Showing posts with label Mumbai Terror attacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mumbai Terror attacks. Show all posts

Monday, 22 December 2008

Antuley Remarks and the Aftermath


Handling Queries; Democratic Responses :: The degree of hostile reaction to some doubt raised and need for unearthing truth in a democratic society should be taken seriously. Why and who is afraid of truth coming out? Strangely we seem to have various types of reactions which have lot of political tinge than elements of reason. Ram Puniyani elaborates

By Dr. Ram Puniyani                      22 December 2008                             Muslim India

The tragic terror attack on the city of Mumbai (Nov.2008) has shaken not only the people of city but also the whole nation. It is not the first time that terror attacks have taken place in this city. The first major one was seen in the aftermath of Mumbai carnage of 1992-93. The investigation of this blast showed that the terrorist took advantage of the gross injustices done to Muslim minority and lured a small section of them to execute their dastardly designs. Then in the aftermath of Gujarat carnage again one witnessed the blasts. The tragic happenings of Gujarat had incited this reaction. This time around November 26, 2008, there is no immediate provocation, but the role of Al Qaeda type elements is clear. What is puzzling this time around is that the attack came at a time when the investigation being done by Maharashtra ATS into Malegaon blast was leading to certain impeccable findings of the involvement of Hindutva elements. This was resulting in a hostile reaction to the ATS chief who was doing a thorough professional job. He was being abused and criticized by the people like Advani and Modi for being deshdrohi (anti national). Pune Police had also received a death threat to him from an anonymous caller just couple of days ahead of the terror attack.

After this tragedy many a versions of death of Karkare and his two colleagues came forward. The first one was that he has been killed at Taj, second one saying the death occurred in the lane near Cama hospital and the yet another one saying that he was killed while sitting in the vehicle. In this context many doubts were raised by some social activists and later by the Union minister for minorities Mr. A.R. Antuley. His statement that "superficially they (the terrorists) had no reason to kill Karkare. Whether he (Karkare) was a victim of terrorism or terrorism plus something, I do not know," implying that a thorough probe in to his death should be undertaken to clear the mist around his death. This does not imply any finger pointing but a mere doubt, which is lurking in the minds of many.

This statement followed a vicious attack on him by many, especially by the Hindu right wing and a section of media. While many felt that the idea was to ensure that Truth comes out, the others felt that he should not only be sacked from his post but a case of treason be launched against him. While few voices like those of Digvijay Singh came to support Antuley statement and Maharashtra Assembly speaker Baba Saheb Kupekar said that since Maharashtra Government is setting up a probe into the allegations of negligence of the top level Police officers, that committee can very well probe the death of Hemant Karkare as well.

The degree of hostile reaction to some doubt raised and need for unearthing truth in a democratic society should be taken seriously. Why and who is afraid of truth coming out? Strangely we seem to have various types of reactions which have lot of political tinge than elements of reason. One of this is to ignore some events and facts which go against the social common sense and the interests of dominant political streams. One such example is the blasts which took place in Nanded in the house of RSS worker in which two Bajrang Dal workers died while making bombs (April 2006). While some channels can work overtime to put out the visuals of events with potential of sensationalism, this particular incident was literally blocked by large section of media. No doubt few papers and channels carried it but it remained a marginal story. Then the events of blasts in front of Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad were also attributed to the usual Jehadi elements, many of them arrested/tortured to the extreme. The blast and the tragedy was news. Later when they got released for the lack of any evidence, that was neither news nor a time to introspect as to why the wrong people are being caught, or to think if there is a need to review the line of investigation in the cases of blasts? Here the media shapes popular perception and the investigating authorities remained stuck to the old theory, terrorists are Muslims. So by overlooking the crucial news/event, a valuable lead was suppressed, the proper unearthing of which might have led to prevention of some attacks later.

The second form of reaction is from vested political elements and section of media which flows with the tide. Once Maharashtra ATS could lay its hands on the motorcycle used by terrorists in Malegaon blast, the investigation shifted to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Swami Dayanand, Lt Col Prasad Purohit and Retd major Upadhyay. This investigation being conducted with professionalism came for scathing attack from Hindutva elements that went to intimidate the ATS officer to the extent that he went for moral support and counseling to the one of the most forthright police officers, Julio Reibero. Mr. Reibero in his article in Times of India tells us the pressure Karkare was going through while doing his professional duty. Shiv Sena not only organized for legal support for Sadhvi and Company but also its mouth piece Saamana went on to write, "We will declare all names and addresses of policemen on Malegaon case, the people will take action. This is nothing but a ploy to defame Hindutva by people in the ATS who have taken supari (contract) of this. On such officers we spit, we spit."

In this context all those trying to strive for truth are also being labeled with choicest abuses. Any raising of question about the investigation, the narration of incidents comes to be branded as being pro Pakistan and anti India. One is not arguing against India or for Pakistan, one is trying to see that the real picture of things will strengthen India. Can a hollow shell full of falsity be the base of the Democratic Indian state? More we try to smoothen the knots more are we will be trying to ensure that Indian society becomes better. In this jingoism, war again Pakistan is the rash demand, quenching the instant anger generated due to terror attack. One has to see such oppressive outburst like the one's we have seen from Advani and company which are not in sync with the building of a harmonious atmosphere and justice to all. All the legal provisions at our command need to be marshaled to see that the work initiated by the likes of Karkare is not allowed to be stifled.

What does one make of the ignoring crucial leads in the first place and then reacting angrily, with such passion to the innocuous demands of a probe? This burst of pseudo nationalism needs to be understood. It is the one which wants to intimidate the voice of reason and is primarily trying to stifle the democratic space. In Antuley's case he is also being hurled abuses by the same section, labeling him as Pakistan supporter and what not. Its time our columnists remember that in democracy the people have full right to express their opinions and doubts. As a matter of fact those hysterically browbeating those raising doubts are the one's who are undermining the nation's constitution. Definitely the most befitting tribute to the officers who have laid down their lives while protecting the society from the insane acts of terror, is to ensure that the truth of their death comes out and that Malegaon probe goes on properly.
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- (Source: Issues in Secular Politics, December 2008 III www.pluralindia.com)
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Saturday, 13 December 2008

Mumbai terror attacks and India’s response


Mumbai was not our 9/11 !
We’re at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.

By Arundhati Roy         12 December 2008                                    Muslim India 
South Asia Citizens Web

We’ve forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India’s 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we’re expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it’s all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn’t act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India’s 9/11.

But November isn’t September, 2008 isn’t 2001, Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan and India isn’t America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It’s odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India’s richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir’s most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something’s going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.

We’re told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That’s absolutely true. It’s an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I’m sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn’t that war. That one’s still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn’t on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let’s call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm’s way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn’t spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don’t care if I’m hanged ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay ... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."

And where, in Side A’s scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening." Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)

All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi’s former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India’s biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.

Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

If that’s not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I’d pick Side B. We need context. Always.

In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain’s final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can’t seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi’s predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India’s bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn’t surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan’s ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today’s world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It’s almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let’s try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world’s most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America’s ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America’s jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.

Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan’s borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.

If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India’s shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It’s hard to understand why those who steer India’s ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan’s mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it’s the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don’t hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists’ nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that’s worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it’s precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they’ve died, they’ve journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don’t want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You’re surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don’t you surrender?"

"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It’s better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn’t seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn’t it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don’t figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush’s famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn’t George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can’t seem to get away from.

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn’t surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We’re now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It’s an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we’re still learning. (If Kashmir won’t willingly integrate into India, it’s beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don’t really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India’s many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi’s Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia’s possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they’ve escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It’s not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they’re for people that governments don’t like. That’s why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They’re just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It’s what they want.

What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.
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Thursday, 11 December 2008

Real Security Should Accompany Real Justice


Of The 200 Killed In Mumbai, A High Number Were Muslims

South Asia Citizens Web              11 December 2008               Muslim India
Tehelka.com


ANAND PATWARDHAN argues that real security has to be accompanied by real justice.

In Mumbai, after the numbing sorrow came the blame game and the solutions. Loud voices amplified by saturation TV: Why don’t we amend our Constitution to create new anti-terror laws? Why don’t we arm our police with AK 47s? Why don’t we do what Israel did after Munich or the USA did after 9/11 and hot pursue the enemy? Solutions that would lead us further into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on reaction, polarisation, militarisation and the thirst for revenge.

The External Terror

Those who invoke America need only to analyse if its actions after 9/11 increased or decreased global terror. It invaded oil-rich Iraq fully knowing that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, killing over 200,000 Iraqis citizens but allowing a cornered Bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. It recruited global support for Islamic militancy, which began to be seen as a just resistance against American mass murder. Which begs the question of who created Bin Laden in the first place, armed the madarsas of Pakistan and rejuvenated the concept of Islamic jehad? Israel played its own role in stoking the fires of jehad. The very creation of Israel in 1948 robbed Palestinians of their land, an act that Mahatma Gandhi to his credit deplored at the time as an unjust way to redress the wrongs done to Jews during the Holocaust. What followed has been a slow and continuing attack on the Palestinian nation. At first Palestinian resistance was led by secular forces represented by Yasser Arafat but as these were successfully undermined, Islamic forces took over the mantle. The first, largely non-violent Intifada was crushed, a second more violent one replaced it and when all else failed, human bombs appeared.

Thirty years ago when I first went abroad there were two countries my Indian passport forbade me to visit. One was racist South Africa. The other was Israel. We were non-aligned and stood for disarmament and world peace. Today Israel and America are our biggest military allies. Is it surprising that we are on the jehadi hit list? Israel, America and other prosperous countries can to an extent protect themselves against the determined jehadi, but can India put an impenetrable shield over itself? Remember that when attackers are on a suicide mission, the strongest shields have crumbled. New York was laid low not with nuclear weapons but with a pair of box cutters. India is for many reasons a quintessentially soft target. Our huge population, vast landmass and coastline are impossible to protect. The rich may build new barricades. The Taj and the Oberoi can be made safer. So can our airports and planes. Can our railway stations and trains, bus stops, busses, markets and lanes do the same?

The Terror Within

The threat of terror in India does not come exclusively from the outside. Apart from being hugely populated by the poor India is also a country divided, not just between rich and poor, but by religion, caste and language. This internal divide is as potent a breeding ground for terror as jehadi camps abroad. Nor is jehad the copyright of one religion alone. It can be argued that international causes apart, India has jehadis that are fully home grown. Perhaps the earliest famous one was Nathuram Godse who acting at the behest of his mentor Vinayak Savarkar (still referred to as “Veer” or “brave” although he refused to own up to his role in the conspiracy), murdered Mahatma Gandhi for the crime of championing Muslims.

Jump forward to 6th December, 1992, the day Hindu fanatics demolished the Babri Mosque setting into motion a chain of events that still wreaks havoc today. From the Bombay riots of 1992 to the bomb blasts of 1993, the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 and hundreds of smaller deadly events, the last 16 years have been the bloodiest since Partition. Action has been followed by reaction in an endless cycle of escalating retribution. At the core on the Hindu side of terror are organizations that openly admire Adolph Hitler, nursing the hate of historic wrongs inflicted by Muslims. Ironically these votaries of Hitler remain friends and admirers of Israel.

On the Muslim side of terror are scores of disaffected youth, many of whom have seen their families tortured and killed in more recent pogroms. Christians too have fallen victim to recent Hindutva terror but as yet not formed the mechanisms for revenge. Dalits despite centuries of caste oppression, have not yet retaliated in violence although a small fraction is being drawn into an armed struggle waged by Naxalites.

It is clear that no amount of spending on defense, no amount of patrolling the high seas, no amount of increasing the military and police and equipping them with the latest weaponry can end the cycle of violence or place India under a bubble of safety. Just as nuclear India did not lead to more safety, but only to a nuclear Pakistan, no amount of homeland security can save us. And inviting Israel’s Mossad and America’s CIA/FBI to the security table is like giving the anti-virus contract to those who spread the virus in the first place. It can only make us more of a target for the next determined jehadi attack.

Policing, Justice and the Media

As for draconian anti-terror laws, they too only breed terror as for the most part they are implemented by a state machinery that has imbibed majoritarian values. So in Modi’s Gujarat after the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in 2002, despite scores of confessions to rape and murder captured on hidden camera, virtually no Hindu extremists were punished while thousands of Muslims rotted in jail under draconian laws. The same happened in Bombay despite the Shiv Sena being found guilty by the Justice Shrikrishna Commission. Under pressure a few cases were finally brought to trial but all escaped with the lightest of knuckle raps. In stark contrast many Muslims accused in the 1993 bomb blasts were given death sentences.

The bulk of our media, policing and judicial systems swallows the canard that Muslims are by nature violent. Removing democratic safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution can only make this worse. Every act of wrongful imprisonment and torture that then follows is likely to turn innocents into material for future terrorists to draw upon. Already the double standards are visible. While the Students Islamic Movement of India is banned, Hindutva outfits like the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and the Shiv Sena remain legal entities. The leader of the MNS, Raj Thackeray recently openly spread such hatred that several north Indians were killed by lynch mobs. Amongst these were the Dube brothers, doctors from Kalyan who treated the poor for a grand fee of Rs.10 per patient. Raj Thackeray like his uncle Bal before him, remains free after issuing public threats that Bombay would burn if anyone had the guts to arrest him. Modi remains free despite the pogroms of Gujarat. Congress party murderers of Sikhs in 1984 remain free. Justice in India is clearly not there for all. Increasing the powers of the police cannot solve this problem. Only honest and unbiased implementation of laws that exist, can.

It is a tragedy of the highest proportions that one such honest policeman, Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the thread of Hindutva terror was himself gunned down, perhaps by Muslim terror. It is reported that Col. Purohit and fellow Hindutva conspirators now in judicial custody, celebrated the news of Karkare’s death. Until Karkare took charge, the Malegaon bomb blasts in which Muslims were killed and the Samjhauta Express blasts in which Pakistani visitors to India were killed were being blamed on Muslims. Karkare exposed a hitherto unknown Hindutva outfit as masterminding a series of killer blasts across the country. For his pains Karkare came under vicious attack not just from militant Hindutva but from the mainstream BJP. He was under tremendous pressure to prove his patriotism. Was it this that led this senior officer to don helmet and ill-fitting bullet proof vest and rush into battle with a pistol? Or was it just his natural instinct, the same courage that had led him against all odds, to expose Hindutva terror?

Whatever it was, it only underlines the fact that jehadis of all kinds are actually allies of each other. So Bin Laden served George Bush and vice-versa. So Islamic and Hindutva jehadis have served each other for years. Do they care who dies? Of the 200 people killed in the last few days by Islamic jehadis, a high number were Muslims. Many were waiting to board trains to celebrate Eid in their hometowns in UP and Bihar, when their co-religionists gunned them down. Shockingly the media has not commented on this, nor focused on the tragedy at the railway station, choosing to concentrate on tragedies that befell the well-to-do. And it is the media that is leading the charge to turn us into a war-mongering police state where we may lead lives with an illusion of safety, but with the certainty of joylessness.

I am not arguing that we do not need efficient security at public places and at vulnerable sites. But real security will only come when it is accompanied by real justice, when the principles of democracy are implemented in every part of the country, when the legitimate grievances of people are not crushed, when the arms race is replaced by a race for decency and humanity, when our children grow up in an atmosphere where religious faith is put to the test of reason. Until such time we will remain at the mercy of “patriots” and zealots.
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South Asia Citizens Web
Human chain against terrorMuslim women hold hands as they form a human chain as a series of citizen initiatives to express anger and demand action from the government.
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Tuesday, 9 December 2008

Three days of Mumbai terror reporting


Media and Conflict

By Anjali Deshpande & S.K. Pande   December 9, 2008     Muslim India 
The Hoot

The media behaved as if the country was so terrified it came to a standstill. As if Madhya Pradesh did not go to polls, as if Delhi did not vote, as if a former Prime Minister, V P Singh, did not pass away Anjali Deshpande and S.K. Pandey of the Delhi Union of Journalists detail their observations.

At the outset we offer our condolences to all those who lost their lives in the fight against the planned terrorist attack that shook India. We salute in particular the martyrs who sacrificed their lives to save the sovereignty and integrity of the country, in what is clearly a planned heinous terrorist attack with wider ramifications. We support the call for restraint reporting, for terrorism has international and national linkages and is often used to destabilise countries. The initial role of some of the media was to grab the eyeballs rather than ask questions and reflect all facets of life as they unfold without adding to the tension strife and trauma in such situations. In some cases the ethics evolved over the years was thrown into the dustbin. Add to it all the fact, that when some restraint began more than a touch of jingoism took over.


If there is one thing the electronic media helped in particular to do in the last three days was to bolster the confidence of terrorists and to give them a sense of achievement far greater than their action may have provided them.


The Times of India continues to aid the cause with sensational reporting two days after the operation is over. On November 30 the TOI had a chilling banner headline “There is Nobody Alive Here” with a four column black and white picture of the Harbour Bar of the Taj in shambles. The want of colour accentuates the feeling of dread that the picture inspires, especially contrasted with a little file picture of the same bar, in colour, inserted at the bottom of the big picture as an inset or a pictorial footnote so to speak.


The media behaved as if the country was so terrified it came to a standstill. As if Madhya Pradesh did not go to polls, as if Delhi did not vote, as if a former Prime Minister, V P Singh did not pass away, as if nothing else happened in the country. This may be a very insensitive thing to say but the major English dailies today are writing as if food writer Sabina Sehgal Saikia’s contribution to India was greater than that of V P Singh. (We are eating better thanks to her asserts Veer Sanghvi, (HT November 30) forgetting that half of India barely manages to get one meal a day.) Such is the lasting hatred the Mandal Messiah inspired in the self obsessed upper and middle classes of India.


Writing just the day after the rescue operation at the Trident in Mumbai was over, Shekhar Gupta chose to tell us how many times he had stayed in the Trident and how much its staff knew about his quirks (IE November 29). There seems to be a competition between editors to tell us how familiar they are with these prohibitively expensive hotels. Understandably then nobody asked the four MPs who barely escaped from the Taj why they were to hold a Parliamentary Sub Committee meeting in one of the most expensive hotels of the country? Was no room available in the parliament Annexe?


From the Beginning


When the undeclared war on Mumbai began unfolding on Wednesday November 26, 2008, the Government and the media especially the television media seemed to have joined a race to prove who is the more irresponsible of the two, the one elected by the people or the other thrust upon the people of India. The media’s claims of self restraint are always made after it has done everything to damage people’s lives, investigations and its own credibility. If there was one time when the government could have used its powers to take the telecasts off the air by cutting off the waves this was it.


As a body of journalists the Delhi Union of Journalists cannot and will not ask for censorship but as some of its members watched the live media coverage grew more and more desperate knowing not where to turn for relief.


The News and Broadcasters Association, set up to ensure ethical reporting, was conspicuous by its absence of any advisory, directions or advice. TV channels continued to telecast sensitive information jeopardising peoples’ lives. They told everyone where the commandos were approaching the Taj and the Trident hotels from; they showed us just where the commandos had landed on the rooftop of Nariman House. They also helpfully let us know that the electricity connection to the Nariman House was cut off. And that the NSG had night vision equipment, and would launch an attack at night! As if the backers of the desperadoes on their brutal murder spree were not watching TV and keeping them updated. Those who argue that viewers can use the remote to not watch what they find unethical or irresponsible should note that many in India did, people went to offices and went to vote but the TV all the same managed to give important information to the backers of the terrorists who were glued to their screens. The remote is not the solution to such irresponsibility.


In fact Times Now reported on November 27, around 6 P M that the terrorists were being given updates by people in other countries ‘who are watching TV’! Despite this the live coverage continued uninterrupted and continues even now. In fact so responsible is the media that Ritu Sarin writing for the Indian Express November 28, the day after the operation at the Trident was over, that she took advantage of people going inside the hotel to slip in!


Ambivalence


Some ambivalence and debate within the newsrooms of TV channels was evident from the way they behaved. In its 11 A M bulletin on November 27 NDTV India (Hindi) said they were not telecasting live from outside the Trident in Mumbai because the police had requested them to stop live coverage. It said the police had told them that the coverage could affect the ongoing operation. The anchor said that that is the reason they were not going to telecast the scenes outside the Trident. Before you could laud this decision to withhold news in the interest of the security of people, the security of the commandos and others fighting this latest attack and society at large NDTV English choked out our words of congratulations.


NDTV English continued showing the operation. It also took us to the scene outside the Trident. There Barkha Dutt spoke to the Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil asking him for details. She asked him whether there were any Indians among the hostages. RR Patil said he could not disclose information for it could affect the security of the people held hostage. Patil also pointed out that firing from outside could give away the direction from, which security forces were approaching the building. Despite that the channel showed where the commandos were hiding behind pillars! Barkha then asked Patil if there is any information about who is behind this attack! Patil hesitates then says firmly that they have some clues but he will not disclose them now and will talk about it at the ‘proper time’. Soon NDTV India was back to telecasting the scenes live. Whatever happened to the earlier decision to not telecast live in the interest of the ongoing operation?


Zee news similarly was ambivalent. It kept suspending live telecasts only to resume it soon. What it lost in this way it tried to amply make up for by using the backdrop of close up shots of flames leaping up. These were shots of a window of the Taj that had caught fire and these were being used long after the fire had been extinguished. So if the terrorists wanted any allies in spreading fear and panic, there was the television media at hand and not even wanting to be paid for its services.


There was ample evidence that the authorities had requested the media to keep some distance and some information to themselves. Despite that shortly before 12 noon, November 27, on Times Now an experienced and senior journalist, Arnab Goswami, made the announcement that one terrorist has been caught alive and has been jointly interrogated by the three forces including the RAW. How can any media professional be allowed to forget that those who planned this audacious operation could also be watching and would take appropriate measures to cover tracks the moment they realise that one of the attackers is probably giving out information?


Exclusive news, for the terrorists?


Irresponsibility knows no bounds. On November 27 all the channels were gleefully telling us that the authorities had found a ‘sat phone’. Effectively ensuring that any further calls to that phone would not be made. Who knows what information could have been gleaned had the backers of these desperadoes not known that one of the satellite phones was with the authorities? Around 6 PM the same day NDTV India reporter Neha Jain got close to the rubber dinghy dragged from the sea and said to have been used by the terrorists, giving a detailed explanation about how and where it was found floating. Then she placed her hand on a wooden structure fitted onto the boat to tell us this is where the engine is and the authorities have found no evidence or marks of any model number or engine make to give them a clue where those things were made. Thank you Neha, the boat at least has one set of fingerprints now! Where were the authorities? Was there nobody to ensure that reporters do not mess with what could be evidence?


Even the next day, on November 28, sense had not dawned. It seems the Information and Broadcasting Ministry had issued an advisory by then that obviously had been ignored. We did have the anchor of NDTV India asking its reporter outside the Taj to get away from there, save his life. “In fact I appeal to all of you to leave the scene, go away. Your lives are more precious than any news”, said the anchor. To no avail of course. Soon an AFP reporter was injured. And there was the usual scramble to get shots of the injured journalist, not any attempt to help him on his feet and to an ambulance. What a most unedifying sight.


The raft the terrorists are supposed to have used was shown any number of times on all the channels but no journalist asked the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra and other top authorities who visited the site what the coast guards were doing? Why did they not notice any suspicious people on a raft? And whether we need more coastal patrolling. Fishermen are said to have alerted the police to the arrival of suspicious people at the seashore. Luckily no TV journalist tried to interview any fisher folk for such witnesses’ lives could be endangered. Predictably the next day’s Indian Express carried the picture of the fisherman who had spotted the boat and alerted the police. 


Will the media ever learn please?


Before investigations are completed TV channels had launched into detailed stories of the route the terrorists had taken with maps and dotted lines marking the route from the sea, all in place. Who says the media does not work hard? In fact the media did not sleep at all. Reporters just did not seem to want to leave the scene sucking at the horrific narcotic of watching terror at close quarters.


No wonder then that drunk on this flow of adrenaline the media forgot to ask many questions. They did not ask the authorities what is the coast guard supposed to be doing if such boats and terrorists can land in the financial heart of the nation? They did not ask why three senior officers of the ATS Mumbai were travelling in the same car? All three, Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte were shot dead by terrorists whose car they then hijacked in an unsuccessful attempt to get away. Are there no rules in place to ensure that senior investigators travel separately to make their elimination tough if not impossible? They still have not asked this question.


There are so many questions they have not asked. For instance in the evening of November 29, PS Oberoi, chairman of the Oberoi group in a press conference asserted that no terrorists had booked into the hotel, no terrorist had checked in as a guest. The obvious question to ask him was how did he know? Did we hear that question asked? No, we did not. How can Oberoi assert this before the investigations are complete? It may be necessary for the image of the hotel (oh, please, our security system is foolproof) but it certainly is not good for impartial investigations.


Silly Questions?


When you are so close to an event you can be excused for your mind getting benumbed. Naturally you can’t think and you make many mistakes. That thanks to the live coverage we got to know. Some of these examples truly stand out. On November 27 a young man told Barkha that his sister was inside the Taj hotel and he had come to see what was happening for he had not been able to get in touch with her. “Are you worried”, asked Dutt! As if he was there to celebrate. And just when he began elaborating on the kind of things that worried him she cut him off! For instance he said he wondered if they were being allowed to use the toilet. “That is of minor concern as long as she makes it out safe”, declares Dutt! So is she the one who is going to decide what kind of worries a man should have when his sister is possibly a hostage inside? And please, we should be avoiding questions to the relatives of those missing like ‘How does it feel when someone has possibly lost his wife or child one cannot expect such a question to a trauma stricken person.’


Such incidents were aplenty, that could have been hilarious had they not been part of an unfolding tragedy. When people rescued from the Trident walked out India TV zoomed on a father with a little baby in his arms. The anchor went breathless with excitement. “Look at the little baby, that little innocent”, he said repeatedly just in case viewers were looking elsewhere. Then he went on to say “ek masoom bachchca jo shayad yeh apne dil ki baat kah bhi nahin sakata!” Just as well that the six month olds can’t talk or the masoom would certainly have been in for a bad time with a mike in its face!


The only competition the media had was from the authorities. On November 28, around noon a commando, in black, even his face wrapped in a black kerchief gave a blow by blow account of the operation! The vice admiral of the Navy went into a TV studio (NDTV?) to give us details of what the Marcos (short for Marine Commandos) were doing and had done while the operation was still on! Not to mention our then Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil who told us all just how many NSG commandos had left Delhi on the night of November 26 and what time they had landed in Mumbai. They left at 2.30 and landed at 5 AM he said. No questions asked about the propriety of such information being given out during the operation. Who will ask such a question when those who should be asking are themselves involved in giving out sensitive information?


This is not to say that the media should not cover the events. But they can easily record and keep some for later. Such recordings can also provide crucial inputs to investigations and can also ensure fair investigations by not letting the police cook up stories later with impunity. However withholding news may sometimes be the most ethical decision to make in the larger interest of society and the security of the nation. Instead some TV journalists were concentrating on speculating about those behind the attacks.


Finally, we earnestly feel that there has to be an internal media code for reporting terrorism, and barbarism taking into account in the making of a new world disorder or inflaming internal passions and at times suggesting something more then even an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth approach that could put even the Nazi jingoes to shame. Some of our journalists turned politicians appearing on TV definitely did so and anchors enjoyed the jingoism. One should also not forget that there is something known as an international war on terror project part of which was felt in select parts of the world after 9/11 creating a new world of disorder.


Before extreme measures are envisaged by jingoistic politicians, it is time that the Press Council be turned into a Media Council with more teeth giving representation to all forms of media with experts from media and judiciary thrown in for a balance. It should be autonomous with some known members of civic society also thrown in.


24x7 reporting of terror has indeed been has also been a traumatic experience for our colleagues. Some of them really did a good job under the circumstances. A fine all round colleague with a zest for life is no more. With our criticism of the reportage we reiterate our demand that there should be immediately a risk insurance cover for journalists on such hazardous missions.


PS: How was it that RDX was found at the CST terminus just yesterday (3/12/2008) and all along our media was concentrating on VIP Hotels without even finding out what else was happening in commonly used places?

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(Anjali Deshpande is a well-known freelance journalist. S.K. Pande is the Chief of Bureau, India News Network, President of the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) and Director of its Media Centre. Both are associated with the Ethics Council of the DUJ)

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