Misnomers are the norm

There is a crying need for television to go beyond labels and jargons. Unfortunately, writes ZIYA US SALAM, our channels indulge in liberal usage of such words which more often than not are wrong....

EVEN IN a conflict as horrifying as the one Palestine is engaged in with Israel at the moment, one television image remains frozen in time. That is of Mohammed Durra - a 12-year-old boy, helpless, luckless, hiding under the shoulder of his father, himself cowering behind a cement block in the face of a rain of bullets. As the Israelis opened fire, bullets whizzed past the duo. Predictably, few of them got the little boy as he collapsed into the hands of his screaming father. Unfortunately this was not how a certain section of the electronic media saw it. CNN and BBC recounted the tragedy by declaring the victim as being ``caught in the crossfire''. It was not true and there was a clear chasm between the report and the visuals so ably captured by a French cameraman.

Call it word play, or power play, if you please. Alternately, you can also call it a war of words. Any which way you look at it, there is an element of war mongering in this word play reminding one of India's own Pokhran bomb blasts two years ago and those exploded by Pakistan in Chagai Hills. At that time we were told by the Western electronic and print media that the nuclear bomb explosion in Pokhran was actually a ``Hindu bomb,'' that A. P. J Abdul Kalam was one of its architects did not seem to matter, while the Chagai Hills brought to the fore an ``Islamic bomb''. Suddenly, out of nowhere, we were told that bombs had a religion. Strangely the bomb did not have a religion when the U.S. threw one at Hiroshima and followed it up with Nagasaki. It did not have a religion when China or France developed it. But it had a religion when India or Pakistan, luckless Third World countries, developed it. This in turn brings us to the whole question of electronic media of the First World, flushed with the power of that region, looking down in a condescending manner at the happenings in the non-European, specifically the Asia-Africa region.

Coming back to Palestine, when the latest phase of bloodshed started, there were despatches about ``terrorist activity'' by Al-Fatah volunteers on most of the foreign channels. The BBC showed visuals of Palestines throwing stones and brickbats but there were no shots of Israeli soldiers' ``counter-operation''. Two days later there were reports of ``Palestinian terrorists'' killing a mother of five. Again there were constant references only to Palestine's acts of violence. Our own Doordarshan, STAR News, Jain TV, Zee and Sahara fortunately refrained from using the term. STAR News, in fact, had footage of fighting from both the sides in almost equal proportion, in its morning news bulletins recently. Strangely, Sahara preferred to give the news a go-by in many of its Urdu bulletins. Coming back to the ``terrorist activity'', the terrorists here are civilian protestors seeking their place under the sun, fighting organised defence forces with stones, rocks and glass! And it was only towards the 12th anniversary of Palestine's declaration of Independence (Nov 15, 1988) that BBC and CNN referred to the protestors as simply ``Palestines''. However, the visuals still were largely of Palestines pelting stones rather than Israelis opening gunfire though in the conflict there have been at leat 4,000 Palestines who have been wounded while the number of the Israelis injured or killed does not exceed a score.

Even this change in description is similar to what Hindi newspapers and TV bulletins indulged in at the peak of the Khalistan controversy in the 1980s. Initially, they talked of Punjab militants as ``atankvadis'' (terrorists) but one fine day, following a word from Babbar Khalsa, the word ``atankvadi'' was replaced by `khadku' meaning a warrior. The change in meaning being too obvious to be mistaken.

It being power that decides the language and manner of discourse, it is still not unusual to find, even in this cyber age, BBC and CNN continuing to refer to India as a ``land of snake charmers and elephants'' and often choosing such images as visual support to India- related features and discussions. For proof, one need not look beyond their Sunday specials.

Closer home, electronic media has indulged in another example of word play on the issue of ``fundamentalism''. Sometime ago even as RSS chief K. Sudarshan gave unsolicited advice to Christians and Muslims, all the channels had a field day talking of how the ``fundamentalists'' and ``members of the Sangh Parivar'' were not only embarrassing the Government with their intermittent advice but also setting its long-term agenda. Little did they realise that in all their news bulletins and panel discussions they were committing a folly. That of wrong and improper use of the term and applying words not strictly applicable to the given scenario. For instance, STAR News waxed eloquent on the ``Parivar's agenda'' in its dicussion programme while Prime Time on Zee talked of ``fundamentalist'' forces, referring to RSS and its various constituents. Similarly Sahara described the Ayodhya movement as ``not being a communal one.''

All wrong. All humbug. To begin with, let us talk of the term `fundamentalist'. The term `fundamentalism' from which the word `fundamentalist' is derived, has had several avatars since its birth at the turn of the 20th Century in the U.S. It began as the buzzword for a Protestant revivalist movement with honourable connotations. However, by the 1970s, it got dislodged from its original Christian context and was given derogatory connotations to describe non-European and Muslim societies.

Considering that the term is applied by the given channels to mean rabble-rousing, self-seeking politicians of various faiths, it is not difficult to see it as a misnomer. The RSS or the Jamaat leaders are neither Protestants nor followers of ``mere fundamentals''.

The mistake was repeated by Zee and Sahara when talking of BJP leader Govindacharya's Press conference in the Capital on November 15. The leader on a two-year study leave stated that Ayodhya was not a ``sampradayik'' (sectarian) movement. And the channels lapped it up gladly! Similarly, one of them described the recent riots in Azamgarh as ``mazhabi dange'' (religious fight), whereas the fact is they were not ``religious riots'' or even ``communal riots''. It was simply a case of sectarian violence. The subtle change in meaning of different terms did not register with the TV anchors who for days on end indulged in misnomers.

On similar lines was the word choice when talking of the activities of the RSS and its affiliated parties and those of the Left and often euphemistically called the Third Front. While all the Hindi channels referred to RSS affiliates as `Parivar' (family), the word being the basic unit of social organisation has definite positive connotations to it, they strangely did not see a family at work when the parties with Leftist ideologies got together or when the CPI-M had a conclave in Kerala or the CPI talked of the power shift in New Delhi. Then they were referred to as merely Left Front, not Left Parivar.

Finally, a word of caution. The media in India has to be wary of applying newly-fangled jargon of the West to describe disempowered groups. We have to refrain from indulging in this tyranny of labels.

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