[Reader-list] ‘As Hindus, We Were Expected To Further The Cause With Our Stories’

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Wonder how many days the so called "ïnsider" has worked in Jammu. Sitting in
the air conditioned office and filing stories is an altogether different
deal. She seems to have not left the four walls or else confined herself to
Orissa.

The Jammu based media friends deny this allegation. This includes her
colleagues in the newspaper she worked for.

The National media was anyway openly biased against the Jammu agitation
against religious propaganda initiated by PDP and separatist elements.

Simple M Pani should join Kak 'sahab' in documentary making. The "valuable
insider account" (well thought, infact) may just lead to another well funded
propaganda masala movie.
Such immature tales put the media to shame. Horrible.



On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Sanjay Kak <kaksanjay at gmail.com> wrote:

> As an 'insider' account of the workings of India's mainstream press,
> and its professionalism and politics, this is a most valuable account.
> Best
> Sanjay Kak
>
>
> From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 22, Dated Jun 06, 2009
> CULTURE & SOCIETY
> personal histories
>
> ‘As Hindus, We Were Expected To Further The Cause With Our Stories’
>
> Simple M Pani
> Is 32. She is a journalist based in New Delhi
>
> Illustration: UZMA MOHSIN
>
> EVERY YEAR, I look starry-eyed at the awardees of the Ramnath Goenka
> Excellence in Journalism Awards and at the stalwarts handing over the
> honours. For grit, hard work, tenacity and honesty to the trade,
> without a care for reward, getting richly rewarded. But this year, I
> couldn’t quell a queasy feeling in my stomach when the virtues of fair
> reporting were spoken about at the event. This has been happening
> since the Amarnath land agitation, when I was reporting for the Jammu
> bureau of a leading national daily. It visited Jammu like a gale,
> sweeping away in gusts the sense of fair play and discrimination of
> many scribes. In our morning meetings, it was assumed as a given that
> being Hindus, we (reporters, photojournalists and other staff)
> supported the agitation for restoration of land to the Amarnath Shrine
> Board. Not only were we expected to support it whole-heartedly but it
> was considered our ‘moral’ duty to further its cause through our
> stories. It was routine for our editor to ask, “So how is the
> agitation faring in xyz place?” and an over-zealous colleague to
> answer passionately, “Excellent. It’s got a tremendous response there”
> and for the editor to rub his chin and say, “But find out what
> challenges they are facing in abc place and how it could be
> strengthened there.” If you were in Jammu, you had to sing paeans to
> the agitators. What smacked of fascism was that no other line of
> thinking, let alone criticism of any sort, was brooked. The few media
> houses that did judge it critically, were a woeful minority.
>
> Two quixotic features of the agitation stood out. First, to refuse to
> recognise the real. To pretend not to see something as stark as an
> economic blockade of the Valley, imposed by the stone-pelting
> agitators by attacking and burning Valley-bound trucks. (I’ve seen
> trucks burnt to rubble by agitators, on the Jammu-Pathankote National
> Highway, but naturally, it wasn’t considered newsworthy in several
> publications because the Jammu media had decided there was no
> blockade. This assumption ruled out any question of trucks being
> attacked.) This kind of dangerous, deductive logic crafting an
> alternative reality was rampant at the time. The storyline would be
> decided in the office and reporters would be asked to select data from
> the field to support it. For instance, to prove the nonexistence of a
> blockade, we would be asked to report that medicines were available in
> plenty in Jammu. If there were a blockade, then Jammu would be equally
> hit, ran the specious logic. In reality, Jammu faced a severe shortage
> of medicines!
>
> Second, to fancy the unreal as real, by drawing parallels between
> itself and the India’s Freedom Movement. Like praising the Emperor’s
> new clothes, which despite any empirical reality, were extolled to the
> skies. Eulogies of “those brave, nationalist, heroes,” the agitators,
> who went about uprooting railway tracks, smashing windows of public
> transport that dared to ply on the roads in defiance of the bandh
> call, and violently attacking trucks entering the state, filled reams
> of newsprint every day. Strangely, the mute common man of Jammu, the
> poor news vendor and hawker on the streets seemed to be more
> discerning than the city’s intelligentsia. They knew that there was
> much more to nationalism than flag-waving xenophobia. That sporting a
> ‘Bhagat Singh moustache’ wasn’t enough to equate one with the martyr.
> They knew that vandalism couldn’t pass for bravery and that they would
> have to repay the loss caused to the state from their pockets; all of
> which the intelligentsia missed, in a misplaced fervour.
>
> Despite the claim that the struggle was solely for the restoration of
> land to the Amarnath Shrine Board, the fact is it did degenerate into
> hate for the ‘other.’ Gujjars’ kullas were burnt in hundreds. The word
> “Kashmir” was knocked off from the Kashmir Square Mall, a Delhi-style
> mall in town, and was rechristened ‘City Square Mall.’ Such sentiments
> are dangerous for any civilised society, more so when the media, the
> supposed watchdog of liberal values, is gung-ho about it.
>
> From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 22, Dated Jun 06, 2009
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-- 
Aditya Raj Kaul

Freelance Correspondent, The Times of India
Cell -  +91-9873297834

Blog: http://activistsdiary.blogspot.com/