, includes districts in Orissa, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal that form the original Jharkhand known today as Greater Jharkhand.

4 For the purposes of this article Adivasis include the outcastes and other non-schedule ethnic groups in Jharkhand.

5 This is just one example. Jharkhand is dotted with a plethora of movements on issues that directly affect its people.

6 For the past three years and being part of a state alliance, JMACC, the Adivasis have stalled 42 mining and allied projects; a people’s imposed curfew on any mining personnel in their area is in operation in 23 places where these projects are planned.

7 According to one estimate there are 4,00,000 Adivasi domestic workers in Delhi alone, most being young girls.

8 On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People, February 27, 1957.

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 5

Studied silence

October 31, 2006

The media and mass movements: Notes of an activist

As a human rights activist, one stands committed to the right to freedom of expression and in turn to the freedom of the press. However, the shrinking space in the media for movements for people’s rights remains a growing concern for citizens of the country committed to democracy. On the one hand there is a segregation of news into the regional pages of newspapers, limiting important coverage to locales and regions. On the other hand there appears to be a dominance or monopoly of so-called national and world news.

In Chhattisgarh we find newspapers bringing out city editions. As a result, the news from a particular region in the state is reported in the respective city editions and barely carried in other editions. So a citizen sitting in Raipur does not get the opportunity to read significant news emerging out of the Bilaspur region or for that matter any other region in Chhattisgarh.

Take for example the Shaheed Niyogi Diwas observed at Bhilai, the steel city of Chhattisgarh, on September 28, 2006. Eight thousand workers, peasants, women and youth from various parts of the state gathered to pay homage to the martyr, reflecting also that a dynamic movement like the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha was alive. This significant mobilisation was restricted to a news item – although a prominent one – only in the Bhilai edition of almost all newspapers published from Raipur, Chhattisgarh’s capital city. In contrast, the visit of a national political leader like Sonia Gandhi to Chhattisgarh a few days later was prominently placed in all editions of all newspapers published from Raipur.

Only a decade and a half ago, the media’s response to democratic movements was enthusiastic and palpable. While the era of globalisation and neo-liberal policies has prised open consumerist lust and competition, it appears to have dampened media interest in democratic movements. Last month a mass-based organisation held a press conference to speak about its proposed campaign against the use of machines in farming like the harvester, which renders jobless thousands of agricultural workers who are then forced to migrate to other parts of the country. It also provided case studies of bonded labourers in Mahasamund district who were released by the Supreme Court of India way back in April 1988. Many of them were present to narrate their stories about how the state government had failed to comply with even the minimum requirements for providing them with reasonable work and land for livelihood.

The press conference was held at the Press Club in Raipur. But the next day only one of the morning newspapers published from Raipur carried a report of the press conference. The argument offered was that the press conference was ill timed as it was held on the eve of Diwali. The timing did not prevent newspapers from carrying news of certain religious and social functions in full detail. Media preference was clear. A democratic movement’s protest against a policy that would render hundreds of thousands of labourers jobless went unreported. But a large portion of the state’s dailies did have space for and were full of Diwali advertisements – displaying greetings by political leaders or commercial enterprises!

Media bias is revealed when the response to a mass rally or protest is contained in box items that decry the manner in which entire roads were blocked and the public suffered because of the adamance of agitators resulting in traffic jams… The evidence of shrinking democratic space is visible in the limitation of public rallies and meetings to a cordoned off area by the law and order machinery and in the fact that the media finds such mass protests an eyesore

The capacity of the media to put forth the facts and place these in the correct perspective is also on the decline. This may be attributed largely to the commercialisation of the media. In common parlance one often hears of the "newspaper industry". It is not without reason that the heads of newspaper houses also occupy top editorial posts. This is a pattern visible in the past 15 years or so. There is a definite connection between patterns of responsibility and ownership and the shrinking space for democratic movements in the media.

In small towns there is yet another trend that has become a permanent yet disturbing characteristic of newspapers. The person who owns the agency for distribution of a newspaper is also the "local correspondent" of the publication. In most cases the newspaper agency is in the hands of a local trader or contractor who is sometimes also a local politician. So it is no surprise that local rights-based movements and agitations hardly find any space in the newspapers. If and when they do get some space it is with a particular bias against the organisations or individuals thus creating a climate of hostility and anger against such people’s movements.

During the struggles for the identification, release and rehabilitation of thousands of bonded labourers in Chhattisgarh’s Mahasamund district, the focus of the news was more on the fact that it happened to be Christian social activists who were leading the campaign. A people’s movement was thus sought to be communalised with motives such as "converting these labourers to Christianity" being attributed to the activists. The media reported these baseless allegations uncritically, thus failing in its role. For three years, from 1986-1988, we witnessed a struggle for the release of these bonded labourers as a result of which the Supreme Court of India delivered landmark judgements leading to the release of 4,000 bonded labourers from a single district in the country. Yet the media did not even relate or report these historic judicial pronouncements on the rights of citizens kept in bondage for generations.

Thus, shamefully, a democratic movement whereby slaves became aware of their rights and in turn gained a new identity and selfhood as citizens of a free country went unreported in the regional press. That none of the released bonded labourers from Mahasamund has gone back into bondage is due largely to their unionisation. This solidarity and mobilisation led to the next stage of their struggle, the unique zameen satyagraha that enabled them to occupy thousands of acres of fallow land and till it for their livelihood. The media continues to remain silent, refusing to reflect this vibrant democratic movement that remains only as a subject matter of study for academic institutions to be published in the coursebook for Indian Administrative Service, IAS trainees at Mussourie.

Why has the media decided that this story of self-empowerment is unfit for space and public consumption? Could it be because the story would so inspire that it would actually unfold a new democratic consciousness among the deprived and the marginalised sections of society? Twenty years into this unique people’s movement for freedom from slavery has seen not one individual converted to Christianity but this does not find any mention in the free Indian press. Yet while the struggle against a centuries old bondage was under way, prominent stories in four columns appeared on the so-called ‘grand international conspiracy to convert them to Christianity’.

Media bias is revealed when the response to a mass rally or protest is contained in box items that decry the manner in which entire roads were blocked and the public suffered because of the adamance of agitators resulting in traffic jams. No such comments are passed when religious rallies cause similar inconveniences. The evidence of shrinking democratic space is visible in the limitation of public rallies and meetings to a cordoned off area by the law and order machinery and in the fact that the media finds such mass protests an eyesore.

This is not to eschew or undermine many committed journalists who remain on the staff of several newspapers and even television channels. The relentless forces and trends of globalisation restrict their spaces and rights as can be observed from the media response to small but significant acts of democratic mobilisation such as celebrations of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh or Shankar Guha Niyogi. There appears to be a distinct fear lest public opinion be mobilised on issues of justice and rights. It is not without reason that democracy is found to be dangerous both to the forces of globalisation and communalism. Both these trends are two sides of the same coin, complementary to each other’s draconian design to derail democratic development for justice and peace.

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 6

Sad commentary

October 31, 2006

Misreporting on sangh parivar and police atrocities in coastal Karnataka

The violence in Mangalore during the first week of October could not be termed ‘riots’ in the usual sense and a few observations are necessary before examining media reportage of recent events. Coastal Karnataka has the highest literacy rate in the state. Newspapers here have not only a very wide circulation, they are also very influential. This is similarly true of other media. Two newspapers with the widest circulation in the coastal belt, Udayavani and Vijaya Karnataka, have successfully planted, at the common sense level itself, a perception in its readers that Muslims and Christians are "members of other religions". However, such discrimination does not have any basis in reality. Muslims and Christians are an indistinguishable part of life in coastal Karnataka. Their language, food habits, dress – none of these aspects distinguish them from others in the region. Languages like Beary, Catholic Konkani and Protestant Kannada, for example. In most cases, their names alone indicate their religious affiliations. Nevertheless, all the newspapers in the region routinely refer to them as "members of the other religion". The expression "members of the other religion" is an ideological construct: it proclaims that Hinduism is the central religion of India. The Indian Constitution does not give such centrality to the religion of the majority. Nor do people in their daily lives observe it.

The immediate cause of the recent violence in Mangalore was that cows were being transported to a slaughterhouse. Over the past five years cow transport and beef-eating have frequently resulted in violence in coastal Karnataka. Prominent among such incidents is the stripping naked case in Adi Udupi last year (see Communalism Combat, September 2006). On the night of Sunday, March 13, 2005, along the highway (NH 17), the youth of a communal outfit called Hindu Yuva Sena stripped naked Hajabba (65) and his son Hasanabba (28) and beat them up, chasing them around for four interminable hours. A crowd of around 400 people watched this as if it were a sports event. (A few attempted to stop the violence but to no avail.) The fact that the father and son duo were transporting cows (in a Maruti Omni) was the reason for this brutality. They had bought the cows in the same Adi Udupi area from an acquaintance who was a cow selling agent. Buying cows for slaughter was, in fact, Hajabba and Hasanabba’s profession.

Many similar incidents had occurred in coastal Karnataka previously but no one had taken any note of them before. The Adi Udupi incident was, however, reported along with photographs of the stripped Hajabba and Hasanabba by Kannada Prabha (a Kannada daily of the Indian Express group). The legislature also debated the incident. Several rallies condemning the Adi Udupi incident were held in coastal Karnataka. One such massive protest rally was held in Udupi on March 19, 2005. While reporting the event, the region’s mainstream Kannada daily, Udayavani resorted to calumny. The protest procession and rally comprised nearly 10,000 people, some of whom were carrying flags bearing a crescent and a star on a green background. On March 20, 2005, Udayavani printed a photograph of the flag with the bold caption – a lie – that it was the Pakistani flag being waved. The paper lied further, saying that processionists in the rally shouted ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans. The Pakistani flag is in fact quite different and has a vertical white stripe on the left. The flags carried by some people during the rally were those often found flying atop madrassas and masjids. Komu Souharda Vedike (Communal Harmony Forum) then held a protest meet outside the Udayavani head office against its treachery. The superintendent of police and the district commissioner clarified that the flags held by the protesters were not Pakistan flags and that no ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans were shouted. (Where was the need for such a clarification anyway? Thousands had witnessed the procession as it passed through the main streets of Udupi at 3 p.m.)

On the next day (March 21), Udayavani expressed its regrets on the front page. However, its treachery had already yielded fruit. The Adi Udupi incident had been an embarrassment to the sangh parivar. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Udupi’s BJP leaders were quick to distance themselves from events and issued statements to that effect. But once Udayavani had printed this treacherous report, the sangh parivar pounced on the opportunity and organised massive processions and rallies against Muslims throughout the district. In the procession and rally held at Udupi, vicious obscenities were shouted against Muslims. Many Muslim shops, on the procession’s path and elsewhere, were stoned. Udayavani did not report this.

"Hindu opposition" to beef-eating is a recent development. It emerged in the aftermath of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Karnataka does have a Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act but it does not categorically, or even completely, ban cow slaughter. The Act provides for the slaughter of cows that do not yield milk, do not bear calves and are older than 12 years as also the slaughter of oxen that are no longer useful. But butchers need to procure licences from panchayats, municipalities and city corporations. Slaughterhouses are required to maintain a standard of cleanliness. Cattle to be slaughtered must be healthy. Such cattle should be transported, without hurting them, in vehicles meant especially for such transport. Such are the provisions of this Act. In other words, it is an Act to which the description ‘the law is an ass’ fits perfectly! In order to properly implement the Act, the police would need to know the language of cows or, better still, cows would themselves have to testify in law courts.

This time round, all newspapers and media (except the Muslim-owned Vartha Bharati) unanimously covered up the truth. This is a new development. None of the newspapers or media (apart from Vartha Bharati) carried a single sentence about the police atrocities at Ullal, Bunder and Goodina Bali. This, too, is a new development

Be that as it may, given that the law exists, who is responsible for implementing such laws – the police or the Bajrang Dal? And if the transport of cows is a crime, why is selling them not a crime? Do beef-eaters eat beef deliberately so as to hurt Hindus? Who gave the Hindutva brigade the authority to determine who should eat what? The dailies in coastal Karnataka brush aside all such questions and act on the assumption that beef-eating is a most grievous crime. Thus vehicles transporting cattle are stopped, the people in the vehicles are beaten up, their belongings are looted; yet the dailies in coastal Karnataka refuse to consider these actions crimes.

The chief cause of the Mangalore violence in October 2006 was the October 5 district bandh call issued by the Bajrang Dal (protesting the purported transport of cows at Kudroli, Mangalore) and the October 6 district bandh call issued by the Sri Rama Sene (protesting the arrest of Hindutva leader Pramod Mutalik at Chikmagalur). Two people were murdered during the violence and both those killed were Muslims. Both murders were pre-planned. During the violence, which lasted for three or four days, Muslims incurred severe economic losses. But the newspapers and the media in coastal Karnataka did not highlight this. In fact, this time round, all newspapers and media (except the Muslim-owned Vartha Bharati) unanimously covered up the truth. This is a new development.

None of the newspapers or media (apart from Vartha Bharati) carried a single sentence about the police atrocities at Ullal, Bunder and Goodina Bali. This, too, is a new development.

Mangalore media persons cannot claim they knew nothing about it – especially since Vartha Bharati in its October 9 and October 12, 2006 issues had published detailed reports about police atrocities in Mangalore.

The fact that the press consciously resolved to suppress the truth became evident later, at a press conference called by a fact-finding team, and from the behaviour of a reporter who was watched silently by – like Bhishma and Drona in the Mahabharata’s Kaurava Durbar – fellow press persons.

As a result of such strong resolve, the press reported instead the inconveniences faced by people during the curfew: in buying milk, fruits and vegetables, rather than reporting on sangh parivar and police atrocities against Muslims. Going a step further, The Times of India (Mangalore edition) described the guidance police provided to stranded commuters at the Mangalore railway station under the headline "Friendly Policemen Win Hearts" (The Times of India, October 8, 2006, page 3).

The Hindu (Mangalore edition) admired the police for being on duty for 22 continuous hours, without thought for food or drink, during the curfew period. According to the paper, the police department was now confronted with the singular Herculean task of supplying food to the police personnel on duty during curfew hours (The Hindu, October 8, 2006, page 3). On the same page, the paper carried another detailed report praising the swiftness of the "Rapid Intervention (Police) vehicles"! The press was far more loyal than the king!

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 7

A free press?

October 31, 2006

The independence of the Indian media: disturbing trends

The day the Delhi High Court delivered its verdict on the December 2001 Parliament attack case, a couple of colleagues of SAR Geelani, lecturer in Arabic at Delhi University’s Zakir Hussain College and prime accused who along with two others had been given a death sentence by the POTA trial court, rushed back to the staff room with the good news that he had been acquitted. The media followed, bemused and not a little confused that we were celebrating. In particular, I recall being asked by a reporter from the NDTV news channel if we were happy now that the ‘kalank’ (stain) on the name of the college had been removed. I replied with surprise that nothing had blemished our institution’s reputation, for Geelani had consistently asserted his innocence and we had believed in him, but that a number of prestigious media houses, including NDTV, were now publicly covered in muck.

The night before the acquittal, NDTV had once again referred to Geelani as a ‘terrorist’ and member of the Jaish-e-Mohammed! The reporter had the grace to look embarrassed but neither his channel nor any of the others who uncritically accepted and publicised the version of the Special Branch of the Delhi police felt they had erred professionally in what they had done or even seemed to be aware that they had in fact interfered in the conduct of a fair trial for the four accused in the case. No personal apologies followed nor were any corrective editorial measures undertaken. Apparently, the media felt it was simply not accountable for, nor did it assume any responsibility for, its role in influencing public opinion. Media coverage had much to do with creating an environment that dismissed even the possibility of innocence of the accused as a lack of ‘patriotism’.

The point was sharply brought home a few weeks ago when news of the Supreme Court judgement, upholding the death sentence for Mohammad Afzal and fixing the date of his execution, broke. Almost all channels carried the news prominently, as was to be expected. What was objectionable was that the news was accompanied by a replay of Afzal’s so-called ‘confession’ at a press conference that the Special Branch of the Delhi police had called before the trial within days of his arrest. Later, during his trial, Afzal had stated that this ‘confession’ had been extracted after torture and the court had found it inadmissible as evidence. But none of this had the slightest effect on the media, which probably found the sound bites appropriately sensational and accessible with minimum effort. The constant replaying of this ‘confession’ across channels without the subsequent ‘story’ of it being inadmissible evidence played an undeniable role in determining opinion against the appeal for presidential clemency. At another level, by selective reportage surely the media reflected its own attitude towards professional exactitude and credibility?

The coverage of the 1993 Mumbai blasts convictions also follows a selective pattern of focus and emphasis. The 13-year delay in bringing the guilty to book was headlined both in the electronic and the print media but almost no report asked why no action has been taken against those responsible for the two month long pogrom targeting one community, which preceded the blasts in Bombay. The question is not one of balancing crimes against one another but of the media functioning as the conscience of society in ensuring that justice is done and that victims are not denied public expression of their grievances because of their religion, caste or social class.

Of course the media would ‘target’ the high profile Sunjay Dutt case given public interest in the popular Bollywood star, but what accounts for the fact that the incidents relating to Madhukar Sarpotdar, reportedly found to have a stockpile of weapons in his jeep during the 1993 riots, have simply dropped out of media view? The Srikrishna Commission Report gathers dust, yet it documents the complicity of the police and administration. Is this not an issue of vital concern for a democratic society? Does the media not have the responsibility to keep at the forefront, and in the public eye, matters that are sought to be swept under the carpet by vested interests? The notion of freedom of the press loses its critical value if the media fails to perform effectively in this area.

Where is the news coverage of the Malegaon blasts with the dead comprising mainly women and children under 12? Why do questions of the involvement of the Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva organisations in bomb terror attacks on mosques in Parbhani and elsewhere get silenced within days of the involvement of these organisations being discovered? In April this year, bombs exploded inside the home of activists of these organisations in Nanded in Maharashtra killing two persons. It was police investigations that provided details of the involvement of these organisations in making bombs. There is kid glove treatment of all information or news relating to the Hindutva elements that contrasts blatantly with the ease with which any Muslim ‘suspects’ or Islamic organisations are labelled ‘terrorist’ or ‘Pakistani’. This continues unabated despite shocking exposures like the one at Chattisingpora or the Yakoob (Khwaja Yunus) case. It is another matter altogether that Giriraj Kishore of the VHP repeatedly declared in a TV interview with Shekhar Suman some years ago that they (he and his organisation) were ‘atankvadis’ and that spreading terror among those who stood in the way of implementing the Hindutva agenda was their express intention. This arrogant pronouncement found no repetition or resonance anywhere else in the media nor attracted any adverse comment.

Stereotypical responses have been so internalised by large sections of the media that they appear spontaneous and ‘normal’. Consequently, one feels that one is almost overreacting in drawing attention to the qualitatively different responses in the media to some obscure maulvis objecting to Sania Mirza’s tennis wear on the one hand and the SGPC (Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee) reaction to Sikh cricketer Harbhajan Singh removing his turban for an advertisement on the other. The former was highlighted as a ‘fatwa’ (which it was not) that was retrogressive (which it was) but also threatening (overtones which it seemed to acquire because of the media splash). Sania’s mature response was presented as distancing herself from her religion and not from narrow-minded elements within it. In contrast, the powerful SGPC’s position was carefully and temperately reported, its impact was not claimed to carry negative implications for the Sikh community as a whole and Harbhajan Singh’s pusillanimous apology was even lauded as a sober and commendable corrective!

Does the media not have the responsibility to keep at the forefront, and in the public eye, matters that are sought to be swept under the carpet by vested interests? The notion of freedom of the press loses its critical value if the media fails to perform effectively in this area

The mindset that has come to dominate the electronic media and the front page headlines and reporting of even the print media, notable and welcome exceptions on the central pages notwithstanding, predictably ignores, undermines or frankly ridicules social groups and forces that are not part of, or are victims of, the neo-liberal agenda and lifestyle. (Remember when the Indian media couldn’t speak of Laloo Prasad Yadav without an actual or metaphoric smirk on its face? The tone has changed completely since the great Indian Railways turnaround!) The way in which the anti-reservation campaign of a section of doctors in New Delhi and elsewhere was highlighted and given prominence without even a comment on the graceless and offensive use of sweeping and polishing shoes as ‘symbols and forms of protest’, was most disturbing. The issue itself, though debated and discussed in articles and interviews, could not overcome the sense of a public relations campaign for the anti-reservationists. The fact that the actions, frequent, demonstrative and articulate, of those supporting the social justice policies were almost blacked out of media prominence certainly helped to create the general effect of a losing battle that did not deserve wide public support.

The media’s lack of an appropriate response, barring some important exceptions, to the passing away of BSP leader Kanshi Ram, showed both political and intellectual bankruptcy. A leader who changed the character and contours of Indian politics in such a significant manner seemed not to even attract much notice by the media. The references made by Mayawati to the legacy and role of Kanshi Ram were presented only as instances of her ‘playing politics’. One could not help but contrast this with the 24X7 coverage of the last days of the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan (undoubtedly a friend of many leading journalists but hardly a significant or lasting contributor to the Indian political landscape) and subsequently, even of the drug scandal surrounding his son. It was difficult not to conclude, with some degree of nostalgia for its proud past, that the Indian media was not just preoccupied with trivia but that it had trivialised its own role.

In contrast, the role of the media in reopening the Priyadarshini Mattoo and Jessica Lal cases has been commendable but a couple of swallows hardly make a summer. The wake up call is sounded and the choice between being significantly free and being commercially successful but trivialised is one that confronts a media with a long and powerful tradition of independence that it could be endangering if the present trends continue unabated.

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 2006. Year 13, No.120, Cover Story 8

1...2,6472,6482,649...2,697 Page 2,648 of 2,697

Shadows & silence

The protest of poor marginalised people is not considered news

Massacre in Maharashtra

Caste out

Studied silence

Sad commentary

A free press?

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Important Links

Other Links

CONNECT