The price of communal politics

The pattern is continuing. First it was Gujarat in 2002. Madhya Pradesh and Orissa followed suit. Now the State sponsored violence has come to Karnataka. One does not require great reasoning to make sense of the developments. Various statements that our ‘great’ leaders are making are a good-enough proof to illustrate the point.
The Bhajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishat and the RSS do not need any reason to carry out their hate campaign against minorities. For sometime, it was Muslims. Just now Muslims are given a break. Christians have obviously become their bête noir. Who knows? Once they are fed up with Christians, they may go to Dalits. (In fact, Dalits have long been their target anyway.) Fascists basically thrive on annihilating everyone else, except themselves. What they do not realise is what they will do when everyone is gone!
Coming to ‘conversion’ – an age old issue. In fact, this is not an issue for debate at all, even if the BJP claims it as important. The Constitution of India has clarified it quite clearly (A 25). So how can the Bhajrang Dal assume responsibility to be the custodian of anti-conversion process? How can a bunch of hooligans represent an entire Hindu religion, which in fact, is an umbrella religion, and which has a rich tradition of being a tolerant religion? One does not require a scientific analysis to judge the hidden, but political, agenda of the BJP.
The media have indeed given quite a bit of coverage to the hate campaign in the State. However, what media have rather failed to understand is the clear and pretty open political motifs behind the violence. The sole purpose of such aggressive and systematic violence against Christians is merely to communalise regions and communities and polarise voters on the basis of divisive politics, to be able to garner enough votes in the coming elections.
Barring a couple of newspapers, no media institution has given space and time to go behind the developments and bring out the truth. This may be either because they are scared or they do not care. Further, whatever coverage they have given looks stereotyped, with a couple of news channels even subscribing to the false allegation of the issue of conversion. What many newspapers and channels have failed to observe and strongly condemn is the fact that these attacks on Christians have been unleashed with the total support and encouragement of the ruling party. It is only because of this that the State chief of the Bhajrang Dal, Pramod Kumar, has the audacity to claim responsibility publicly and even encourage such violence, caring a hoot to the secular fabric of our Constitution, much less the legal system.
Again, after a few days media institutions will forget the whole issue, without carrying out a meaningful debate on the malicious, divisive politics of the State government. Media, in the long run, will, of course, be held responsible for not creating a meaningful and all-important public opinion on communal politics and brining about awareness among the public.

Channels have forgotten Orissa

Great writer Mark Twain was the one who said, “In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.”
But the question is, are the journalists seriously engaged in this social responsibility entrusted upon them by their very profession?
Take for example the Orissa episode. It has been nearly 15 days since the communal violence broke out in Kanadhmal and neighbouring districts of Orissa. And there are no signs of the violence coming to an end. Sporadic violence, burning of churches and houses is continuing unabated. According to a report, over 50,000 people, mostly tribals and dalits, are still hiding in the jungles, deeply scared to come out, fearing insecurity. The question is, even if they come out where will they go? Their houses are burnt to ashes. With houses their faith in the authorities, the government officials and the police is also shaken. So they seem to find nowhere to go.
It is indeed a mystery why the State is taking such a long time to address the situation head on. The Supreme Court had to order the State machinery to act, to be tough on those who disrupt law and order situation in the State and give protection to the minorities. Still the State seems to be going very slow, even as it is speaking ‘tough’.
Coming to the point, the Orissa violence seems to have suddenly disappeared from the media, especially the electronic media. Last four days the leading channels of the country had nothing to report on Orissa during prime time news bulletin. One got an impression that the situation in the State had come to normalcy. But sadly, that was not the case. News coming from ground zero said that the violence was still looming large and the situation was tense. But channels said nothing. This is a very sad development of modern mass media. Reporting is also about doing the follow up. No channel seemed to be serious in doing that. For a couple of days the channels did report from places most hit by violence. Then, of course, they were silent. One frantically searched the internet to see what was happening.
The newspapers did have some courtesy reporting to do every day, but buried in the inner pages, drawing less attention.
Indeed one becomes suspicious about the whole development in the media circles. Why is that even when things are not going right, they have nothing, or hardly anything, to say about such a grim reality as the threat to the secular fabric of our country? Is it because they are afraid? Or they do not care? Or is it because they think this is nothing unusual and that they have ‘better’ developments to cover?
At least the media have miserably failed in making the State accountable to the failure of law and order situation. The Navin Patnaik government is treading as though everything was normal. They are more concentrated on the coming elections and keen to exploit the volatile situation. In the real world, it is true that nothing is happening at the right place and at the right time. Sadly, though, the journalists and the media institutions are also scantly bothered to correct it. May be because, nothing right is happening for them these days.