Well, I am back to action after a spell of boredom. For the past week I have been busy reporting incidents of violence and killings in some parts of my district where red and saffron brigades went on a killing spree, tit-for-tat style. I am familiar with this periodic outbreak of political murders, bomb-throwing and clashes. During the latest spate of manslaughter and house attacks, I felt that the scope of innovation possible in the use of language in the media did not match the innovation of people who instigated violence and murdered rival party workers in broad(est) daylight. So? So I felt that I could only use the words (to describe this latest sprouting of madness) that I have been using for the last several years while reporting similar incidents. Words and expressions like brutal, inhuman, killing in broad daylight, severed head of the victim, multiple stab injuries, perpetrators of violence, assailants barging into houses of rival party workers etc. left a sense of ennui in me.
I was also preparing for a seminar on `Media, language, objectivity' held in a college located in a rural setting. I told the audience, mostly comprising graduate students, that objectivity of the media could not be the same as the objectivity of science. I asked the audience if they considered as objective a comment in the recent issue of Time Magazine that `North Korea is the most barbaric regime on the planet.' Expectedly, majority of the students said `no'. You could not expect a different response, for 90 per cent of the students in the college, I was told, belonged to a students' union loyal to the CPI(M). Then I showed them a report in The Hindu headlined `Saffronised police show their colour' (March 3, 2002) which tells us about the communalisation of the police force under the Modi government in Gujarat. When I raised the same question (whether it was objective), there was no response not because they did not consider it objective, but rather because of their feeling that I was trying to push them into a trap. Finally, I presented a Nanidgram-datelined report in The Telegraph (November 13, 2007) which was a graphic news story about hooded, gun-carrying, motorcycle-riding CPI(M) workers `roaring into Nandigram' to `consolidate' their `recapture' of the area. There was silence in the audience when I hurled the same objectivity question. Yes, they knew that they were trapped. But someone was waiting to trap me during the Q & A session.
He quoted a media critic who writes columns in a magazine run by a Muslim organisation and asked why the media was using the term Islamic terrorism to describe terrorist attacks by a small group of Muslims and why the same media did not use the term Hindu terrorism to refer to attacks on Muslims by Hindu fanatics in Gujarat in 2002. Having decided that I would not be politically correct while responding to the question, I said that Islamic terrorism was a reality whether you liked the term or not. In Gujarat, it was a communal violence, with members of the majority Hindu community carrying out genocidal attacks against Muslims. It was not an attack inspired by any dogma of Hinduism. Islamic terrorism was Islamic terrorism because the terrorists were carrying out their attacks in the name of Islam, I said. All those 19 youths who hijacked planes and hit them into the twin towers in New York had been inspired by some of the tenets of Islam, I said.
I told the audience that Muslims still took their holy book seriously whereas majority of Christians and Jews did not waste their time pondering about what the Old Testaments god says in the Bible.
I think we have to call a spade a spade. Islamophobia is a spectre created by fanatic Muslims to ward off any genuine criticism of Islam.
3 comments:
I do not know the rural area you are referring to, but my part of the rural suburb was well versed in what was happening in Gujarat, post Godra in 2002. But yes, I do not believe that neither the Muslims nor the Hindus were neutral on that issue. They took sides, both politically as well as religiously. Not one among the Hindu community stood up to alert others on the issue that what was happening was not right - in fact it was severely wrong.
But media as usual played to the gallery, but scrupulously without taking sides. Their images would have taken a nasty beating otherwise, you see?
I agree it was communal violence of the worst magnitude.
You are right on one score, though. The word Islamic terrorist is not altogether wrong. That is because although the terrorist sites may be different, the aim and the ultimate goal seem to be the same, whereever they strike. Hatred towards US is all fine, but who would want to blow themselves up to achieve Paradise, while killing thousands of innocent people, including Muslims? (The politically correct word would have been ' their own brethren'.
But we know that we, the inheritors of this planet are actually brethrens. Recently scientists came out with the stratling discovery that by geneti mapping, they have come to the conclusion that all homo sapiens are just a gene away from each other.
Even I could not come to terms with that one. The Africans, the Mongols, The Asians,The Aryans, The Australoids - all of them come from the same gene!
I am not neutral about Gujarat violence because I am against those who caused the train to be burnt at Godhra and those who instigated post-Godhra backlash. And outside Gujarat, the voice of concern and outrage was raised by the Hindus. The media, especially the English media, brought out the true menacing dimension of what was happening in Gujarat.
Anti-Americanism of Islamic fundamentalism is just a facade. If 'American imperialism'has to be destroyed, then what is the alternative they are presenting? Islam which is the `True Religion'. It is this messianic component coupled with a general consensus across the Muslim world that Islam is an absolute religion that makes Islamic terrorism more dangerous. Evangelical Christians in the U.S. are equally messianic and fundamentalist. But they are derided in that country. An nobody deriding them and their religious dogma is getting killed. Islam has to be tamed as Christianity was tamed. The process of taming is under way. My optimism is not based on optimism. Political Islam has failed. When Europe and the U.S. strengthened their security arrangements, Political Islam is now targetting Muslims. See suicide bombings in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Political Islam has to be defeated and it is being decimated. You just open your eyes and you can see the signs of this retreat. Islam cannot just wish away the scrutiny it is now being subjected to.
I am told that the Quran is the only book in the whole wide world which has not been translated into any other language. Pity! More so, when the fundamentalists claim that after English, Arabic is the most widely used language. The more the pity. It does not need too many brains to understand that this is so due to the namaaz being said in Arabic, five times a day, day in day out, 365 days of the year by 128 crores of Muslims all over the world, not many understanding the meaning of their prayers. Other than that Arabic cannot claim to hold sway over language lovers of the world.
There has been no new innovations, in language and science, nor in literature or arts in Arabic. The lest that could be done is to let children and adults say the namaaz in their own mothertongue and teach the nuances of the Quran in their own language.
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