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Pressing matters

In my previous column, I had named the Marathi daily whose reporter was in a bind over how to write a vicious copy on the SS-BJP rally at Shivaji Park. However, the name had to be withheld because anti-BJP-ism is not a declared policy of that paper; they could sue us and shift the onus on the reporter, whose career would be forever ruined. Meaning, thereafter, no "secular" and "free" media would touch him. Meaning, he'd have to move to the Internet, or, be at the mercy of saffron official mouthpieces.

When the decision to delete the name was put forth to me, I did not put up a fight (much to the shock of the sainted editor, methinks). You see, by then, I'd already absorbed the coverage by those who were seated near me at the rally and who'd heard and seen the same things I had. I acquiesced, not because of the instinct to preserve self, but because there was no point in going after one piddling paper when nearly all had written the same... And as I type this, I remember the words of a friend, a photo-journalist, from the days when I'd just begun to write: "Don't mingle with newsmen. Stay away. Or you'll lose your fire. You'll become a cynic." I now see why Bombay's Press Club is always blotto...

Last week, former Punjab supercop K P S Gill wrote: "Presiding over this insistent, corrosive loss of values is a stifling conspiracy of silence. No editor or journalist will write about the scandals, the compromises, or the corruption of his own peers; and if he did, no newspaper would publish such a critique... No other institution can be as aware as is the Press of the disastrous consequences of secrecy and the lack of introspection in any institutional structure... It is time, however, that the members of the Fourth Estate gave evidence of a realisation that these principles apply as much to their own profession and institutions as they do to others."

No truer words have been written. It was just such a conspiracy of silence that caused my first rift with The Sunday Observer, when it refused to accept a column on a FERA-violation case involving The Times of India chief, the late Ashok Jain. It is just such deceit that keeps a mere PM-wannabe safely out of columnists' firing range. It was just such a collusion> that made Praful Bidwai hark wistfully to the days when "the mainstream English-language press would treat the Jana Sangh, and in particular the RSS as politically unacceptable, and as part of the lunatic fringe." It is just such dishonesty that forces stringers to concoct reports and mislead readers. For if they don't, then their seniors do -- a la the Hindustan Times' Monica twist.

Bidwai was only being facile. The Press still conforms to that same old line; indeed, it is plugging it harder these days. Read any number of opinions/edits: all other points of view still belong to the "lunatic fringe". The correct line, of course, is the "Nehruvian" line. And God save us from it. For Secularism's altar boys undergo no moral conflict over publishing non-existent letters between Brigadier Surinder Singh and the army chief. The brigadier's own lawyer, Ranjit Singh Randhawa, admitted to a newspaper that the letter dated November 12, 1998 -- the one splashed on Outlook's cover -- did not, in fact, exist. But even after this confession, editor Vinod Mehta's stable remained firm -- on the ground that the brigadier's "relatives" *said* it existed. Hearsay!! Hey, anything to drive the fundies from Delhi...

The good part is, Mehta's own brother, Major General (retd) Ashok K Mehta, in an article, has dismissed the charges against the government as nonsense. When I quizzed a friend, a southie journo, about all this, he said, "Some editors have a knack of publishing very readable papers, but I'd never blindly pick up any of their stories. Apocryphal scandals sell the paper, but destroy its credibility forever. A case must be water-tight. This one isn't."

But the harm has already been done: The media use the shoot-and-scoot ploy even more than battling politicians do. Especially during election time. And that's why they are more dangerous: The public always takes politicos with bagfuls of salt, but the persistent lies from the Press have an effect... As Mr K P S Gill observes, "No editor or journalist will write about the scandals, the compromises, or the corruption of his own peers..." What's REALLY required today is for the media to be at each other's throats -- to expose what the other does. Dreams... dreams...

No matter how hard I try, I still can't get acclimatised to the perverted dialectic that forms the bedrock of Nehruvian secularism, that travesty embraced by the Press at large. The Srikrishna vs Wadhwa controversy is one example of its manifestation; Balasaheb's disenfranchisement -- and not Bukhari's and de Lastic's -- is another. I'm always amazed by what the dingbats are capable of finding offensive next -- it can be just about anything. With their pretzel logic, they can stand even the free choice of a citizen on its head and give it an ominous shade. Don't believe me? Analyse this:

"Yes, Bollywood, despite communal flare-ups in the rest of the country, remained a secular paradise. This happened so long as there was political stability at the Centre and the Congress ruled the nation without any challenges... But the current crop of stars would rather swim with the tide and keep their secular credentials well hidden... These are not happy developments. Bollywood, out of fear and its instinct for self-preservation, is ready to fall at the feet of Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray. Many of the stars see the BJP as the party of the future, in view of the decline of the Congress... The BJP had come to be associated with visible nationalism and patriotism and that was enough for our cardboard heroes and heroines."

V Gangadhar in The Tribune. And what caused his outrage? Voila: "Dream Girl Hema Malini campaigned for fellow filmstar Vinod Khanna [BJP]... She was joined by screen villain, Amrish Puri, who exhorted voters in chaste Punjabi to vote for Khanna. In New Delhi's Chandni Chowk constituency, another group of Bollywood stars, Rahul Roy, Bhagyashree and her husband Himalaya, waved the saffron flags and campaigned for Vijay Goel..."

Vyjayantimala was excluded from Gangadhar's diatribe because she formally joined the BJP three days after the piece was published. And perhaps he didn't know of Shilpa Shetty and Om Puri and Akshay Kumar and Suresh Oberoi and Sonali Bendre and Nana Patekar and... You see, all of them belong to a sub-human intellectual strata: Issues do not matter to them, and, they swim with the party in power...

Perhaps. But then why have Sunil Dutt, Raj Babbar, Shabana Azmi, Anant Nag, Muzaffar Ali, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan -- who were all politically active even at the time when their fellow secularists were in power -- never been accused of swimming with the tide...? Only because their political bent didn't clash with Gangadhar's personal ideology? And what might that be? Clue: "There is hardly any support for the Socialist or the leftist groups... In Mumbai, there were no takers for Marxist ideology. The late Balraj Sahni, thespian Hangal and Bengal's Utpal Dutt carried the Red flag but made little impact"....

Point to ponder: If only the "current crop" is swimming with the tide, how does one slot Vyjayantimala, Shatrughan Sinha and Amrish Puri? Are they spring chickens?? So you'll deflect that with: Vyjayantimala has often switched parties. Sure -- but so has Dr Karan Singh, whom the Congress respects so much that he's been pitted against the prime minister. It's like Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh sneered on the Big Debate: "I had only heard of the Midas touch, but Sonia has one which magically turns all her supporters into secularists, even Karan Singhji." You see, the good doctor was the chief of the Virat Hindu Samaj, a VHP outfit, for years. But he's healed now, he's been "touched." Like Shankarsinh Vaghela and JJ were touched...

Therefore, is "opportunists," as an abuse, applicable to fundies alone? Others merely get "disillusioned" and make "new adjustments," right? The pinkos' trashing of the policy of "equi-distance from Congress and BJP"; the Congress' wooing Laloo; the Shroud's volte face on coalition governance -- why aren't these instances of a despicable opportunism?

Another thought: Do Mahima and Madhuri Dixit metamorphose from cardboard heroines to rocket-scientists just because they back the Congress...?

But I'm nit-picking. For Gangadhar has never hidden his bigotry: "How could its [Bollywood's] representatives campaign for a communal party?", he asks. Er... could it be because they aren't paper cut-outs and do have the brains to discern Nehruvian bullshit? Knock, knock, they obviously don't buy the assessment that the Beej is "communal"! It's called difference of opinion -- an imperative for democracy. But to understand that, dweebs would need to take an extensive course in lateral thinking and shun their Totalitarian tendencies...

I tell you, this year's election has made me one sick bird: puking, puking all the time. What else can I do when the Shroud is portrayed by an experienced journalist -- my favourite, at that -- as the embodiment of innocence, helplessly enmeshed in bloody politics? Am I expected to feel thrilled that Sonia and her brood didn't get annoyed when the television crew re-arranged her furniture?? Am I expected to get kittens over their hospitality to the crew?? Hel-lo, did you think she'd throw a fit before an interviewer chosen to highlight her "virtues"...? Did you expect her to treat mediapersons as she would some dehati Congress workers...? Above all, did you expect us to buy that crap?! Vir, Vir... what a dummy piece. Your arguments on why NOT to vote in Vajpayee had balls. But the Sonia serenades lopped them off. What a pity.

No doubt, Indian journalism has begun to struggle with credibility ratings: We are now (correctly) ranked somewhere between politicians and pimps. With the advent of cable and satellite news, the surface Press, too, has embraced a docudrama culture -- the techniques of fiction and non-fiction have begun to blur. Sure, subjectivity can be an enhancement for an opinionated column, but if objectivity -- in investigating scandals and reporting events -- is going to be declared a myth, then, lemmee outa herrrrreeee.......

Varsha Bhosle