Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Media and Right wing Organizations

It is sad that extremist right wing organizations like the Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal has played a poignant role in portraying the Hindu religion in poor light.To state that this has lead to a misunderstanding of Hindu rights and feelings , would be an understatement.The fact that their activities are a reaction of fifty years of organized bias against the majority community, can in no way justify the extremism and sense of intolerance in their action, as it goes against the basic tenets of Hinduism, which stands for tolerance and respect to other faiths.This has given a scoring point for the secularists and intelligentsia of our country to denounce right wing activity in every form and actually benefited the appeasement machinery of the Government.
At the same time there is definitely an exaggeration by the part of the media in its portrayal of such activities. They have more than often presented to the public a blatantly one sided view of the whole picture. A classic example of that was the murder of Graham Steins , a Christian missionary in Orissa vis a vis Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati , a Hindu monk.The murder of Steins, no doubt a horrifying one, was reported as an attack on humanity , a stain on the Indian culture,and what not .Steins was repeatedly in controversy for his alleged role in conversion en-masse in the tribal belt.In fact ,the whole history of subversive conversion in orissa and the untold sufferings it has brought to those who resisted , is itself very eye-opening.
Swami Laxmanananda , on the other hand was a monk who, along with organizing enormous social relif work amongst the poor in Orissa, resisted the conversion activities of the evangelists.He was brutally murdered in broad daylight; yet the whole incident was passed off as a solitary Naxalite encounter, despite the glaring proofs that there was a deeper nexus and foul play at large.The media, not only overlooked the incident , but shockingly went on to continue its biased reporting on Sena and Dal atrocities on Christian converts , in retaliation for the murder.
There has been a number of inquiry commissions set up by none other by our "secular" Central govt., and all of them have uni vocally accepted the role of missionaries in promoting conversion and resulting violence in nexus with naxalism in tribal Orissa.
What i mean to say, is that, it is not that there are no violent and extremist elements in Hindu organizations. They need to be denounced and reined in , just as any other fundamentalist organizations. but their role has been blatantly overplayed by our secular media, even going on to branding it as "Saffron Terror"
Orissa is not the only case.. Sadhvi Pragya,Batla house encounter,Godhra incident,etc etc,..there are countless cases of such biased reporting...
will get back with more of that on the role of the Indian media..

3 comments:

  1. but u know.. our media is anti right and anti left too.. dont exactly know what stand it is.. but definetly the projection of certain national identity which is extremely disturbing!... could please talk about how did this whole secular idea come into India.. it was during Indira gandhi period is it? socialism was included in preamble then or secularism? i dont remember...

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  2. again the left wing.. compared to congress i feel left is better sometimes.. like u see all these dams like varahi n tat dam in gujurat.. they seemed to have benefited corporates more than farmers.. then Bjp is as bad as any party.. like you see and you wonder what is progress and development all about.. you know..

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  3. u know..this whole debate of development versus explotation is a ery subtle and delicate one..one can easily cross the line...
    will write on that later..
    Read Narayan Murthy's "Towards a Better India"..its a great colection of his selected speeches..he throws light on the need for globalization,its rights and wrongs as well as "compassionate Capitalism"..
    socialism is more "heart" topic than "head " topic..it does not consider neccessities and reaities of an evolvng society as well as its needs..ther are lessons to be learnt from it ..but its model is only reactionery..
    ask any of these dam prtestors to give an applicable solution to the problem of power demand..i bet they wont come up with one..
    its all very well to influence people in the name of justice..even naxalites have done the same successfully..but its another thing to tackle theproblem in an inclusive and progressive manner..
    what u say about benefitting corporates and not farmers are because of errors in framing laws and lacuane in their implementation..that definitely needs to be corrected..and there are examples
    all this talk about the narmada dam..but do you know how much it has benefitted the farmers of Gujarat..they are highest in per capita income in our country and get 24 hr power supply even as the rest of the country is grappling with drought and farmer suicides.It goes on to show that development is not neccessarily anti-poor..of course there uis the issue of displacement of people and environment destruction..but it has to be done ina systematic and sensitive manner...

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