[Reader-list] Massacre of journalism in India

[hemennarayan at gmail.com]

Dear Sir ,

This is in reference to -Massacre of Journalism in India-By Nava Thakuria on Nellie massacre which has been quoted. It was triggered because of my book-25 years on.. Nellie still haunts.

Given below are two  reviews of the book which somewhat puts the record straight. 

--
(1) Review
 
The main piece of the book is more of personal impression of the author, than a hard news story by a professional. Hemendra Narayan, the journalist -- who more by instinct than design – became a witness to the terrible mayhem of February 18, 1983, in central Assam. The traumatic incidents at Nellie still haunt him, and it comes out unmistakably in the chapter - Woman in the Green Sari. The woman, who had seen death all around and escaped, produced a 'surreal scream'; he says -- and adds, "The horrific images are still stuck in my mind."

The magnitude of death and destruction that unfolded before them in an open clear picturesque setting - they were three media persons - would have overwhelmed anyone. It was an eerie setting because of the 'kill-burn-slay' psychology of the hundreds of armed men.

The February 1983 Assembly elections were held to fulfill a Constitutional 'obligation'. The logic was that the polls could not be stopped because the President Rule could not be extended beyond one year, and that deadline was fast approaching. The supporters of movement against 'foreign' nationals were not only boycotting, but opposing the elections aggressively as well.

As the election(s) process got going, "It was a strange scenario across the Brahmaputra valley -- right from Dhubri to Dibrugrah; depending on the population profile -- the killing lust had surcharged the atmosphere," the slim publication says in its preface.
 
The toll around Nellie villages officially stood at 2,191.

Mr B G Verghese, doyen of Indian journalism -- who has a special interest on the affairs of the North–East, says in his foreword remarks, "India must care and ponder over what happened, and we must all learn our several lessons as distinctive groups, wider communities, the Government..."
 
The booklet, apart from being of interest to journalists even 25 years on -- should be of relevance to the students of contemporary history. Some of the documents used helps in understanding the overall situation in proper perspective. The documents in the publication, which includes that of the Lalung Darbar, the Election Commission and the report of the non-official Justice Mehta Commission, would be of great significance for some one, studying the Assam and India's history of period.
 
(2) Review - 25 years on...Nellie still haunts

Some events in history just refuse to fade from public memory. The partition of India and Pakistan, for instance. That bloody event in history continues to inspire several novels, academic studies and even films — even now. But there are some dark chapters in independent India's history that many people — protagonists, by-standers and even those who had nothing to do with the event per se — want buried in the sands of time. The infamous Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983 is one such gory episode. 


There are conflicting figures about exactly how many people — women, infants and men — were killed on that fateful day of 18 February 1983, but no one disputes the fact that at least 2,000 people lost their lives. For years, the Nellie massacre became a metaphor for everything that has gone wrong with Assam over the past three decades. Those who worry about the unabated influx of foreigners from across the international border say Nellie was a manifestation of the pent up anger among the indigenous people. 
Others, apologists for the migrants, portray the victims of the Nellie massacre as just that — victims. 


But the reality of the violence of that day and several days preceding it lies somewhere in between. And bringing that to the fore is reporter, Hemendra Narayan, now with The Statesmen but who 25 years ago was with The Indian Express. He was one of three journalists to witness the carnage first hand. For a quarter century, he carried the memories of that particular day with him but finally decided to come out with a small booklet detailing the events of that day. It was as if he was liberating himself after such a long gap. A catharsis in a way for Narayan the human being, if not Narayan the reporter! 


The writer, I am sure, in 25 Years on... Nellie still haunts, had no intentions of opening any old wounds or hurting anyone. But it can be said that the Nellie massacre still remains a deep wound on the collective psyche of Assam! Narayan has indeed recounted the events of that period with some objectivity and with the benefit of hindsight 

In the 52-page "slim publication", as BG Verghese describes it, he says in the Foreword, "Narayan has recalled various versions on offer, including his own of what happened on 18 Februrary, 1983. The narrative reads like the Japanese play, Rashmonon." 

Narayan has indeed included an array of material in an attempt to give all possible sides to the real story of Nellie. He has his own dispatch of that day as the starting point.
 
 It includes a memorandum by the Lalung Darbar, presented to Indira Gandhi, who in many ways should be blamed for creating the circumstances that led to the Nellie massacre. The Lalungs, who are often portrayed as aggressors of that day, have stoutly denied their hand in the violence. Then there are documents, both official and non-official, as also the Election Commission's logic in holding the elections that ultimately resulted in unleashing the violence that culminated in Nellie. 

Like a true reporter, Narayan has attempted to raise the real question: What is the real truth of Nellie? Like many events in independent India's history, the correct answer will never be known — not at least in our lifetime, as Tribuhwan Prasad Tewary, who conducted an official enquiry into the massacre (and whose report has never been made public), told Narayan. 

But in writing and publishing an account of Nellie, 25 years after it happened, Narayan has done a signal service to historians and students of contemporary history. The mystery of Nellie will never be completely solved but at least, through Narayan's efforts, each of us can make an attempt to find our own little answers.
(Rekha Goel)
-- radhikarajen wrote : 
Hey, to call commercial tv channels and the anchors as journalists is misnomer, they are celebritis, merchants of news, packaging news as they like to sell it for good trp and better ad revenues, they are blots on good journalism, and importance of news channels being partisan for favours is well known, most of them have lost credibility as the anchors and channels are far away from ground realities in India.
 Unlike weatern channels which covered 9/11 carnage, showing the calamity only two or three times and then covering the relief work more than theold footage, in India you can see all these channels showing the 12 year old footage even now every half an hour three times to seek favours with political party in power.Ofcourse Padma awards added incentive of sycophancy.

----- Original Message -----
From: Bikash Ballabh Singh <vikash.sen at gmai...>
Date: Thursday, March 6, 2008 1:39 pm
Subject: [Reader-list] Massacre of journalism in India
To: reader-list at sara...

> *A senior TV journalist recently reported the Nellie carnage with 
> three-year
> old facts. He did not bother to update the story. Is it ethical to 
> packageold wine in a new bottle? Why does the Northeast receive 
> such treatment: A
> review.*
> by  Nava Thakuria(Citizen Journalist) via merinews
> 
> NORTHEAST INDIA has turned in to a land of happenings. From 
> insurgency to
> ethnic tension and economic activities to cultural discourses, it 
> starteddrawing the attention of media worldwide. The alienated 
> region of the
> country has suddenly woken up to an anniversary of a massacre that 
> tookplace 25 years back in Assam. A senior Indian journalist 
> released a book on
> the issue in the national capital recently and suddenly a group of 
> reportersbegan to pile up their reporting space with the memory of 
> the carnage. Many
> of them even did not bother to check the old information, while 
> puttingthose in their fresh columns (as might be nobody bothers 
> about Northeast).
> 
> Meet Nitin A Gokhale, the senior editor, defence and strategic 
> affairs of
> NDTV (New Delhi), who has recently contributed a column for the 
> portal of
> the satellite channel
> (http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/showcolumns.aspx?id=COLEN20080042819).
> But out of callousness, the editor-journalist copied and pasted 
> more than 70
> per cent of the text from one of his earlier articles, released by 
> an Indian
> portal (
> http://www.tehelka.com/story_main13.asp?filename=Ne070205The_simple.asp)
> three years back. He even used the same quotes, where one of them 
> was a
> local Panchayat member. Assam had the Panchayat election three 
> months back,
> but Nitin did not bother to check his present status (whether he was
> re-elected this time). More over the entire situation was re-
> created for
> Nitin (must be by God) when he had recently visited, Nellie, the 
> place of
> the carnage.
> 
> It may be mentioned that Nellie, a sleepy village of middle Assam 
> witnesseda horrifying massacre of thousands of Muslims in 1983. 
> The village, nearly
> 90 km away from Guwahati became a center of media attraction 
> during the
> period, when the Assam agitation led by All Assam Students Union 
> (AASU)reached the peak. It was the time, when New Delhi imposed an 
> election in the
> state against the will of the indigenous people. The memory of Nellie
> massacre still haunts the Assamese psyche irrespective of caste, 
> creed and
> religion.
> 
> But surprisingly enough, this sensitive issue was also taken for
> manufacturing stories by the journalist, who used to stay in Assam 
> for some
> time. Now based in New Delhi, Nitin had contributed a piece for 
> NDTV with
> his three years old information. His column (with an 'I-Know-All' air)
> titled 'Nellie revisited: 25 years on' uploaded on Saturday (March 
> 1), tends
> to analyse the situation after his recent visit to the location. 
> The writer
> also described the consequences of the carnage and its implication on
> today's changing demographic pattern in the state. But leaving 
> aside first
> few paragraphs of the write up on NDTV portal, the entire text was 
> simplyadded form an earlier article (by him of course) used by 
> Tehelka. In fact,
> besides a little introduction of the Nellie massacre in reference 
> to a book
> release by Hemendra Narayan in New Delhi recently, Nitin picked up 
> his old
> text with minor updating.
> 
> The journalist picked up all the quotes (as he did three years 
> back), and
> used for his March 1 piece on NDTV. One of his quotes (Mohammed 
> NuruddinMunshi, the all-powerful leader of the community in the 
> area) described, "We
> now number about 12,000-14,000 as against barely 3,000-odd in 
> 1983." The old
> article contained the same line with the same description. So the 
> man must
> have taken help of his memory to reveal the precise statistics to 
> Nitin'during a recent visit to Nellie'. The next quote (Suruj 
> Konwar, a
> veterinary department employee) said exactly the same thing to 
> Nitin, as it
> was reported in 1983.
> 
> The editor provided some space to elaborate the profile of 
> Nuruddin, who was
> 'then a 20-year-old having just completed his schooling in Arabic' 
> and later
> 'began taking active interest in politics'. The next lines say, 
> "Today he is
> the member of the Anchalik Parishad and a leader of the 
> community." The old
> article (uploaded in July 2005) also described Nuruddin as the 
> member of the
> Anchalik Parishad (a part of Panchyati Raj system in India). So he 
> must have
> been re-elected in the Panchyat polls of Assam that took place during
> December and January 2007. But there is no mention about it. It simply
> implies that Nitin does not care about the authenticity of a quote 
> in his
> column. The NDTV editor was communicated with his personal e-mail 
> address as
> well as official feedback format, but no response was coming from him.
> 
> Now the pertinent question that arises, whether a journalist is 
> allowed to
> manufacture quotes for his write-ups those might speak biased 
> information?Moreover, is anyone is permitted to copy and paste 
> almost 80 per cent of his
> own write up, even though the situation had been changed in three long
> years. Are these not a clear case of unpardonable offence by the NDTV
> editor, which could definitely hurt the moral and ethical values of
> journalism?
> 
> *PS. The readers may check **out both pieces, where paragraphs 
> lifted from
> the earlier piece are in italics.*
> 
> *Nellie revisited: 25 years on*
> *Nitin Gokhale*
> Senior Editor, Defence and Strategic Affairs
> Saturday, March 1, 2008 (New Delhi)
> 
> On February 18, 2008, the Delhi Press Club was the venue for a small
> function organised by Hemendra Narayan, a veteran reporter, who 
> works with *The
> Statesman* in New Delhi. The Occasion: Release of a monograph on 
> one of
> independent India's darkest chapters: the massacre of over 3,000 
> people at
> Nellie in Assam. Exactly 25 years to date, Hemendra Narayan and a 
> couple of
> other journalists - one from *Assam Tribune* and the other from 
> ABC news -
> witnessed the cold blooded murder of migrant Muslims by a rampant mob.
> 
> Narayan was then reporting from India's northeast for *The Indian
> Express.*Could the reporters have done anything to save even one life?
> Could they
> have played saviours at a time when police and para-military 
> forces failed
> to act? For over quarter of a century, Narayan battled with the 
> ghosts of
> that day and played and replayed the horrific images in his mind's 
> eye and
> finally decided to come up with the monograph as if to rid himself 
> of the
> burden of the guilt that he carried for so long.
> 
> Super Cop KPS Gill, who was Assam's Inspector General Police for 
> Law and
> order during that period was present at the function to release the
> monograph. He recalled the tough times and the circumstances under 
> which the
> Nellie massacre took place. There are no clear-cut answers to what 
> wentwrong that time. But this is perhaps an appropriate occasion 
> to look back
> how Assam's political landscape has changed over these intervening 
> 25 years.
> 
> Nellie was the turning point in Assam's body politic. On a more 
> personalnote, I started my career as a journalist in Assam just 
> two months after the
> infamous carnage. Since then I have visited Nellie a number of 
> times and
> have found that in the past 25 years, the ground reality has 
> undergone a
> total transformation.
> 
>The Assam agitation (or movement as some people prefer to term it) 
> was a
> result of the fear that the indigenous population had against 
> large-scale
> influx of Bangladeshis into Assam. But this migration was nothing 
> new. In
> the early 20th century hordes of people from what was then East 
> Bengal in
> undivided India migrated to the sparsely populated yet fertile 
> BrahmaputraValley.
> 
> They came in such large numbers that CS Mullan, an ICS officer and 
> the then
> census commissioner, observed in 1931: "Probably the most 
> important event in
> the province (Assam) during the last 25 years - an event, 
> moreover, which
> seems likely to alter permanently the whole future of Assam and 
> the whole
> structure of Assamese culture and civilisation - has been the 
> invasion of a
> vast horde of land-hungry Bengali militants, mostly Muslims, from the
> districts of Eastern Bengal in general and Mymensingh in 
> particular. It is
> sad but by no means improbable that in another 30 years Sibsagar 
> districtwill be the only part of Assam in which an Assamese will 
> find himself at
> home."
> 
> *Mullan's prophecy did not come true as early as he predicted but 
> at the
> turn of the century, the ground reality in most parts of Assam 
> resembleswhat the ics officer had foreseen more than 70 years ago. *
> 
> *Today, the Assamese indeed finds himself outnumbered in at least nine
> districts; most of the state's agriculture production and its 
> vegetables are
> in the hands of the migrants. The migrant also makes up the 
> largest chunk of
> labour force engaged in construction activities; over 80 percent 
> of the
> state's cycle-rickshaws are pedalled by the migrants. The truth is 
> today'sAssam cannot do without this hardworking section of the 
> population. *
> 
> *The flip side is that even politicians cannot do without them. 
> The ruling
> Congress goes out of its way to appease the migrants and therefore 
> wants to
> believe in the myth, perpetuated by its own propaganda machine, 
> that there
> is no influx from Bangladesh. Sadly, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), 
> midwifedby the once powerful All Assam Students Union (AASU), also 
> did not do much
> to deport illegal migrants during its two stints in power.* So 
> what's the
> reality a quarter century after Nellie?
> 
> During a recent visit to Nellie, I found the tide has truly 
> turned. Muslims
> are no longer a minority there. They are also politically savvy. 
> Most of
> their leaders realise that their safety lies in numbers.
> 
> *The change is apparent in Nellie. In 1983, the Muslims were 
> outnumbered by
> the Tiwa tribals; today the situation has completely reversed. 
> Says Mojen
> Konwar of Nellie, who was witness to the massacre, "What happened then
> cannot happen again because the minority has become a majority. 
> There are
> bound to be problems in the coming years." The wizened old man, 
> however,hastens to add that the killing of the Muslims in 1983 was 
> the handiwork of
> 'outsiders'. Narayan Radu Kakati, chairman of the Tiwa Autonomous 
> Council,meant to offer constitutional protection to the tribals, 
> concurs: "Our
> people had no clue to the killings. It just happened as part of a 
> largerconspiracy." *
> 
> *The Muslims, however, are not interested in knowing who the 
> killers were.
> All they know is that the best protection they can have in the 
> areas is to
> become a majority. The large-scale relocation of Muslim peasants from
> neighbouring Morigaon and Nagaon districts has fulfilled that 
> plan. Admits
> Mohammed Nuruddin Munshi, the all-powerful leader of the community 
> in the
> area: "We now number about 12,000-14,000 as against barely 3,000-
> odd in
> 1983." Mohammad Moinuddin, a 70-year-old father of 10 children, 
> says he
> shifted from nearby Jagiroad to the Nellie area and bought several 
> bighas of
> land to support his family. "With so many mouths to feed, I needed 
> to get
> more land and the land was available aplenty here," he says. Most 
> of the
> land earlier belonged to the Tiwas who, for lack of enterprise, 
> are simply
> selling it for short-term gains. *
> 
> *The root of the problem is in fact the alienation of tribals from 
> the land.
> The Tiwas, hopelessly outnumbered now, say their land is being 
> graduallybought over by the Muslims. "When people get Rs 30,000-
> 40,000 per bigha,
> they simply sell their land," says Suruj Konwar, a veterinary 
> departmentemployee. As a result, today Nellie's demography has 
> completely changed. *
> *But most people have not forgotten the 1983 massacre. For 
> Nuruddin's elder
> brother Mohammed Tamiruddin, the memory of February 18 is as 
> painful and
> vivid as if it happened yesterday. "Between 8am and 3pm that day, 
> a mad
> frenzy had gripped the attackers. They came, armed with daos 
> (matchet),country guns and lathis and surrounded us. First they 
> started burning our
> hutments. We thought our lives at least would be spared but after 
> a while
> the attackers started killing systematically. In our village 
> (Basundhari) we
> lost 1,819 people that day. I and my brother Nuruddin were hiding 
> in a pond.
> When the attackers started coming closer, we ran to the nearby railway
> bridge and hid there till the CRPF came to our rescue. Between us, 
> we lost
> 26 family members," Tamiruddin says, his eyes moistening at the 
> painfulmemories.*
> 
> *After the killings, Nuruddin, then a 20-year-old having just 
> completed his
> schooling in Arabic, began taking active interest in politics. 
> Today he is
> the member of the Anchalik Parishad and a leader of the community. *
> *Despite the harrowing experience he had to go through, he holds 
> no grudges.
> "We have very cordial relations with our Hindu brothers here. 
> There is no
> tension. In fact, 30 percent of our children study at a school 
> located in a
> Hindu majority area," he emphasises. *
> 
> *There may not be any tension but the residents are always alert. 
> As I
> ventured into the interiors, leaving the NH37 passing through 
> Nellie, word
> reached Nuruddin, who was some 10 km inside that strangers were 
> coming to
> meet him, courtesy the ubiquitous mobile phone. Someone had called up
> Nuruddin to inform about the strangers' arrival.*
> 
> *Afraid that something was wrong, Nuruddin waited for us near the 
> mosque in
> the village instead of his house. Many others were around him as 
> we reached
> the village square. The safety in numbers theory was very 
> apparent. As we
> talked, the tension gradually faded but it was clear that no 
> newcomer could
> now enter the Muslim villages of Nellie without being noticed.*
> 
> *Clearly, Nuruddin and his fellow men have learnt from the 1983 
> experience.None of them want to be at the receiving end. Indeed, 
> most people in Assam
> now know that the outcome of a Nellie repeat would be much 
> different. That's
> the ground reality today.*
> 
> Soruce: http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=130768
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sara... with 
> subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-
> list 
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
_________________________________________
reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
Critiques & Collaborations
To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sara... with subscribe in the subject header.
To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list 
List archive: &lt;https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>

--
This message was sent on behalf of hemennarayan at gmail.com at openSubscriber.com
http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/reader-list@sarai.net/8748815.html