Mumbai Massacre - Gnani Sankaran's View

I received this from Partha Sengupta.
Mr Sankaran is very right.
This is the terrorism of the media.
I have mentioned this earlier in our blog.
We have seen it in the Arushi murder case in Gaziabad.
It was truly shocking, the way the interviewers would shove the mike in the face of person coming out of the trauma at the Taj.If I was in the shoes of that person, I would have taken the mike and beaten up the interviewer with it.

Radheshyam

Hotel Taj : icon of whose India ?

Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai.

Watching at least four English news channels surfing from one
another during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a
terror of another kind. The terror of assaulting one's mind and
sensitivity with cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All
these channels have been trying to manufacture my consent for a
big lie called - Hotel Taj the icon of India.

Whose India, Whose Icon ?

It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not
bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from
terrorists - the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway
station. CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this
railway station hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar,
Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over
the years, transforming themselves into Mumbaikars and built the
Mumbai of today along with the Marathis and Kolis

But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they
recognise the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform
of CST. No Barkha dutt went there to tell us who they were. But
she was at Taj to show us the damaged furniture and reception
lobby braving the guards. And the TV cameras did not go to the
government run JJ hospital to find out who those 26 unidentified
bodies were. Instead they were again invading the battered Taj to
try in vain for a scoop shot of the dead bodies of the page 3
celebrities.

In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of
workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving
by train at CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify
them. Even after 60 hours after the CST massacre, no channel has
bothered to cover in detail what transpired there.

The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the Aam
Aadmis of India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by Taj,
Oberoi and Trident closing down for a couple of weeks or months.
What mattered to them was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban
trains even for one hour. But the channels were not covering that
aspect of the terror attack. Such information at best merited a
scroll line, while the cameras have to be dedicated for real time
thriller unfolding at Taj or Nariman bhavan.

The so called justification for the hype the channels built around
heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is
that Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the
globe congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and
politics, not India. It is the icon of the financiers and
swindlers of India. The Mumbai and India were built by the Aam
Aadmis who passed through CST and Taj was the oasis of peace and
privacy for those who wielded power over these mass of labouring
classes. Leopold club and Taj were the haunts of rich spoilt kids
who would drive their vehicles over sleeping Aam Aadmis on the
pavement, the Mafiosi of Mumbai forever financing the glitterati
of Bollywood (and also the terrorists) , Political brokers and
industrialists.

It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people,
that the terrorists chose to strike.

The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam
Aadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and
trains. He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she
can even survive.

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news
channels and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is
enough, said Pranoy Roy's channel on the left side of the channel
spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami
representing the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is
now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in this game of one upmanship over
TRPs ? They all attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm
action from the government in tackling terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in
trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The
resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class
of Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop.
When it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of
nerves and refused to be resilient themselves. They cry for
government intervention now to protect their private spas and
swimming pools and bars and restaurants, similar to the way in
which Citibank, General Motors and the ilk cry for government
money when their coffers are emptied by their own ideologies.

The terrorists have learnt that the ordinary Indian is
unperturbed by terror. For one whose daily existence itself is a
terror of government sponsored inflation and market sponsored
exclusion, pain is something he has learnt to live with. The rich
of Mumbai and India Inc are facing the pain for the first time and
learning about it just as the middle classes of India learnt about
violation of human rights only during emergency, a cool 28 years
after independence.

And human rights were another favourite issue for the channels to
whip at times of terrorism.

Arnab Goswami in an animated voice wondered where were those
champions of human rights now, not to be seen applauding the brave
and selfless police officers who gave up their life in fighting
terorism. Well, the counter question would be where were you when
such officers were violating the human rights of Aam Aadmis. Has
there ever been any 24 hour non stop coverage of violence against
dalits and adivasis of this country?

This definitely was not the time to manufacture consent for the
extra legal and third degree methods of interrogation of police
and army but Arnabs don't miss a single opportunity to serve their
class masters, this time the jingoistic patriotism came in handy
to whitewash the entire uniformed services.

The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went
down dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart
rending but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but
also brain. Israel has a point when it says the operations were
misplanned resulting in the death of its nationals here.

Khakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit
the mistake of traveling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson
in management that the top brass should never t ravel together in
crisis. The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels,
would have laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine
commandos, an elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in
a see-through cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea
about the structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to
liberate. But the terrorists knew the place thoroughly, he
acknowledged.

Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and
discuss operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before
entering? This is something even an event manager would first ask
for, if he had to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural
event in a hotel. Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his
ancestral hotel to the commandos within one hour considering the
mighty apparatus at his and government's disposal? Are satelite
pictures only available for terrorists and not the government
agencies ? In an operation known to consume time, one more hour
for preparation would have only improved the efficiency of execution.

Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances.
But the Aam Aadmis always believe that terror-shooters do better
planning than terrorists. And the gullible media in a jingoistic
mood would not raise any question about any of these issues.

They after all have their favourite whipping boy - the politician
the eternal entertainer for the non-voting rich classes of India.

Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Manmohan Singh and
Advani visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing
solidarity even at this hour of national crisis. What a farce? Why
can't these channels pool together all their camera crew and
reporters at this time of national calamity and share the sound
and visual bites which could mean a wider and deeper coverage of
events with such a huge human resource to command? Why should
Arnab and Rajdeep and Barkha keep harping every five minutes that
this piece of information was exclusive to their channel, at the
time of such a national crisis? Is this the time to promote the
channel? If that is valid, the politician promoting his own
political constituency is equally valid. And the duty of the
politican is to do politics, his politics. It is for the people to
evaluate that politics.

And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.

To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the
practice of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning
and improvement. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps
terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin.
And the rich and powerful always prefer terrorists and dictators
to do business with.

Those caught in this crossfire are always the Aam Aadmis whose
deaths are not even mourned - the taxi driver who lost the entire
family at CST firing, the numerous waiters and stewards who lost
their lives working in Taj for a monthly salary that would be one
time bill for their masters.

Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to
all the channels, 30 hours through the coverage. After all they
have been constantly asking the viewers to message them for
anything and everything. My message read: I send this with lots of
pain. All channels, including yours, must apologise for not
covering the victims of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam
aadmis of India. Your obsession with five star elite is
disgusting. Learn from the print media please. No channel
bothered. Only Srinivasan Jain replied: you are right. We are
trying to redress balance today. Well, nothing happened till the
time of writing this 66 hours after the terror attack.