Commentary/Varsha Bhosle

Achtung, baby

Were I a communist, the type of person whom I should most wish to attack would not be the millionaire or the imperialist, but the soft, reasonable, tolerant, secure, self-satisfied intellectual like Vita and myself", wrote Harold Nicholson in 1932's Diary 4. Decades later, India's writing leftists, now awake to the dangers posed by sane and unfettered debates in a changing political climate, have taken the advice to heart. Oracles indicate that the progressives are regrouping -- to wipe out soft, reasonable, tolerant, secure, self-satisfied intellectuals like Shourie, Shenoy, Kamath, Dasgupta and moi.

It was inevitable, really. After the CPI and CPI-M identified the BJP as their principal adversary during the central committee meeting held in June, and after Bengal's home minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya publicly said, "We must take note of the fact that the BJP is growing and may turn out to be a threat to us in the near future", there was no way that the media Bolsheviks would leave us Hindu scribes to our gentle, non-interfering ways. The first salvo has been fired by Praful Bidwai, current Pooh-Bah of the red mafia, er media, in his essay "Media in service of communalism" in the August issue of Communalism Combat.

Mr Bidwai's woe is that "the respectability that Hindutva has acquired among the upper and middle class elite in spite of the despicable Ram temple campaign (not "despicable campaign of Ram temple," please note) culminating in the destruction of the Babri mosque in December 1992, and in horrific pogroms and riots the following month, would have been quite inconceivable without the media's complicity with and soft line on the Sangh combine. It is also a fact of no mean consequence that the top journalists and columnists of India's largest circulation English-language magazine are not just BJP sympathisers, but hardcore RSS supporters." (I presume, Mr Bidwai's dialectic has not been granted space in India Today.)

Now, what Saamna is to Nehruvians and Marxists, CC is to com-div- fundie-forces -- indeed, I call it Hinduism Combat. In the issue wherein Mr Bidwai writhes, other secularist contributors include Ayaz Memon (editor, Mid-Day), Imtiaz Ahmed (professor of history, JNU), Tarun Tejpal (associate editor, Outlook), Narendra Panjwani (asstistant editor, Times of India), Rauf Ahmed (editor, Screen), Rahul Singh (former editor, The Sunday Observer) and Mushirul Hasan (former VC, Jamia Milia Islamia). Missing are: MJ Akbar (editor, The Asian Age), N Ram (editor, Frontline), Behram Contractor (editor, The Afternoon), Vir Sanghvi (editor, Sunday), Kumar Ketkar (editor, Maharashtra Times), Anil Dharkar (former editor, The Illustrated Weekly), Nikhil Wagle (editor, Mahanagar), Mohammad Sayeed Malik (editor, The Sunday Observer), Dina Vakil (resident editor, Times of India). And (grin), the thrust of Mr Bidwai's article is that Saffron has overrun the media.

When people think of propaganda, what comes to their minds are the campaigns waged by Hitler and Stalin: Old Adolf, between World Warring and murdering 6 million Jews, established the extremely powerful ministry of propaganda headed by Josef Goebbels, which dominated all public utterances and instigated the so-called war of nerves. The defunct system is called Nazism or Hitlerianism. Old Josef, between his pogroms (Russian for "devastation") on religious/ethnic groups and the suppression of any hint of dissent, controlled all media and used them to impose an unrelenting dictatorship that checked all activities of citizens. This system is called Totalitarianism or Stalinism -- and is alive in most places where Communism rules.

Point to ponder: Since Hindutvawadis are freely called Nazis by all secularists (which group includes, strangely, religious minorities), why aren't our communists automatically reviled as Stalinists? Why is the CPI, with its pathetic number of seats, in governance? Why is the BJP made to bear the cross of the militant Bajrang Dal, but the CPI-M not painted with the blood-red brush of Naxalites? That, my friends, is the power of Propaganda. The Left successfully propagated ideas and shaded information for the purpose of inducing and intensifying anti-Hindu attitudes -- for it always knew that the religion of the majority would never allow Communism to take significant hold. Along with embracing Red ideology, our pinkos also adopted the indoctrination methods of the mother country.

Now think: Which medium disseminates propaganda? Who broadcasts the politico's com-div-fundie mantra, while at the same time concealing critical news items and demographic or crime statistics since they may be "detrimental to communal harmony"? For instance, you know all about the horrific firing on dalits by Thackeray's police, right? How many of you -- and how many times -- have read that the slimeball who put a garland of slippers on Dr Ambedkar's bust in Aurangabad, one Sheikh Naeem, had been contracted for Rs 40,000 by Saleh Chaus, a mobster -- and that both have confessed? Has this item been emphasised so that it may "ensure intercaste peace"? What is the logic behind ensuring peace between communities, but not castes? Not kidding, scratch an editor, and usually, out pops a Hinduphobic Marxist.

Ideally, I'd have loved to tear into Mr Bidwai line by line, but it makes for confusion if one is unfamiliar with the original. However, littering his predictable Marxist constructs and tiresome hammer-and-sickle motifs are pearls that I simply must scatter. Like, the Sangh is anathema to the "Nehruvian project of building an open, non-hierarchical, diverse, equitable and democratic society free from hunger, want, ignorance and superstition." Apart from the fact that in the last 50 years, the noble plans to banish hunger, etc, never even took off, let alone achieved anything, how is it possible to say "Nehru" and "non-hierarchical" in the same breath.? The word "superstition" we can ignore -- since we've already seen an example of Stalinist subliminal messaging above ("despicable Ram temple").

What tickled me most was Comrade Bidwai's proud confirmation of what fundies have been protesting all along: Ruing the lack of secularist principles in today's press, he goes all misty-eyed over the old days: "It was not hard to evolve a code of reporting on communal incidents which would avoid identifying the victim's/aggressor's religious affiliation so that it would not be used to fuel prejudice and cause violence." Achtung, baby. Now we have it straight from the burro's mouth that deception is a Nehruvian media policy...

But let me put it this way: I'm forever being told that to condone a staged police encounter, even if with a known terrorist, is to condone a violation of law. Besides which, the police, when unchecked, become obdurately brutal. Then, isn't it possible that journalists (whose very job-description is to investigate and announce the truth), when made to lie and obscure facts for whatever noble motives, can begin to develop their own agendas and play god? Where does chicanery end, and manipulation begin? It's the likes of Bidwai who have created the conditions which necessitated and fuelled an aggressive Hindutva. With more such deceit, Hindus can only get more combative -- that's a given.

I once believed that, whatever their agendas, commies had more intelligence than 'non-aligned' secularists. That is, before I saw Comrade Bidwai setting up his own traps to walk into: Eg, "the elite's own agenda, of promoting a State and social order that furthers its interests at the expense of the majority's and perpetrate its privileges" is one Bad Mamma. Now, what if I replace 'elite' with 'secularist' or 'minority'? Like it or not, the great majority of India is Hindu; Hindus have demonstrated that they want the Ram temple; Hindus have a right to read uncensored news. So whose agendas are being met at whose expense? In short, majoritarianism, when applied to Hindus, is an evil concept; when applied to other groups, is virtuous. What argument is this?

Actually, Comrade Bidwai's postulations, especially when juxtaposed with his other assumptions, would make even Fidel Castro grin sheepishly: First, he deplores that editors and reporters are pressurised "to conform to a certain (BJP) line, indeed to plug it hard, to the virtual exclusion of other points of view." Then, he mourns the change in the conditions since 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." Meaning, it is perfectly legitimate for the media to virtually exclude the Hindu point of view. Methinks, not only do pinkos lack intellect, but the integrity floor, too, is largely uncluttered.

The tender soul of Mr Bidwai is very troubled by the "certain paranoia and bitterness on the part of communal commentators", our indifference to "caring and sharing" and our bent for "national chauvinism." M V Kamath, a jingoist who betrays all this, depicts our most respected Leninist's role in the Bengal famine thus: "Jyoti Basu's biographer concedes that 'it lay in the Bengal government's power to avert the tragedy'. But what did Comrade Basu do? According to his biographer, 'he plunged into relief activities'! How noble! He should have plunged a knife into the British government. Instead he supported it, all in the noble cause of fighting fascism." Obviously, Comrade Bidwai *needs* to be worried by "communal commentators" -- not because we reflect Hindutva attitudes "in a particularly one-sided and brazen manner", but because we're letting out the putrefied skeletons in the pinko closet. Catch Comrade N Ram exposing the turned-coats of Basu or Yechuri.

Then there's this thesis that "the Dalits and OBCs are the mainstay, the bulwark of Indian democracy." Now picture the bulwark of democracy being transported to election booths in hired trucks, given a dhoti and a few rupees in exchange for voting, and with Naxalite goons overseeing them for extra measure. This commie crap brings up my bile, I tell you.

Finally, I have an axe to grind with Parivaris, too. Mr Bidwai informs us that "they have turned flattery and offers of gifts and favours to journalists into a fine art. The BJP-RSS have special training programmes on handling the media." Hel-lo? What's going on, guys? I'm not writing another word till I don't get wined and dined and tenderised! Er... and about that column in India Today...

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