by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
I have never seen the electronic media so totally defiant of the BJP government. Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s avowed intention to calm Kashmir by announcing a Ramadan ceasefire appears to have been dismissed as “appeasement of Pakistan and terrorists”.
A guest peering out of one of the six windows on the TV screen was frothing in the mouth. “Murderers of our brave jawans are being shamelessly appeased.” The other went one better: “A brave nation does what the Sri Lankan army did to the LTTE – just finished them off.” The anchor on this Aaj Tak show Thursday evening looked angrier than both. This apparently is common fare.
The Communist Party of India is receiving signals from its Kashmir unit that it may have to rename itself. The ‘I’ in the CPI has been hurting the state unit for quite some time. But after the recent surge in shootings, stone pelting, “encounters”, sustained images of wailing women, trailing the spate of funerals, and relentless media jingoism, the “I” now invites physical danger. True, a defunct party by any name will remain defunct, but even so, Communist Party of Kashmir (CPK) will at least not incur the wrath of the street.
The relative Ramadan peace is a good occasion to take stock. Even in days of drift in Kashmir during the time of P.V. Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, there was a semblance of political control by the National Conference and the PDP. Elements of the Hurriyat had fingers on the street pulse. The scene recently has been anarchic: there was no control.
Recent increase in violence was described by reliable sources as “indigenous” which is not what officials say. A narrative which discounts outside “meddling” is not honeyed music to the establishment. Nor to that shrill panel – on Aaj Tak. Ironical, isn’t it, that the absence of outside support to the insurgency disturbs us?
Just when Kashmir was at fever pitch, the mayhem in Aligarh Muslim University erupted around the photograph of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
Friends are in error if they consider the undiluted hooliganism on view in Aligarh an occasion to engage in a serious debate on Jinnah’s culpability in partitioning the country. The hoodlums of Aligarh were not busting their guts to have Jinnah’s portrait removed from the AMU union office. Quite the contrary. Hindu Yuva Vahini would love to provoke Aligarh hotheads to dig their heels in to preserve Jinnah in the university precincts. This will be the ammunition which can come in handy at all times. The campus will be the ordnance depot for frequent explosions in the service of the projected Hindu Rashtra.
This is not the first time in recent decades that AMU has been exploited for saffron politics. Ever since Prime Minister V.P. Singh aggravated identity politics by implementing the Mandal Committee report providing reservation in government jobs to lower castes, the BJP has rushed to prevent the caste structure from crumbling. Hindu consolidation, by building up the Muslim ogre, has been the obvious strategy.
Aligarh was frequently the target as part of this strategy. There was no Arnab Goswami in the 90s but Hindi newspapers played a lead role in widening the Hindu-Muslim divide.
A story appears in newspapers that, after horrendous riots in Aligarh city, some of the injured Hindus being taken to the University Medical College for treatment are being killed by Muslim doctors and interns. Even though the university is only three hours drive from New Delhi, newspapers choose to rely on unverified agency copy which, in turn, quotes upper caste Hindi newspapers.
An incredible scene is being enacted on the outskirts of the university. Local scribes seated on chairs arranged in a circle under a mango tree, sip tea even as one Krishna Kumar Navman, BJP MLA from Aligarh, holds them in his thrall with graphic accounts of murders in the hospital.
“Has anyone visited the Medical College?” I ask. They had not, they say, because it is “risky”.
At the medical college the picture is surreal: petrified doctors encircle me. “No one has come to us for clarification,” they complain.
Why have they not reached out to the journalists with their story? After a long, pregnant silence, they speak up. They thought it would be dangerous stepping out of the campus “in the midst of communal violence”. This is what I call uninstitutionalized apartheid.
That was 30 years ago when there were no TV channels to inculcate saffron nationalism on the scale I saw the other day and which I have mentioned above.
Folks overtly agitated or elated at the turn of events in Aligarh may find it sobering that Pakistan’s Jinnah is not the only leader around whom communal polarization can be contrived. Ram Navami processionists in Kankinara, 24 Parganas in West Bengal, were so overpowered by the spirit of Rama that they pulled down the statue of Congress President and India’s first Education Minister, Maulana Azad – a person, who in his outlook was exactly the opposite of Jinnah. This was in preparation for the Panchayat elections currently in the news.
Protection to anti-namaz lumpens in Gurugram, or those who pasted a Maharana Pratap Road placard on Akbar Road (the placard was removed the next morning), Modi clenching his fist at Tipu Sultan during the recent campaign, are minor episodes in an epic of hatred being manufactured for 2019 of course, and beyond if need be. In this gameplan there is no real, long-term respite for Kashmiris, Muslims or Indo-Pakistan peaceniks. Alongside, the rage of the Dalits and tribals is spiraling out of control. There is an element of simulation in anti-Muslimism for political reasons but the retribution faced by Dalits and tribals in the countryside is visceral.
(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News
Sandeep Sharma, Navin Nishchal and Vijay Singh
New Delhi : Press freedom in India has deteriorated in 2018 and three journalists have been killed in the first four months, media watchdog The Hoot said, stating that “journalists continue to be vulnerable”.
The number of killings documented by the Hoot report for the first four months was the same as in the whole of 2017.
“They were killed in connection with their reporting, judging by what initial investigations show,” it said.
India ranks 138th among 180 countries on this year’s World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders. India’s rank was 136th in 2017 and 133rd in 2016.
The number of documented attacks on journalists and media workers across the country during the period was 13. It includes three in West Bengal. In 2017, documented attacks stood at 46.
Apart from these, there were defamation cases that came to trial. A sedition case was filed against a journalist. There was also a clear push by both the State, Centre and the judiciary — through regulatory policy as well as judicial orders — to curb free speech, The Hoot said.
“Media freedom continued to deteriorate in the first four months of 2018 in India,” said the non-profit watchdog.
“There were also around 50 instances of censorship and more than 20 instances of suspension of Internet services as well as the taking down of online content,” it added.
All three journalists killed in the January-April period were mowed down by vehicles.
On March 26, two Dainik Bhaskar journalists — Navin Nishchal and Vijay Singh — were killed when their bike was hit by an SUV in Bhojpur in Bihar.
Police said the vehicle was driven by a village leader and that a heated argument between him and the reporters over a news report had preceded the “accident”.
A day later, television reporter Sandeep Sharma was mowed down by a truck in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh. Sharma, who had done a sting operation on a sand mining mafia in Bhind, had told police that he had received threats to his life, it said.
Hoot’s investigation revealed that politicians, businessmen, members of Hindu right wing groups, police and paramilitary forces, government agencies like the film certification board, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, state governments, lawyers and even media groups had acted to undermine freedom of expression.
India’s record on press freedom has remained poor and has been deteriorating over the last couple of years.
The Hoot report, however, said: “Despite the ominous number and range of attacks on freedom of expression, the ongoing struggle to resist these curbs does yield results.”
In April, an injunction on the publication of a book on yoga guru and businessman Baba Ramdev was lifted by a district court in Delhi.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, Opinions
By Saeed Naqvi,
These are such desperate times for journalism that S. Nihal Singh’s departure at 89 triggers memories about a phase in the profession that dreams are made of.
My personal journalistic trajectory trailed his rather closely. He was The Statesman’s Special Correspondent in Singapore when I entered the portals of that once great newspaper as a cub reporter.
I was, in fact, following Nihal’s footsteps because this was how he entered the profession a decade earlier — as a cub reporter. There were no schools of journalism then, but we received training of exactly the thoroughness which our respective letters of appointment had promised: “We do not guarantee you employment at the end of the six-month training period, but the training you will have received here will enable you to find work elsewhere.”
It remained something of a puzzle why the pocket money Nihal was offered during the training period was infinitely higher than mine, which was a meagre Rs 300 per month.
Like most of us who entered the profession after him, Nihal covered New Delhi courts, Tis Hazari courts, Municipal Corporation, Delhi State Assembly, Police Commissioner, Chief Minister. The drill of dwelling on nodal points of governance and power, moving upwards in measured step, imparted to the journalist that most precious of attitudes: An indifference to power, an ability not to be overawed.
As the profession expanded, behavioural contrasts magnified. Untrained entrants at senior levels, who had romanticised political power from a distance, became unsteady on their feet because they found corridors of power too heady. A sense of balance was a frequent casualty.
This is where Nihal could not go wrong. In 1982, when the nation was convulsed by the Meenakshipuram conversions, Nihal, then Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Express, sent a teleprinter message to me in Madras, where I was then posted as editor of five southern editions: “Urgently need 700 words on Meenakshipuram.”
I put on my ultra-balanced hat and churned out the required wordage. It was a typical “while on the one hand” but “on the other” piece. Muslims shouldn’t be up to these tricks and Hindus shouldn’t get too excited. I mentioned “structural violence” in the Hindu social order: This was sacriledge and Nihal let it pass. Unaware of the gathering storm, he thanked me for having responded promptly.
What followed took him and me by surprise. We were both completely out of touch with the strength of feelings on the issue. Indeed, a certain indifference to religion which a whole generation cultivated as Nehruvian secularism was being jettisoned and we found ourselves flat-footed.
After a brilliant career with the IAS and having established himself as a scholar of the Indus Valley script, Iravatham Mahadevan had taken up a job as Executive Manager of the Indian Express’s southern editions. After reading my edit, he came charging to my room in a state of high agitation. “How could you have done it?” He looked at me in a daze, blabbering like someone in a motor accident. “How could you have done it?” I learnt later he was from the RSS, shakhas et al. I commend to the RSS to keep more Mahadevans in its stable. He was exceptionally erudite on subjects of his choice.
In the Express compound, in Hick’s bungalow, Ramnath Goenka was bringing the ceiling down: “Hindu Kahan Javey?” (Where should the Hindus go?) “Tum to Makkay chale jaao; Hindu kahan javey?” (You can go to Mecca, but where should the Hindu go?)
He commandeered his Chartered Accountant, S. Gurumurthy, a senior RSS functionary, to write a rejoinder to my editorial. My “balanced” approach to Meenakshipuram, it transpired, was misplaced.
It was now Nihal’s turn to face the music. The piece, authored by Gurumurthy, arrived at his desk in New Delhi. His job as Editor was on the line. What should he do? But Nihal did what he had learnt in The Statesman. In a newspaper, the prerogative for taking editorial decision rests with the editor. He consigned the article to the waste paper basket. Ramnath Goenka too was a larger than life publisher. He allowed his Editor’s line to prevail. But separation was clearly on the cards; they belonged to different cultures.
So did S. Mulgaonkar “apparently” belong to another culture, but he was both a craftier man and a finer writer. In the projection of his image, Mulgaonkar was exactly Nihal’s opposite. Never having been to school, Mulgaonkar cultivated all the airs of English aristocracy. He was adept at bridge, horse racing, angling, and, believe it or not, keeping Oxford and Cambridge cricket scores. He was a gourmet cook, a fad for which he cultivated junior French diplomats as sources for herbs and white wine. All of this impressed the Marwari in Ramnath Goenka. Once an editor, devoted to the amber stuff, looked at his watch and dropped an obvious hint: “I suppose I will not get a drink here.” Pat came the reply from Goenka, “I keep, but only for English people.”
Nihal had no aristocratic pretenses of a Mulgaonkar. He was content with his buffalo undercut, marinated in garlic and pepper, roast potatoes and Dujon mustard on the side. He called it beef fillet. The Dujon, rather than English mustard, was in deference to his warm hearted Dutch wife, Ge. He had first come to know her when she was a young KLM hostess. I remember him flaunt his European affiliation before friends in London: “I prefer the continent,” he would say with a sort of flat, ineffective pomp.
His understanding of politics and International affairs was uncomplicated. He made up in clarity what he lacked in deep insight. He was, by habit, a perfect gentleman.
It was a mistake, I believe, for both Pran Chopra and Nihal Singh to be parked respectively in Kolkata as editors of The Statesman. The only Punjabi that Bengal has ever tolerated was K.L. Sehgal in New Theatre cinema. This elicited no more than a smile from Nihal.
(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Jay Shah, son of BJP President Amit Shah, and news portal “The Wire” to settle a defamation case filed by the former against the portal for carrying a story on the exponential increase in the turnover of his company after the BJP-led government came to power at the Centre in 2014.
The bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud asked the senior lawyers appearing for the news portal and Jay Shah to meet and try to resolve the issue.
“Can it be solved,” Justice Chandrachud asked senior counsel Nitya Ramakrishnan for The Wire and Neeraj Kishan Kaul for Jay Shah, with Chief Justice Misra suggesting “why not senior counsels meet and try to resolve (the issue)”.
“What kind of settlement we can have? We don’t want to have any settlement. We stand by our story. It was done in public interest,” said Ramakrishnan, with Kaul saying, “if the court says go for settlement, we are prepared for it”.
The Wire, its founding editor and journalist have moved the top court against the Gujarat High Court’s January 8 order, refusing to quash the summons issued against them by a trial court.
Journalist Rohini Singh’s article on the company of Jay Shah was carried by the news portal. The article claimed that Jay’s company’s turnover grew exponentially after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government came to power at the Centre in 2014.
The top court had asked the Gujarat trial court not to proceed with the criminal defamation complaint till April 12 filed by Jay Shah last year against the news portal and its journalists. The interim order was extended on Wednesday.
The High Court had on January 8 rejected the website’s plea for quashing the criminal defamation case filed by Jay Shah and said that based on initial impression, there was a case against the reporter and the editors.
“The article ‘The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah’ is per say defamatory and the trial court should proceed with the case,” the high court had ordered.
In October 2017, Jay Shah had filed a criminal defamation case in the trial court in Gujarat after the article appeared.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Media, Opinions, Social Media
By Saket Suman,
The increasing polarisation among media in India — and perhaps across the world — has led to an unprecedented trust deficit in everyday news. What was once regarded as the fourth pillar of democracy today finds itself under the scrutiny of citizens as tainted news published with self-securing motives are an everyday occurence in our times.
The times we live in are extremely challenging for the media. How media outlets have been hand-in-glove with political leaders and parties is no secret today. A journalist now commands far less respect in society than was the case even a decade ago. All of this, along with a host of other compelling factors, have together led to a massive downslide in the media’s place in a liberal democracy. There is the suspicious eye of the audience, who, even while reading or watching what the media reports, refuses to believe. Media is no longer, for most audiences, the honest purveyor of news — difficult to digest but apparently true.
The very purpose of media’s existence is in a crisis — a crisis that could well result in social media taking on the “fourth pillar of democracy” tag. And this could happen far earlier than projected.
This may happen because of a variety of reasons, primarily because the attraction that the social media has for those who were earlier fed by the mainstream media and the increasing affordability of the internet for the less privileged.
From television channels to most leading dailies in India, the reportage on non-sensational news — whether it is cultural or social and clubbed as “soft” news — is fast diminishing. Pages that were earlier dedicated to theatre, music and books are being replaced with “hard” politics — or simply negative and conflict-bearing news — that point to the grim picture of the times we are living in. There is no space to breathe for a particular section of readers that is intellectually inclined. Social media, thus, comes as a natural relief to such audience as just a couple of clicks in the keyboard will lead a visitor to the content that he wants.
Added to this is the challenge posed by the affordability of the internet in India. Telecom operators have already rolled out unlimited monthly internet plans that are, quite shockingly, even cheaper than a monthly subscription of most newspapers. At the same time, there is a significant rise of “social media influencers” across platforms on the internet. Celebrities of the internet in their own right, many social media influencers target niche audiences based on language, geographical location and even religion and caste, in many cases.
But the most significant factor leading to a slide in the traditional media’s position is a result of its own doing. In the race to make the utmost use (and monetary profit) of the internet, media outlets of our times have given it their entire content. The excitement to read the newspaper early in the morning, therefore, is gradually dying, because almost everything that appears in the newspaper is already trending on the social media in advance.
As is widely known, the internet-news concept in India has been plainly borrowed from the West, without an attempt made to either protect the sovereignty of print or to filter the content that goes online. Internet thrives on content — and content of a certain kind that will appeal to the user instantly — clickbaits. So even newspapers that would never publish a certain kind of article in their print editions actually end up having many of those kinds on their websites. What we miss here is the trust deficit that gradually builds in the reader for the entire brand of a given newspaper that publishes such content.
The circulation mafias and selective advertisements have made matters worse for the traditional media.
But the rapidly rising popularity of social media and its increasing user-base cannot alone replace media as the fourth pillar of democracy. After all, media is the trusted voice of the people and, as African-American human rights activist Malcolm X said, media is “the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses”.
Hasn’t social media too come to command a similar, if not more vicious and quicker, authority today?
Social media and the internet are still new phenomena in India, something that even today’s college-goers have seen evolving before their eyes. Traditional media, on the other hand, has been around for hundreds of years. It is high-time that media entrepreneurs and voices from the fraternity re-evaluate traditional media’s interaction with social media.
If not, social media may well, if not already, replace the traditional media as the fourth estate — and that is a fear more forbidding.
(Saket Suman is a Principal Correspondent at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in )
—IANS
