Tags:
Journalism of Courage
8220;What do you know about the law and order situation in the state over the last three months? You know nothing. I know that some of you have called my office for details. I8217;ve asked my staff to provide false information. If you ask me, I too will lead you down the wrong path8221;. So said Kerala Chief Minister E.K. Nayanar at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram. How honest, how blunt, how straightforward, how sincere, how communicative you are, Mr Chief Minister.
In a world where truth is just a semantic twist for a pants-down president, you, our avuncular comrade of immense comedy, an English-speaking communist ruler in one of the last few soviets of the century, have said it for the record, with unintended Orwellian subtlety: truth is lie. Silly, the media. They should have known what to expect from a very senior communist like you.
8220;False information was provided to keep you happy8221;, continued the Chief Minister at the press conference. Keep us happy, yes, keep the masses happy. You have only stated the obvious. Every communist leader of the century celebrated the false to keep the people happy. After all, what was communism if not an idea of infinite happiness? An Edenic brotherhood on earth, as ambitious as Christianity. The only difference was, in the red religion, the cross was marked for the one who questioned the dubiousness of happiness.
Compared to the historically abandoned socialist lands, your kingdom is so insignificant, your burden so light, as light as a silly joke. Your forefathers implemented happiness by resorting to jackboots. Theyhad higher things at stake 8212; the empire, the masses, history 8230; What have you got? A few mofussils, some slogans, the book and, of course, false information.
History repeats itself: first time as tragedy, second time as farce, and finally as joke. But your joke is so harmless, comrade. It may not make us happy. It certainly makes us laugh.
8220;For the last three months, you have all been fooled8221;, continued Chief Minister Nayanar at the said press conference. Only for the last three months, and only journalists? It has started the day Stalin landed in the Finland station. Not journalists alone, a vast section of humanity was fooled, for eighty years. When history intervened ten years ago to put an end to the ebony joke, nobody laughed. There were only tears of I8217;m-still-alive-to-cry. But you, comrade, survived.
You were too marginal, too invisibly irrelevant, to catch history8217;s attention. Now you say you have been fooling us. We have never claimed that you have been doing something else. You look sofoolish when you say that you have been fooling us. Is Comrade E.K. Nayanar capable of anything else? We are not foolish enough to say yes.
