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Journalism of Courage
If a tragedy repeated even once is a farce, what is a farce repeated endlessly and in almost every detail? The answer is obvious: call it a Veerappan kidnap. The poacher, who is alluded more alliteratively as the sandalwood smuggler, has done it again, but with a depressing difference this time. The anxiety caused by his abduction of Kannada film star Rajkumar and three others is augmented by two factors. First, the phenomenal popularity of the chosen victim and, even more, the elements in the episode that have made it a Kannadiga-Tamil issue of such explosive potential and proportions. The panic that has palpably seized Bangalore, particularly its Tamil population, is indeed reminiscent of the worst of the scenes witnessed in the past over the Cauvery conflict. The Veerappan strike has unfolded a sequence of scenarios that should fill everyone with a sickening sense of deja vu. As in each past instance of abductions carried out with utter impunity, with the hapless captives ranging from police personnel andforest officials to scientists and journalists, it has led to a declared resolve of an inter-state initiative to meet the emergency. S. M. Krishna and M. Karunanidhi have done well to appeal for calm and peace in both the states, but their gesture alone may not suffice against the challenge to law and order mounted by an outlaw.
The public is unlikely to see the promise of an early end to the episode in the proposal for a joint action by the police forces of the two states that have not exactly covered themselves with glory in this part of the Western Ghats before. Nor in the proposed despatch of an emissary, predictably in the person of Nakkeeran8217; R. Gopal who had brought the poacher8217;s characteristic cassette of demands on the previous occasion. Even if the diplomacy with the desperado succeeds and secures the release of Rajkumar, few will see it as a guarantee against the farce finding yet another repetition in the not so distant future, given that the last six years have seen five dramas of the kind being staged, with curtains never coming down on Veerappan and the game he loves to play. The irony, of course, is the coexistence in Karnataka of India8217;s own Silicon Valley and the wild Veerappan country. It is truly amazing, the way the defences of the dotcom land have crashed against the depredations of a gang of ivory thieves,and Bangalore watches its courts and colleges closed and its transport paralysed by an incident of this indescribable kind after promising the best of conditions for investors from across the world8217;s cyberspace.
