Arun Shourie
All sorts of lessons are being propounded from the events of fifty years ago -- from our getting Independence, from the country being partitioned. But, as usual, political correctness is keeping commentators from facing up to the fundamental lesson. The fundamental premises on which the country was partitioned were that
(i) religion defines nationhood;
(ii) though they do not have a common language, though they are separated by a thousand miles, the Muslims of East and West India are a nation because of their common adherence to Islam; (iii) moreover, Muslims are a separate nation from the rest who inhabit the sub-continent;
(iv) they can never get justice in a united India for they will be swamped by the Hindu majority; (v) once they are given a country of their own, prosperity, justice, fraternity and all else will flow automatically;
(vi) as Islam is a religion of tolerance, brotherhood and equality, as it places human dignity above all, people of all beliefs, creeds, races, languages will enjoy equal rights, and live in liberty and fraternity.
These were the propositions which Muslim leaders -- from Sir Syed Ahmed to Jinnah -- hurled incessantly for seventy years at the country. Surely, the fundamental lesson must concern the way these premises have turned out in practice -- in the country which was set up as a consequence, that is in Pakistan.
The first truth after fifty years of course is that today no one seriously asserts that, because Muslims believe in Islam, they constitute one nation. The massacre of Bengalis by Punjabis in 1971, the continuing killings of the Mohajirs in Karachi, the animosities between Sindhis and Punjabis, the continuing intransigence of the inhabitants of the tribal areas in the North-West -- all these give the lie to the basic premise on which the country was partitioned. The lesson is reinforced by what has been happening in the rest of the "Islamic world" : the wars between Iran and Iraq, the annexation of Kuwait, the rivalries between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the fratricidal war in Afghanistan, the bitterness between Libya and Egypt, the killings of thousands upon thousands in Algeria, terrorists trained in Sudan and flung at other Islamic countries... -- there is no end to proof to the contrary.
The second lesson is in the logic of these things. Jinnah, as is well known, was as far from being religious as anyone could possibly be. But he embraced the religious rhetoric to acquire a following. He had the country partitioned in the name of Islam. In his very first address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan he set about to dilute the "principle" on which he had wrested Pakistan. He told the Assembly,
"You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan... You may belong to any religion or caste or creed -- that has nothing to do with the business of the State.... We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State..."
Pointing to the way England had evolved, how there were now no Roman Catholics or Protestants in that country, only equal citizens of Great Britain, "all members of the Nation", Jinnah told the Assembly,
"Now I think we should keep in front of us our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State..."
Liaquat Ali, the country's first Prime Minister, was equally emphatic in repudiating the suggestion that non-Muslims would be in any way less equal than Muslims. He told the Constituent Assembly that a non-Muslim could well be the head of the administration of an Islamic State, that non-Muslims would be welcomed into the administrative services of the country. He said that the guarantees which were being provided for non-Muslims in the Pakistan Constitution were much more comprehensive than were being provided for Muslims in the Indian Constitution. Mohammed Zafrullah Khan, the country's Foreign Minister and an Ahmediya by faith, had this to say,
"It is a matter of great sorrow that, mainly through mistaken notions of zeal, the Muslims have during the period of decline earned for themselves an unenviable reputation for intolerance. But that is not the fault of Islam. Islam has from the beginning proclaimed and inculcated the widest tolerance. For instance, so far as freedom of conscience is concerned the Quran says "There shall be no compulsion" of faith..."
When the Assembly passed its Objectives Resolution, the General Assembly of the All Pakistan Christian League hailed it, and in April 1949 declared, "In our opinion the Objectives Resolution should set at rest the doubts which often assailed the non-Muslims of Pakistan with regard to the connotation of the term 'Islamic State', which it was feared would be a theocratic State at variance with the democratic ideas of modern times." We shall soon see what has happened to the Christians since, to the Ahmediyas of whom Sir Zafrullah was such a devoted member, to say nothing of the Hindus.
For the moment we may note only that that speech of Jinnah is often quoted -- but only in India ! Here it is recalled by our secularist commentators in their effort to prove that Jinnah never really wanted Partition -- the corollary to that being, of course, that Partition came about because of the latent communalism and folly of the (naturally, Hindu) leaders of the Congress. In their commitment to lay the blame for everything on Gandhiji, Nehru and the Sardar, our commentators do not pause to think that if one is to assume that it is this kind of a speech which reflects the true desires of Jinnah, then everything he ever spoke from 1935 to 1947 was a lie. Moreover, were it really the case that he and others of the Muslim League were "not really keen on Partition", the point would be proven to the hilt : that once a movement is launched on the basis of an exclusivist ideology, irrespective of the "real" intentions of the leaders, an irreversible logic will take over.
In any event, neither that speech of Jinnah nor those made by other ministerial spokesmen in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly are recalled today in Pakistan. The reason lies in the subsequent events. Those speeches and pledges were made in 1947-49. In 1953, Pakistan was formally proclaimed to be an "Islamic Republic". The Constitution of 1956 was entitled The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Article 32 (2) of the Constitution provided that a person who was not a Muslim would not be qualified to stand for election of the country's President. Article 197 directed the President to set up an organization to assist in the reconstruction of Muslim society on a truly Islamic basis. Article 198 provided that no law would be enacted which was in conflict with the injunctions of Islam, and the laws then existing in Pakistan would be brought into conformity with those injunctions. These Articles were given an operational immediacy by the Constitution Ayub proclaimed in 1962 : an Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology was constituted to bring about the objectives of Articles 197 and 198 of the 1956 Constitution. The new Constitution proclaimed the sovereignty of Allah over the entire universe, and declared Pakistan to be an "Islamic Republic" based on "Islamic principles of social justice."
Bengalis having been given a taste of the tolerance of an Islamic State and a concrete demonstration of the "Islamic principles of social justice" in 1971, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sought to galvanize the masses with his cry of "Islamic Socialism". Articles 31, 227, 228 of the 1973 Constitution brought into being by this great secularist repeated and made more concrete the provisions of the earlier Constitutions. And as the legitimacy of the regime dwindled, the usual decrees ensued : drinking, gambling, night clubs were banned, Friday replaced Sunday as a holiday...
But Bhutto was ousted and then hanged by his prot�g�, General Zia-ul-Haq. In 1979, the General proclaimed the establishment of "Nizam-i-Islam" in Pakistan. Shariat benches were set up in the High Courts and a Shariat Appellate Court in the Supreme Court. They were to assess whether any existing law ran counter to "Islamic injunctions". The moment they decided that it did, the law was to automatically become void. Lawyers practicing in these courts were to be aalims well-versed in the Shariat. Islamic punishments were introduced for specific categories of crimes -- for theft, adultery, intoxication. The detailed classifications familiar to readers of Shariat were put in place -- if the woman guilty of adultery is a virgin or is married, the punishment is death by stoning; if she is unmarried -- if she is a widow, a divorcee, a prostitute -- the punishment is one hundred lashes... For possessing an intoxicant the punishment is two years' imprisonment or thirty lashes, and fine; for importing, transporting, manufacturing, selling, allowing consumption of an intoxicant in the premises the punishment is imprisonment up to five years, thirty lashes and fine...
The measures were hailed far and wide -- giant steps towards establishing a moral society, it was said. I remember well how visitors and commentators praised Zia for his devotion to the Quran, for his commitment to Islam, indeed for his piety. We shall see how the Pakistani press talks of Zia today. That Pakistani politics has since been taken over by the drug trade should be some approximate indication of the effect of those much-hailed laws on the incidence of crimes.
But that was in the future. Enough having been done to establish the "Nizam-i-Islam", a referendum was decreed. The people were asked to decide whether they approved of the programme of Islamization. Of course, the referendum was not to be of the ordinary, non-Islamic variety : opposition groups were outlawed, and banned from participating in the referendum; anyone who boycotted the referendum was prohibited from participating in elections for seven years, anyone who urged anyone else to boycott it was to be imprisoned for five years. Two-thirds of the electorate were proclaimed to have voted, and 97.7 per cent of them were proclaimed to have endorsed the Islamization of Pakistan !
Naturally the Government was now in duty bound to press further with Islamization. "Non-Islamic banking" became the target : interest was to be outlawed, and the whole economy was to be brought in line with Islamic injunctions within six months. Treatises began appearing on "Islamic taxation", on "Islamic economic management", of course on "Islamic banking". It was all quite ludicrous. Interest is abolished, it was proclaimed. And in practice? When you took your amount to be deposited in the bank, the bank "sold" you some goods, and then immediately repurchased them from you at a higher price : it turned out that the difference in the "price" at which it had "sold" the goods and the "price" at which it had "purchased" them back totalled exactly to what the "interest" would have been ! Correspondingly, when you went to borrow money from the bank, the bank "purchased" some goods from you and then "sold" them back to you at a higher price : and lo and behold, another miracle -- the difference in the two "prices" again totalled exactly to what the interest would have been !
Piety precluded everyone from pointing out the obvious. But it was not in these specific measures towards Islamization that the fulfilment of the premises of the 1940s was most visible. The real effect was in making Islam, and talk of Islam pervade everything : it became the touchstone for every measure, exhibitionist commitment to it became the measure of everyone. Dress and appearance were transformed. The President made it a point to be seen consulting ulema at every turn. Mosques, madrasahs began to receive a share of the Islamic taxes, such as zakat.
I remember well a friend describing to me how astute all this was. He had become very important in Zia's Government. By giving State funds to the madrasahs, he said, Government had acquired a say in their running : now it would be able to get them to modernize their syllabus. He was particularly proud of one device : Government had linked the amount that a madrasah was to receive with the percentage of girls among its students -- this had led to an immediate leap in female-enrolments, he told me.
Actually it is religion which got secularized! Here is a representative account from the cover story in the September 1994 issue of Karachi's well known magazine, Newsline :
"General Zia found a ready constituency among the mullahs who had comprised the bulk of the PNA movement against Bhutto. Steps like setting up zakat and salat Committees and State-sponsored conventions for ulema and mashaikh conferences suddenly brought the clergy close to the corridors of power. The same mullahs who once had to wait for weeks before they could get an audience with their local DC were being dined by the pious President and accompanying him on Haj and Umra. The traders and the business community which had mainly financed the PNA movement against Bhutto, also found powerful political allies in the clergy who had a ready-made, ideologically trained street force coming out of the madrasahs, which had started mushrooming all over the country to claim their share from the Government largesse that was available in the form of zakat fund. At the same time, the madrasahs, putting aside their sectarian differences, persuaded General Zia-ul-Haq to grant madrasah degrees a status equivalent to those issued by universities. A logical outcome was that many of the madrasah graduates were later appointed in colleges and even in the Ministry of Education. In some cases, those with a degree in Dars-i-Nizami even managed to get themselves appointed as English and science teachers.
"These 175,000 deeni madrasahs also produce maulvis who have to find employment for themselves. For them one of the few sure-shot ways of earning a livelihood is a mosque. Many mosques have now become little enterprises, in some cases complete with adjoining shops which can be rented out. There are mosques where rich patrons and VIPs are provided separate air-conditioned rooms where they can pray in surroundings befitting their status. And there are other kinds of hierarchies operating in mosques as well...
"....a phenomenal proliferation of mosques. Okra city had one Sunni mosque in the early 50's. According to a survey carried out last month, there are now over 160 Sunni Barelvi mosques in the city, and that does not include the dozens of Deobandi, Ahl-e-Hadith mosques and imambargahs there. Most of these mosques have shops which have been rented out, turning the House of God into a lucrative economic unit. Over 60 per cent of the mosques are either outright encroachments on public property or built on disputed land. 'This is perhaps the most fool-proof method that the qabza groups have come up with,' says a Lahore resident. 'After a mosque's foundation has been laid, no matter what the legal status of the land, nobody can dare challenge it.'..."
Organizing professional qabza gangs -- gangs to capture land -- has been just one avenue. "Every private madrasah," reports the February 1995 issue of The Herald, "is a surprisingly large publishing house -- the Ziaul Quran chain has over 500 publications, the sale of which on paper accounts for most of its income.... The donations from their patrons are also, in most cases, exaggerated. The arithmetic is simple. An institution with 1,000 regular members ( who need not be fictitious ) can easily show each of its members as donating 500 Rupees per month. This accounts for an annual income of about six million Rupees... Similarly, a single 32 page publication is enough to account for an income of a million Rupees or more, since it is perfectly plausible that a well established madrasah should be able to sell one lakh copies at a profit of 10 Rupees per copy..."
The effect on religion can be easily imagined. The effect on society, as we shall see, has been twenty times worse.
India Connect
July 21, 1997
Showing posts with label india connect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india connect. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Not an Abberation, But the Theme
Arun Shourie
"The Congress is like Ravana," The Hindustan Times of 2nd September, 1999, reported Dr Murli Manohar Joshi saying, "and they have unleashed Sonia, the Surpnakha (Ravana's sister who was humiliated by Lakshman) on the country." That in a box-item at the very top of page 1, under the heading, "Below the belt." The source? The Asian Age, reported The Hindustan Times.
Knowing what The Hindustan Times has been doing, I look up The Asian Age. It doesn't take long: the relevant story appears at the top of the front page of The Asian Age of the previous day, 1st September. The report says, "At Union Minister for Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi's rally in Mysore on Monday night, BJP MLC Ramchandre Gowda referred to Congress President Sonia Gandhi as Surpnakha -- sister of Ravana who was humiliated by Lakshman. 'The Congress is like Ravana and they have unleashed Sonia, the Surpnakha on the country,' much to the audience's delight."
So, from some MLC saying it at a rally at which Murli Manohar Joshi was present to Murli Manohar Joshi saying it in one short leap. But even that is not the end. The other secularist paper, The Hindu of 1st September reports an additional detail. Under the caption, "Heed PM advice: Joshi," the Mysore-datelined news story in the paper reported, "'Please don't debate that,' a visibly upset Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, Union Minister for Human Resources, said when his attention was drawn by presspersons to the uncharitable remarks by his ministerial colleagues against the Congress (I) president, Ms Sonia Gandhi. Mr Joshi also wanted to know whether his party colleagues were taking the rebuke of the Prime Minister seriously." "He was replying to a question on the BJP's state unit general secretary, Mr Ramchandre Gowda, having compared Ms. Gandhi to Surpanaki of the Ramayana in his (Dr Joshi's) presence at an election meeting here on Monday. Dr Joshi told presspersons on Tuesday that the feelings and advice of the Prime Minister should be respected by all the party members and others in the National Democratic Alliance. He had conveyed his views to Mr. Ramachandre Gowda...."
Thus, from Dr Joshi asking the man to abide by the Prime Minister's guideline in the matter, to the simile being delivered at a rally attended by Dr Joshi, to Dr Joshi himself delivering the simile -- all in two short leaps!
The Indian Express had done exactly the same thing in the case of Professor Vijay Kumar Malhotra: it had put in his mouth words -- that Dr Manmohan Singh take off his turban so that people may see whether he actually is a Sikh -- which he had not uttered at all. And it had failed to correct the mischief for three days, enough time for Congress to stage demonstrations etc.
The most notorious example of course involved The Hindustan Times. By supplying a perverse headline, and altering the reporter's copy, it fanned a concoction -- that Pramod Mahajan had compared Mrs Sonia Gandhi to Monica Lewinsky. When that fabrication was nailed by the reporter himself, the paper -- and the ones for whose benefit all this is being done, the Congress leaders -- attempted to divert attention from the fabrication by using the favourite device of politicians: "But how did Mahajan get the letter?," it demanded in mock-horror.
What if Mahajan had got it from me? And I had received it from the reporter, or from some colleague of his in the paper's Bombay office, or from some colleague in the paper's Delhi office? How would that dilute one bit the reporter's searing indictment of what had been done to his copy by the editorial office in Delhi?
The press has been pontificating about politicians. In fact, as the campaign has proceeded such perversions and fabrications have become the staple -- of the press, much, much more than of politicians. "IB study says Cong is inching ahead," proclaimed a bye-lined report on the front page of 31st August's Times of India. The paper said that the IB assessment "has been reportedly communicated to the Prime Minister's Office." Nothing of the sort had been sent to either the Prime Minister or to anyone in his Office. Nothing of the sort had been sent to the Home Minister or his office. And I say that after checking with the persons directly concerned: at the highest levels in the Prime Minister's Office, in the Home Minister's Office, in the Intelligence Bureau.
"Guilty Kargil Generals exposed," screamed the headline across six columns of the front page of The Asian Age of 1st September. As the magazine Outlook had done in its cover story earlier, the paper maintained that Brigadier Surinder Singh had sent letters to the Army in August and November, 1998, warning them about Pakistan's build-up and designs in the Kargil sector. The Army has denied having received any such letters.
What the spokesman of the Congress(I) had released earlier in the day, the paper carried as a great scoop: a "receipt" from the Army of a communication from Brigadier Surinder Singh. The date on the receipt itself should have alerted the paper: clearly visible in the facsimile it carried across two columns, the date was 28 June, 1999. But the letters which the Brigadier was supposed to have written were said to have been written in August and November 1998! The receipt had absolutely nothing to do with the non-existent letters.
Not only the date on the receipt, the text of the receipt too should have made that clear: at the very top, the receipt stated, "Received HQ 15 Corps letter No 29734/SS/Conf dated 28 Jun 99 containing 68 (sixty eight) pages from Brigadier Surinder Singh, SM, VSM" It is well-known that Surinder Singh had been transferred. He had sent a representation against his transfer. This was a receipt for that representation! Not just that, the officer was by this time involved in litigation with the Army. He had been directly in charge of troops in the Kargil sector. Sending patrols etc., and keeping a vigil in that area had been his direct responsibility. He was certain to be questioned on why patrolling had been inadequate. If any single person's claims needed to be cross-checked before publication, they were of this officer. But then defeating "communal forces" justifies everything!
The Congress built its campaign on these twin predispositions -- to print canards without verification, and to broadcast anything and everything so long as it served "the Great Cause" of harming "communal forces". Every day, the party spokesman would hurl one new concoction. And the next morning, these papers would reach it to millions of households. "Rs 900 crores loss to public exchequer because of sugar imports from Pakistan," the spokesman declared. Not just that, on the premise that the concoction would fetch more if it could somehow be linked to national security, the spokesman asserted that actually through these imports Vajpayee had helped arm ISI and the Pakistan Army to invade Kargil! "Will they dare to name the owner of Kundan Sugar Mills?," he demanded, with an air of having some devastating information up his sleeve. They were allowed to import 80,000 tonnes, and thereby provide foreign exchange to the Pakistan Army and the ISI.
It turns out that import of sugar had been placed on Open General License in 1994 by the then Congress(I) Government. That a score of traders had been importing sugar since. That sugar had also been imported from Pakistan. That one of the importers was a trader in Chandini Chowk of Delhi, named Kundan Sugar Mills. But what had that trader to do with the Prime Minister and his family? And the firm had imported not 80,000 tonnes, as the Congress(I) had alleged, but a paltry 2,500 tonnes! As for loss to the exchequer was concerned, the Government had not imported any sugar at all -- how was there a loss of even 9 paise, to say nothing of Rs 900 crores? In fact, while the Congress(I) Government had allowed imports of sugar at zero import duty, the present Government has successively raised the duty to 27.5 per cent: it is now that every teaspoon of sugar imported will contribute to the public exchequer!
Each of these facts could have been ascertained with just a phone-call. Each of them should have been common knowledge among journalists. But the rule held, "Swallow and vomit." And the press became the megaphone of calumners.
The daily allegation has become the mainstay of the Congress(I)'s campaign this time round, and that of its allies in the media. But this is just a new low. It is this very party with the help of some of the same papers which in the 1989 elections forged and broadcast documents to prove that Mr. V. P. Singh and his son Ajay had a secret account in St Kitts, an account into which millions had been paid as kickbacks. And that was just one of seven forgeries which these worthies had put out through the media. That was their explanation of the kickbacks in Bofors.
This is one of the central issues before the electorate today: should it place the country in the hands of a party, and a leadership which is so comfortable with falsehood?
More is at stake than just an electoral outcome. The eagerness with which the press is making itself the hand-maiden of falsehood poisons public discourse -- something even more elemental for a society than elections. The press often complain that politicians do not discuss issues. But surely one of the main goads to them to discard issues and pedal calumny is that papers and TV channels as good as black out whatever they have to say on issues. At a discussion on Starnews, the Congress(I)'s spokesman recalled that he had fielded Dr Manmohan Singh one day to talk on economic issues, and that the result had been that next day the papers had not carried a word about the Congress(I)'s press conference. "You mean, sleaze sells?," the anchor asked. Yes, said the spokesman.
On the one side that was quite a confession -- as sleaze sells, the Congress(I) had decided to peddle sleaze. But on the other, it was an important statement of fact. Coverage of Parliament exhibits the same trait: hulla gets much coverage, considered speeches get next to nothing; naturally, that balance becomes an encouragement to the hulla-raisers.
The entry of TV has compounded the problem. As it is, newspapers had given up examining issues in any detail. TV has it as an article of faith that viewers turn off if any image lasts for more than 30 seconds, that they do not want to be bothered by detail. So, the moment someone start explaining the point at issue, the interviewer shuts him up, "What you mean is that you do not agree with Mr..., Let us move on, well, Mr... what do you think of the other charge...?"
Several things can be done. The press should not print allegations unless they are backed by evidence.
Second, if it just has to print the allegation because of urgency or because of the importance of the person making it, the press should pursue the allegation on its own in the days that follow, and report its independent findings on the matter.
Third, TV programmers should devise extended issue-based discussions among experts, and among political representatives.
Fourth, while the legal provisions on defamation are excellent, victims hesitate to go to court because of the time it takes to bring the case to any sort of conclusion: it took the victim thirteen years to get a judgment even from the lowest court in a case against The Indian Express in which to my personal knowledge the paper had no defence at all. The remedy, therefore, is to leave the defamation provision as it is but to legislate day-to-day hearings of defamation cases. And for courts to award exemplary damages.
Fifth, even under the law as it is, to repeat a libel is libel. When a newspaper or TV channel broadcasts a libelous statement, it compounds the libel manifold. Unfortunately, in practice the courts are too liberal in this regard, and often papers are able to get away by pleading that they merely repeated what X had said. The provision on repeating libel must be enforced with due sternness.
Finally, in one respect the current situation needs to be turned on its head. The harm calumny does is infinitely greater at the time of elections. But our current practice seems to be to be even more lax during elections in regard to what is permissible. Notice that while the Election Commission has deemed fit to pronounce its views on all sorts of matters in the past few weeks, it has done nothing, it has not even said anything that would dissuade party spokesmen from hurling defamatory allegations.
The defamation law should be enforced even more rigidly in case the defamatory statement is made during elections, if necessary the law should be amended for this purpose.
Such changes are necessary both to prevent elections from being polluted further, and also to save media from its own excesses.
India Connect
September 7, 1999
"The Congress is like Ravana," The Hindustan Times of 2nd September, 1999, reported Dr Murli Manohar Joshi saying, "and they have unleashed Sonia, the Surpnakha (Ravana's sister who was humiliated by Lakshman) on the country." That in a box-item at the very top of page 1, under the heading, "Below the belt." The source? The Asian Age, reported The Hindustan Times.
Knowing what The Hindustan Times has been doing, I look up The Asian Age. It doesn't take long: the relevant story appears at the top of the front page of The Asian Age of the previous day, 1st September. The report says, "At Union Minister for Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi's rally in Mysore on Monday night, BJP MLC Ramchandre Gowda referred to Congress President Sonia Gandhi as Surpnakha -- sister of Ravana who was humiliated by Lakshman. 'The Congress is like Ravana and they have unleashed Sonia, the Surpnakha on the country,' much to the audience's delight."
So, from some MLC saying it at a rally at which Murli Manohar Joshi was present to Murli Manohar Joshi saying it in one short leap. But even that is not the end. The other secularist paper, The Hindu of 1st September reports an additional detail. Under the caption, "Heed PM advice: Joshi," the Mysore-datelined news story in the paper reported, "'Please don't debate that,' a visibly upset Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, Union Minister for Human Resources, said when his attention was drawn by presspersons to the uncharitable remarks by his ministerial colleagues against the Congress (I) president, Ms Sonia Gandhi. Mr Joshi also wanted to know whether his party colleagues were taking the rebuke of the Prime Minister seriously." "He was replying to a question on the BJP's state unit general secretary, Mr Ramchandre Gowda, having compared Ms. Gandhi to Surpanaki of the Ramayana in his (Dr Joshi's) presence at an election meeting here on Monday. Dr Joshi told presspersons on Tuesday that the feelings and advice of the Prime Minister should be respected by all the party members and others in the National Democratic Alliance. He had conveyed his views to Mr. Ramachandre Gowda...."
Thus, from Dr Joshi asking the man to abide by the Prime Minister's guideline in the matter, to the simile being delivered at a rally attended by Dr Joshi, to Dr Joshi himself delivering the simile -- all in two short leaps!
The Indian Express had done exactly the same thing in the case of Professor Vijay Kumar Malhotra: it had put in his mouth words -- that Dr Manmohan Singh take off his turban so that people may see whether he actually is a Sikh -- which he had not uttered at all. And it had failed to correct the mischief for three days, enough time for Congress to stage demonstrations etc.
The most notorious example of course involved The Hindustan Times. By supplying a perverse headline, and altering the reporter's copy, it fanned a concoction -- that Pramod Mahajan had compared Mrs Sonia Gandhi to Monica Lewinsky. When that fabrication was nailed by the reporter himself, the paper -- and the ones for whose benefit all this is being done, the Congress leaders -- attempted to divert attention from the fabrication by using the favourite device of politicians: "But how did Mahajan get the letter?," it demanded in mock-horror.
What if Mahajan had got it from me? And I had received it from the reporter, or from some colleague of his in the paper's Bombay office, or from some colleague in the paper's Delhi office? How would that dilute one bit the reporter's searing indictment of what had been done to his copy by the editorial office in Delhi?
The press has been pontificating about politicians. In fact, as the campaign has proceeded such perversions and fabrications have become the staple -- of the press, much, much more than of politicians. "IB study says Cong is inching ahead," proclaimed a bye-lined report on the front page of 31st August's Times of India. The paper said that the IB assessment "has been reportedly communicated to the Prime Minister's Office." Nothing of the sort had been sent to either the Prime Minister or to anyone in his Office. Nothing of the sort had been sent to the Home Minister or his office. And I say that after checking with the persons directly concerned: at the highest levels in the Prime Minister's Office, in the Home Minister's Office, in the Intelligence Bureau.
"Guilty Kargil Generals exposed," screamed the headline across six columns of the front page of The Asian Age of 1st September. As the magazine Outlook had done in its cover story earlier, the paper maintained that Brigadier Surinder Singh had sent letters to the Army in August and November, 1998, warning them about Pakistan's build-up and designs in the Kargil sector. The Army has denied having received any such letters.
What the spokesman of the Congress(I) had released earlier in the day, the paper carried as a great scoop: a "receipt" from the Army of a communication from Brigadier Surinder Singh. The date on the receipt itself should have alerted the paper: clearly visible in the facsimile it carried across two columns, the date was 28 June, 1999. But the letters which the Brigadier was supposed to have written were said to have been written in August and November 1998! The receipt had absolutely nothing to do with the non-existent letters.
Not only the date on the receipt, the text of the receipt too should have made that clear: at the very top, the receipt stated, "Received HQ 15 Corps letter No 29734/SS/Conf dated 28 Jun 99 containing 68 (sixty eight) pages from Brigadier Surinder Singh, SM, VSM" It is well-known that Surinder Singh had been transferred. He had sent a representation against his transfer. This was a receipt for that representation! Not just that, the officer was by this time involved in litigation with the Army. He had been directly in charge of troops in the Kargil sector. Sending patrols etc., and keeping a vigil in that area had been his direct responsibility. He was certain to be questioned on why patrolling had been inadequate. If any single person's claims needed to be cross-checked before publication, they were of this officer. But then defeating "communal forces" justifies everything!
The Congress built its campaign on these twin predispositions -- to print canards without verification, and to broadcast anything and everything so long as it served "the Great Cause" of harming "communal forces". Every day, the party spokesman would hurl one new concoction. And the next morning, these papers would reach it to millions of households. "Rs 900 crores loss to public exchequer because of sugar imports from Pakistan," the spokesman declared. Not just that, on the premise that the concoction would fetch more if it could somehow be linked to national security, the spokesman asserted that actually through these imports Vajpayee had helped arm ISI and the Pakistan Army to invade Kargil! "Will they dare to name the owner of Kundan Sugar Mills?," he demanded, with an air of having some devastating information up his sleeve. They were allowed to import 80,000 tonnes, and thereby provide foreign exchange to the Pakistan Army and the ISI.
It turns out that import of sugar had been placed on Open General License in 1994 by the then Congress(I) Government. That a score of traders had been importing sugar since. That sugar had also been imported from Pakistan. That one of the importers was a trader in Chandini Chowk of Delhi, named Kundan Sugar Mills. But what had that trader to do with the Prime Minister and his family? And the firm had imported not 80,000 tonnes, as the Congress(I) had alleged, but a paltry 2,500 tonnes! As for loss to the exchequer was concerned, the Government had not imported any sugar at all -- how was there a loss of even 9 paise, to say nothing of Rs 900 crores? In fact, while the Congress(I) Government had allowed imports of sugar at zero import duty, the present Government has successively raised the duty to 27.5 per cent: it is now that every teaspoon of sugar imported will contribute to the public exchequer!
Each of these facts could have been ascertained with just a phone-call. Each of them should have been common knowledge among journalists. But the rule held, "Swallow and vomit." And the press became the megaphone of calumners.
The daily allegation has become the mainstay of the Congress(I)'s campaign this time round, and that of its allies in the media. But this is just a new low. It is this very party with the help of some of the same papers which in the 1989 elections forged and broadcast documents to prove that Mr. V. P. Singh and his son Ajay had a secret account in St Kitts, an account into which millions had been paid as kickbacks. And that was just one of seven forgeries which these worthies had put out through the media. That was their explanation of the kickbacks in Bofors.
This is one of the central issues before the electorate today: should it place the country in the hands of a party, and a leadership which is so comfortable with falsehood?
More is at stake than just an electoral outcome. The eagerness with which the press is making itself the hand-maiden of falsehood poisons public discourse -- something even more elemental for a society than elections. The press often complain that politicians do not discuss issues. But surely one of the main goads to them to discard issues and pedal calumny is that papers and TV channels as good as black out whatever they have to say on issues. At a discussion on Starnews, the Congress(I)'s spokesman recalled that he had fielded Dr Manmohan Singh one day to talk on economic issues, and that the result had been that next day the papers had not carried a word about the Congress(I)'s press conference. "You mean, sleaze sells?," the anchor asked. Yes, said the spokesman.
On the one side that was quite a confession -- as sleaze sells, the Congress(I) had decided to peddle sleaze. But on the other, it was an important statement of fact. Coverage of Parliament exhibits the same trait: hulla gets much coverage, considered speeches get next to nothing; naturally, that balance becomes an encouragement to the hulla-raisers.
The entry of TV has compounded the problem. As it is, newspapers had given up examining issues in any detail. TV has it as an article of faith that viewers turn off if any image lasts for more than 30 seconds, that they do not want to be bothered by detail. So, the moment someone start explaining the point at issue, the interviewer shuts him up, "What you mean is that you do not agree with Mr..., Let us move on, well, Mr... what do you think of the other charge...?"
Several things can be done. The press should not print allegations unless they are backed by evidence.
Second, if it just has to print the allegation because of urgency or because of the importance of the person making it, the press should pursue the allegation on its own in the days that follow, and report its independent findings on the matter.
Third, TV programmers should devise extended issue-based discussions among experts, and among political representatives.
Fourth, while the legal provisions on defamation are excellent, victims hesitate to go to court because of the time it takes to bring the case to any sort of conclusion: it took the victim thirteen years to get a judgment even from the lowest court in a case against The Indian Express in which to my personal knowledge the paper had no defence at all. The remedy, therefore, is to leave the defamation provision as it is but to legislate day-to-day hearings of defamation cases. And for courts to award exemplary damages.
Fifth, even under the law as it is, to repeat a libel is libel. When a newspaper or TV channel broadcasts a libelous statement, it compounds the libel manifold. Unfortunately, in practice the courts are too liberal in this regard, and often papers are able to get away by pleading that they merely repeated what X had said. The provision on repeating libel must be enforced with due sternness.
Finally, in one respect the current situation needs to be turned on its head. The harm calumny does is infinitely greater at the time of elections. But our current practice seems to be to be even more lax during elections in regard to what is permissible. Notice that while the Election Commission has deemed fit to pronounce its views on all sorts of matters in the past few weeks, it has done nothing, it has not even said anything that would dissuade party spokesmen from hurling defamatory allegations.
The defamation law should be enforced even more rigidly in case the defamatory statement is made during elections, if necessary the law should be amended for this purpose.
Such changes are necessary both to prevent elections from being polluted further, and also to save media from its own excesses.
India Connect
September 7, 1999
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)