As DD celebrated millennium, PTV oozed concern for India8217;s awaam

So you have political analysts such as Shireen Mazara denouncing India as a hysterical nation which was using the hijacking as a way of getting back at Pakistan after the Kargil defeat8217;, and Sardar Ahmed, described only as a former ambassador, being paraded on PTV World, and made to confirm the involvement of RAW in the hijacking.

And why would the freedom fighters8217; they are never militants in Pakistan choose this time to hijack when theinternational media is away on Christmas holiday, ask the analysts8217; incredulously. A book written on the 1984 hijacking called Soft Target is trotted out to defend this theory and is repeatedly flashed on the screen.

Even Bhagat Singh finds himself being used to prove Pakistan8217;s point. He is a freedom fighter, revered both in India and Pakistan, so why accuse these hijackers who too are fighting for freedom, they ask. The simplest solution, of course, is to liberate Kashmir. And their unasked advice to Indians is: give the hijackers safe passage and release the 35 militants. After all, 155 hostages is a larger number than 35. Indians, they lament, do not know much mathematics.

Nor do they know enough about humanity. Murtaza Amir, the PTV World correspondent stationed at Kandahar airport, reports on how there is no senior representative8217; of the Government on the negotiating team that is until Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh flew in. And when Anil Khurana is released, close-ups are displayed of the twocards made for him by the hospital staff.

The battlelines are drawn. It is humane Pakistan against inhuman India. 8220;It is sad that a country which professes to be peace-loving and the seat of religions like Buddhism and Jainism has become so hard-hearted,8221; says another analyst8217;. And while their accusation that India should have stopped the plane from taking off at Amritsar instead of blaming Pakistan later, has its logic, they spoil it all by declaring dramatically that, whatever the outcome, 8220;Pakistan will get a raw deal8221;.

And, before bidding goodbye to viewers, hostess Shireen Mazara, declares: 8220;At the end of the day, we are mothers first and our heart goes out to the five-year-old child left alone in the plane.8221; Lest you forget their humane face.