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REACTION

A dangerously linear narrative

Photo: REUTERS

Relentless flow of news: A woman holds a leaflet during a “Scotland United Against Terror” demonstration in Glasgow.

There was bound to be something predictable about the way media and political institutions in India reacted when a bomb-laden Cherokee tried driving into Glasgow this month. In popular imagination, the shock value implicit in such mindless acts tend to blur the distinctions between the shared identity of a community, and, a desperate fringe out to appropriate it by force.

Glasgow-like incidents are also pregnant with far reaching religious and political implications for the establishment in India than the West can imagine. To begin with, any spurt in the magnitude of violence by the fringe also has the potential to put the political groups supporting the larger community on the defensive, especially when the violence occurs on white territory. To add to the discomfiture of these groups is India’s divided polity where the state apparatus competes hard with the opposition ranks to polarise and control the flow and direction of public debate, since both understand that there is much public opinion to sway if issues are framed to their own advantage.

In the era of coalitional groupings today, each rank consists of a large number of smaller parties. And while the rising dust and decibels of opposing groups are reflective of the increasing number of parties, the diversity of opinion expected of them remains conspicuous by its absence. This is understandable because most parties are provincial and, to them, the Muslim question is not global but a narrow electoral one. The chain that ties Glasgow to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and to Mumbai train blasts therefore may matter little to a Haryana Vikas Party; while those like the Shiva Sena isolate Mumbai train blasts since they can be superimposed more easily onto a larger Hindu-Muslim question. Glasgow to them is proof enough to substantiate their belief system that a particular community may have a genetic affiliation to terror!

Provincial outfits like the Samajwadi Party climb the Muslim pulpit in UP to appease their large minority vote banks. Often, their rhetoric may bear striking resemblance to that of leftwing groups, despite the lack of academic rigour accompanying them. For instance, at first glance, SP’s pamphleteering may appear just as radically opposed to the U.S. and the U.K. as that of our left. Paradoxically, the politics underlying their discourse reinforces the worst stereotypes of Muslims promoted by the West. For, in calling out the entire community to vote for them by defending its terrorist fringe, they tend to equate the two; which is exactly the stereotype the West has promoted to decimate civilians across West Asia.

Three inferences jump out of such discourse then. One, terror makes for national articulation only where Muslims figure. Two, never is war or state terror by the allies brought to question while dealing with this issue. Three, issues of invasion or terror are broached only in areas where Muslim numbers matter to electoral fortunes as if it were an issue that should affect only the Muslims.

In December, 1987, as a media student I visited veteran journalist, Khushwant Singh in New Delhi. I asked him what he thought of conceding the Sikh demand for justice in the aftermath of the 1984 massacre. His response was as terse as it was Gandhian, “If you truly believe that the demand is one for justice why should the demand remain only those of the Sikhs?”

Today, the absence of any discussion on state terror across all non-Muslim areas demonstrates how deeply the Indian psyche is being conditioned to attribute terror and war atrocities to a particular community.

A major stumbling block to openness and articulation of ideas is the system of voting along party lines. In all fairness, however, to let go of such a system will be to return to the anarchy where representatives commodify and trade their support on the floors of the legislatures. Therefore, in accordance with its status as the fourth estate, it is left to media to play a defining role in promoting the desired diversity and openness from outside. However, driven increasingly by speed rather than fact, and configured to ensure dependence on authority for sound bytes, the pursuit of complex facts is hard to undertake for most media.

For instance, when proceedings of the much hyped Agra Summit between India and Pakistan was kept out of bounds for the Press, the media’s anger against the establishment was palpable. Earlier, in the true spirit of the market, it had launched a series of on-air promos working a frenzy around Agra to bring audiences in. Both Agra and Glasgow illustrate the rising dependence of media on governments and powerful sources.

This time, confronted by an establishment that was reluctant to react once again, the larger media houses fell back on their international partners. The West thrives on such defaults. Partnerships with global players like Reuters, AP or CNN came in extremely handy. News flow on Glasgow, unlike Agra, remained relentless.

Predictably, the news centred largely around Glasgow as if its occurrence had no context. Objectivity went flying out of the window and with it, our sense of even handedness. No attempt was made to isolate terror from religion and what followed was another spectacular portrayal of the West as the victim and Muslim as the villain.

By design or default, on Glasgow, news sharing partnerships facilitated and furthered only the Anglo-American definition of terrorism. It presented a dangerously linear narrative that implicitly justified an unjust war against a community as an inevitable consequence of its terrorism.

Without the organic hold of the West on Indian media, would a free democratic media with at least three dozen channels explain the lack of diversity? Can they explain why they missed widening the debate to examine the global wars started by the West and the global insecurity they have created for all?

Glasgow’s amplitude in Indian media offers a striking contrast to the reportage in 2003. Even as the US-led ‘coalition’ pounded Iraqi ‘targets’, our media was busy fancying India’s chances at the World Cup! In fact, cricket coverage hung on to the first lead across the media for as long as the team remained in contention. Only after the Men in Blue lost did our best newspapers turn attention to the unjust war that has claimed tens of thousands of innocents so far.

Today, as we amplify the terror at Glasgow, we must introspect if we have had lesser sympathy for Iraqi blood than we have had for the innocents of 9/11? After all, we are a country that flirted with the possibility of sending our own army to help the United States in Iraq. We have toyed with the idea of fuelling their war planes. We are willing to strike a nuclear deal that is downright discriminatory.

The question is: Why do we trust the allies so much?

The moment Glasgow transpired, all of UK’s allies went to town, polarising their own population into victimised whites and villainous immigrants. How should a mature, self-respecting government of a multicultural society and its media respond to their less civilised counterparts? Sadly, neither the government nor the media has done enough to mould public opinion that is remotely fair or balanced.

Today, the margin that separates foreign policy from our moral fabric has widened. To an extent, one can accept governments to have lesser room to manoeuvre and lesser social conscience. But under what duress can our independent media claim immunity? A free media will only be discharging its basic responsibility if it provides its audiences a focus on the continuing slaughter of innocents, regardless of West or East and a reminder for peace. As a minimum, we have no reason to isolate Glasgows but to read them as a price the world is forced to pay for the mindless expansionism and invasion that may have preceded them.

We have on hand the world’s most mighty nation and its most dreaded terrorists running riot here. Each one is using the media to get their point across. Neither has a stake in listening to us. Simultaneously, their behaviour is of immense concern to us. And the response of civil society — including the media — has to be far more mature, far more even handed and proactive for peace than it has been so far.

Instead, news producers have been eager to lap up the flood of exciting details of how attacks are planned and how the terror networks operate or how they launder blood money. To focus on either the planning and execution of terror plots or the gallantry of Western intelligence agencies is to accept the myth of gallantry where the West comes out blazing and putting its life at risk to serve the cause of our safety. So it is upon us to do better and laugh it off for the joke it is!

The writer is Associate Professor (Media Studies), Amrita School of Communication.

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