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[Anand Vivek Taneja]

This is a brief(?) report of a part of day 3 of the crisis/media workshop.
Which has been one of the most intellectually explosive sessions i've ever 
attended

Anand

Day 3, Plenary Session -
Arundhati Roy  - Peace is War: The Collateral Damage of Breaking News.

In response to a question at the end of her presentation, about recovering 
the possibilites  inherent in  reportage, Arundhati Roy spoke of the 
'laziness of the use of language'. How this laziness needed to be fought; 
how every sentence had to be honed and polished, how even a 200 word report 
had to be made a weapon - because 'they' aka 'the motherfuckers', (aka The 
World Bank the IMF and .......)  steal and co-opt language to suit their own 
twisted ends.

Crisis/Media, for me, has been working through certain trajectories over the 
past three days, coming up with ideas, and trying to express them, and this 
morning's Plenary was t the perfection of an idea that had been struggling 
for expression through a series of sessions.

Language as a weapon. Honed. Polished. Language as an ally of thought, 
rather than its polite obfuscation.

Shuddabrata Sengupta, who was chairing the session, reminded us of a term 
from The God of Small Things.
Locusts Stand I.  Who are you to say these things? is something that is 
always hurled at you to silence you.  Exactly a year ago, it was used to 
send Arundhati to jail for one absurd day - who are you to ask/say these 
things?

Locusts Stand I. Where do you stand when the locusts come flying?
(Istand with the sons of Cain.)

Metaphors, imagery, the play (and  hard work) with words and phrases that 
turns them on their head. These are her weapons. Weapons which cut through 
the doublespeak of 'development reports' and the ranting report of the right 
wing; words which provoke all of us to think, and to find our own truths. 
Arundhati's presentation today, though self-admittedly more 'theoretical' 
than her past work, was no less powerful.

Beginning from the Times of India selling space to wannabes on Page 3, 
through 9/11, to the shrinking space of Civil Disobdience and the 
self-fulfilling prophecy of 'Terrorism', to Peace is War, the importance of 
talking about everyday struggles; it was brilliant Theory, constantly 
informed by the realities that the Media ignores in its constant search for 
Crisis.

The behemoth conglomerates of Old Media, though plagued by the buzzzing 
flies of 'New Media' (which can come up with minor irritants like the 
millions of anti-war marchers in 750 cities) keep lurching from Crisis to 
Crisis to satisfy its insatiable appetite for Spectacle; for Theatre. 
'Crises' are disconnected from their context, from their historicity, and 
then dumped... Social Movements, Resistance Movements, are being sucked into 
crisis production, becuase if you don't have a crisis of your own, you're 
not in the news; if you're not in the news you don't exist. While 'real' 
crises, and those who suffer genuine socio-economic problems which are 
grounded in the real - are increasingly dealt with by brutal repression; 
'symbolic' , virtual crises , like the ones created/fed by the Right Wing 
are given media coverage, denied to the real, and allowed to shift agendas 
in the country with a ridiculous ease. As Arundhati Roy said in the context 
of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, " People resisiting dams are suppoosed to 
conjure up new tricks, or give the struggle..."

When victims refuse to be victims, they become terrorists. The space for 
genuine Civil Disobedience is is atrophying; conflated with the fear of 
'Terrorism', is closing every avenue for non-violence protest - and leaving 
no choice to people to become 'Terrorists'.

The solution to this?  For the resistance movements to stop feeding the the 
media's endless appetite for theatre, and get back to the real issues. To 
recognise that for most people in the world, 'Peace is War.' That the daily 
struggles of existence are the more important struggles than the 
spectacles/spectres of War and Terrorism that the media/government create. 
To lose our fear of the mundane and to dwell on these struggles, to become 
'Peace' Correspondents. In response to one of the questions, Arundhati spoke 
of 'normality' as being magical and celebrated in literature, and the need 
to blur the lines between literature and reprotage. This tied, for me,  up 
with one of the themes of the first day, when shuddha had suggested poetry 
and a poetic form as a possible way of writing about violence; as an 
alternative to the 'objective', balanced report as news.



(Hermann Goering - Tell the people they're being attacked, then denounce the 
peacemakers.)


The Truth as Casualty

- Yogendra Yadav, chairing the session, joked about mistaking the topic of 
the session for 'Truth' and 'Causality', the two things disapperaing in the 
social sciences. Though the jokes were followed by Ifthikar Gilani talking 
about his own, near farcical experiences with the Intelligence Bureau and 
the Courts, it wasn't funny.

In the plenary, Arundhati Roy spoke of how we live in a judicial 
dictatorship and are unaware of it. Ifthikar Gilani was made painfully aware 
of this, when the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi refused to grant 
him bail for having in his posession a pamphlet of an independence movement 
in PoK, " for believing(?) in the liberation of Kashmir."

Ifthikar Gilani went on to say that he was scared by the lack of judicial 
accountability, becuase he could get justice after only seven months having 
access to the media and the government  in the capital of the country, but 
what would happen to the arbitrarily accused in the small towns of India 
without access to the portals of power?

Gilani went on to point out that the new Freedom of Information Act, which 
was passed while he was in jail, does not override the draconian Sec. 5 of 
the Official Secrets Act, by which the mere posession of any document deemed 
to be dangeropus to National Security, could lead to the arrest of people, 
and their incarceration for upto fourteen years.  He mentioned a sketch of 
Meerut Cantontment, which was planted on 4 different people... which had far 
less information which could be considered detrimental  to national 
security, than issues of India Today which give maps and figures of troop 
deployments in border areas.

Gilani also mentioned how his trail and incarceration were misprepresented 
by the media, particularly the Hindustan Times and the Pioneer, whose 
reporters gave entirely fictive accounts of the court proceedings and his 
'confessions' of being an ISI agent and a terrorist plant.

(Judges can be bought, why not journalists?)


Anjali Mody's presentation on the 'willing suspension of disbelief' by the 
media, noted how the media now ignores the 'other side' of the story, which 
is a very basic tenet of the profession.  This laziness, and the willing 
suspension of disbelief, has created the sense of a nation under siege, 
becuase the only source the media follows, particularly in the coverage of 
'terrorism'  is the government sources, which are shadowy, and 
'non-verifiable'. The media cannot even think of the governemnt as a 
perpetrator of terror, something which is exclusively reserved for non-state 
actors, except for Pakistan.

Anjali locates this failure of the media in the Information Culture present; 
in which Information is not free, but a state owned commodity, dispensed as 
a favour, so that even routine information dispesned by the government is 
valued. She also locates the media's 'laziness' in its class intersts, which 
make its goals the same as that of the state.


Anjali spoke of the terrain of the 'encounter', which led well into the 
presentation of Vijay Nagraj of Amnesty International, who dwelt upon the 
the discursive power of the 'encounter', the extra judicial executions that 
we are all aware of. Vijay spoke of how the media reportage of these 
'encounters' has done away with the words 'suspected' and 'alleged'. Now 
they are plain, unadorned terrrorists. Police lies become facts. The 
laziness of media language in reporting 'encounters', has lethal 
implications; delegitimizing  an entire struggle. the truth as casualty.

The media has completely ignored the 1997 directives of the NHRC, which call 
for an investigation of all police officers involved in an encounter. The 
police versions are now the truth. The 'lazy 'assumptions which led to the 
arrest of Ifthikar Gilani are part of the media's commonsense about all 
Kashmiri Muslims.

Vijay warns us of worse things to come, like the Domestic Security 
Enhancement Act 2003, to come out in the US, which by maintaining a blanket 
security policy for detainees, will in effect legitimize disapperance.

And since repression has become globalised...


Arun Mehta, in the same panel, spoke of the need for electronic forensics, 
especially when the major evidence presented in almost all the spectacular 
crises of the past two years or so, which have allowed governemts to kick up 
levels of repression and aggression; has been largely electronic in 
nature... the bin Laden tapes, the december 13 mobile intercepts, the West 
end tapes, etc.

Arun Mehta noted, especially in the Tehelka case, how there were no 
standards for the presentation of electronic evidence, especially in the 
Tehelka tapes, and went on to highlight  guildelines for  accepting/using 
electronic evidence.

The guildelines are simple - Good audio quality of recording is an 
essential, for it makes it much harder to distort content. Backup coipes of 
all evidence should be taken immediately, and distributed, to prevent police 
tampering. The public should have access to all these materials, unedited. 
The recording hardware should aslo remain untampered with; and accessible.


Na Likhne ke Kaaran -
In the Hindi session, 'Na Likhne ke Kaaran', the concerns about the media 
from the morning plenary, and the first session, as well as the preceding 
days, spilled over.

The dissatisfaction which had followed Siddharth Vardarajan's absolvement 
(sort of) of the role of Editorial decision making in the finished product 
of the 'newspaper', even in times of crisis; was addressed by Abhay Dubey's 
short, punchy presentation.

Abhay humurously traced the trajectory of how JANSATTA, a paper he worked 
for, transformed from a communal paper to a markedly secular paper, almost 
in one day - the 6th of December, 1992.

Through this trajectory, he attempted to understand the role of the Editor 
in the functioning of the newspaper, and where the decision making power 
lay, to which all the other writing/expressions in the paper were reactions. 
  Abhay thenpresented the triangular model of content-decision making and 
problematized it. instead of the triangle of Capital, Governemnt and 
Obstacles(e.g - Hindutva), he proposed a 4th corner to the Triangle, the 
made invisible corner of the Editor; whose say in the newspaper's policy is 
hidden under excuses of the disaggregated model of American newspaper 
policy.


But the speech de resistance of the pre-lunch session was Rajendra yadav, 
speaking of 'Na Likhne ke Kaaran', 'Reasons not to Write...' .

Rajendra Yadav's understated sarcasm and anecdotal style made for great 
listening. He was talking of why it is easy to be a status quoist, becuase 
everything you write abouty is a holy cow, so if you challenge something you 
are asking for trouble... more of the 'laziness of langauge'.  It is better 
not to write if you can't challenge Religion, Family, Society or even 
Economiccs and Politics. (Which hasn't stooped Yadav from writing about any 
of these, and provocatively, in his long and chequered carreer)

Ravikant, in his introduction, to Rajendra yadav, mentioned how despite 
Hans, which yadav edits, being a literaray magazine, it delas alo with the 
politics of the literature. This becomes more important to me as it 
highlights the theme of blurring the lines between literature and 
reportage...

Rajendra ji spoke of huis unflinching commitment to rationalism and free 
thinking in the face of all kinds of obscurantism and the controversies he 
has created through his writing, especially  the writings which have 
problematised the way all morality and patriarchy is located on the woman's 
body. On why na d how he went around defending MF Hussain in his writing, 
when the right wing was gunning for him - his was an a free-flowing and 
inspirational talk, in which he made it clear that the reasons not to write 
are the very reasons to write.

At the end he spoke of why we leave abuses, Gaalis, out of our sanitsied 
discourse. Gaalis, particulalrly in Hindi and Punjabi, are  one the most 
expressive forms of langauge we have, especially for those who use them as 
daily discourse.  Rajendra-ji made a plea for the retention of abuse in 
literature.

At the end of her presentation, Arundhati Roy re-deployed cheesy 'Titanic' 
in a beautiful metaphor. That we continue sailing on the Titanic, as it 
slides into the sea. Even as the third class passengers drown, the 
banquetting continues, even with decks tilted, becuase they know that the 
lifeboats ar reserved for club-class.

And the motherfuckers may be right.

The final edge to the weapon of language. The eloquence of abuse for those 
who deserve it.

To paraphrase Shuddha, once again,
We need to break the norms of polite,  bourgeoise discourse.
If you're reasonable today, you have to be strident, pasiionate, 
uncomfortable.

Fuck you, motherfuckers.















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