Opinion Mirror Image
Indo-Pak conflict: Never before have civilians been targeted so aggressively.
While All India Radio reports that the exchange of mortar fire on the Line of Control is over, TV is still riding the story. Headlines Today believes it is a cover for infiltration — one reporter literally emerged from hiding in a maize field on the border to demonstrate how easy it was to travel undercover — while others talk darkly of political dividends in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. But there seems to be a cross-border consensus: never before have civilians been targeted so aggressively.
Headlines Today left behind Delhi’s ranting heads to interview BSF jawans, “brave soldiers protecting the border”, who would fight the good fight until Pakistan (Land of the Pure) renounced its “napak” (impure) ways. For once, they had a say instead of their commanders, but the programming seemed to “stick up for our boys”, like the British media used to do in World War II. There isn’t a war on in J&K, is there?
Switching to Al Jazeera, one found the mirror image of Headlines Today’s story being reported from Sialkot. Tahir Javed Khan, director general of the Punjab Rangers, claimed that mortar fire from the Indian side had reached an all-time record this year. The reporter spoke of 20,000 incoming shells, with only one-tenth as many being fired from the Pakistani side in return. But then, combatants have been fudging figures since the first Neanderthal picked up the first sharp rock.
The videos of civilians on both sides record the real tragedy. Indian channels would have us believe that only our civilians have been hit, and there were indeed troubling images of people cowering and fleeing night bombardments. But reporters in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir also showed droves of civilians fleeing, with what they could carry in hand luggage. In the village of Dhanali, a mother was seen comforting a child with shrapnel injuries. She had lost two other children and her mother when a mortar shell landed on their home during the morning prayers. And then came news of the Nobel Peace Prize, shared by a Pakistani child and an Indian child rights activist. NDTV had Malala Yousafzai written all over it, but was delightfully reticent about Kailash Satyarthi. While they discovered who he is and what he does to deserve a Nobel, one supposes.
Do Indian channels see themselves as proxy warriors for the government? Because to get a sense of balance on any cross-border situation, one must look at foreign channels too. Like the jihadi infiltrator, the Ebola virus may cross our borders any day, in search of densely packed settlements to infect. But while Indian TV showed the mass for the first US victim, CNN documented a day, straight out of The Hot Zone, in an Ebola clinic in Liberia. If the setting were South Asia, the picture would have been even grimmer.
What sells in India? Om Prakash Chautala appearing before the faithful like a messiah, in full rhetorical flow. “I told you that I would break out of jail if necessary, didn’t I?” “Ho!” goes the crowd. “Am I not incarcerated?” “Ho!!” “Am I not standing before you?” “Ho!!!” Twenty years ago, every utterance of Chaudhary Devi Lal had elicited the same response: “Ho!!!” But he would have hesitated to claim a jailbreak.
Last week, we had reported that with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Prime Minister had snatched the jharoo from the nerveless fingers of Arvind Kejriwal. We were mistaken. He actually snatched the jharoo from the angry, fidgety fingers of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, who has imperiously claimed first mover advantage in the public cleansing tournament. So far, there has been no response from the Prime Ministers, who is fighting other fires in Maharashtra. And anyway, since his voice sounds like the “before” section of a cough syrup ad, he must wait for better days to seek satisfaction.
pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com
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