MxMIndia

Category: BLOGS

  • An informed debate on this sedition law is perhaps now required, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Arnab losing mojo outside studio?

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    According to popular opinion, the normally bristling with national outrage Arnab Goswami went easy on Raj Thackeray. He was gentle in his technique and let Thackeray get away with confusingly contradictory rhetoric. Perhaps Goswami loses his mojo when he’s out of his studio. Maybe Thackeray’s sneering aggression troubled him. But it was an interview which exposed both participants. Thackeray was petty. And Goswami was not in his best “India wants an answer” mood.

     

    **

     

    By the time the weekend was over however we had new excitements in our lives. A young cartoonist with an FIR and court order against him was arrested in Mumbai on charges of sedition. Aseem Trivedi arrived in Mumbai from Kanpur, went to the BKC police station and surrendered. He has some connection with the India Against Corruption movement, so some of them were there with some TV-inspired drama all around.

     

    Social media was spewing venom at the political class for being against cartoons as were general comments on TV news. But which politician had got Trivedi arrested for sedition? Politicians may be against freedom of expression at most times, but who was the villain here?

     

    There was no overt political villain as it happened. A Republican Party of India worker had taken exception to Trivedi’s cartoons. Information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni said the UPA government was all for freedom of expression but desecration of institutions was unacceptable.

     

    The problem is that viewers were not shown the cartoons. Later, on Times Now, we were told they were so horrible that they could not be seen.

     

    After that, the discussion went from freedom of expression to sedition laws to bad taste and everywhere but didn’t inform the view about the exact charges. Kiran Bedi did try on both CNN-IBN and Times Now but none of the senior editors found the details worthy enough to be revealed.

     

    Rajdeep Sardesai and Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju had a discussion on CNN-IBN about how politicians had to be taught a lesson and how we were a democracy and the importance of freedom of speech. But Katju did not seem to know that politicians were not directly involved – if at all – and Sardesai did not enlighten him.

     

    None of the TV discussions looked at the sedition laws in detail either, although surely they are an issue. Because cartoonists like Sudhir Dar, Sudhir Tailang and artists like Anjolie Ela Menon were guests, the tenor was more civilised than usual.

     

    Sardesai spoke over his guests so we missed some of what they had to say. Goswami was very upset that the cartoons were so disrespectful and crass.

     

    **

     

    Tuesday morning’s newspapers put some of the facts out there – that the Maharashtra home minister had distanced the state from the sedition charges, that the local police had perhaps gone too far with sedition, that the state home department had pressed the police to drop the plea for further police custody. Most importantly of all, the newspapers introduced us to the complainant, who had filed the charges after the IAC rally at the Bandra Kurla Complex in December 2011.

     

    The Times of India also quotes Jawaharlal Nehru on the sedition law (he wanted to get rid of it). But an informed debate on this sedition law is perhaps now required, which is what this cartoonist also wants. Whether we as a nation are still capable of public informed debates is another question.

     

  • Now, I'm top of the pops when it comes to TV news. I watch it all day. I watch it all night. I can tell from a lift of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip if an anchor is going to mess it up or burst into bombast.

    Ranjona Banerji: End to innocence

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Watching TV news every day was never on my list of must-dos. I laughed at my friends and relatives who were addicted to news on an endless loop and TV debates full of bluff and bluster. Working in a newspaper, who needed so much TV news anyway? You could easily find out what was happened from other sources.

     

    Enter MxM and an end to my life of carefree innocence. Now, I’m top of the pops when it comes to TV news. I watch it all day. I watch it all night. I can tell from a lift of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip if an anchor is going to mess it up or burst into bombast. A glance at a guest on a TV debate and it’s clear whether they’re going to shine or sink tonight.

     

    I now have extensive knowledge of the boundaries of human ingenuity, especially when it comes to grammar and spelling. I thought newspapers were running downhill fast when it came to standards, till I started watching TV news.

     

    If the star anchors are bad enough when it comes to their egos and their often shifting quality, it is the guests who give you a delightful idea of how petty, daft, small-minded and badly behaved Indian society can be. There is also a refreshing sense of honesty at work. Almost never do you see a TV guest who feels he or she has to put on an act because they are on a show. They are incapable of masking their true feelings and so eagerly expose their shortcomings – whether in the art of making a logical argument or the bigger challenge of civilised behaviour.

     

    But I also discovered what a terrible job it is, working in television. Waiting for hours outside a gate or a door, hoping the studio will come to you for a one minute at least. Or the opposite can happen – an anchor come to you over and over when you really have nothing new to say from what you said five minutes ago. The anchor then asks you impossible questions: “Have your sources told you exactly how many toes have been injured in the train accident?”

     

    I have also learnt that newspapers are also on a slippery slope – especially when it comes to paid news and ethics but they still have a superior understanding of newsgathering than TV. Hard to see why news channels don’t hire more print journalists for general “gyan” and that other word so popular these days, “mentoring”.

     

    The past year with MxM has also forced me to look at the media far more critically than I ever did before because, if nothing else, distance lends perspective.

     

    But I’ve also had the chance to reconnect with the advertising industry, where I worked for a short while at the beginning of my career. I’ve also learnt how much the media has grown. I’ve read Anil Thakraney, Peter Mukerjea and all the other guest writers who share their insights. I’m enjoying Vidya Heble’s new column on language. And of course, Pradyuman Maheshwari’s insights into the media.

     

    And I’ve poked a little fun at ads. Which in many ways has brought me so much more joy than making chutney out of journalism – schadenfreude anyone?

     

    That’s one year of MxM. Can’t wait to see what the next one brings!

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and editor. A commentator with Mid-Day and various other publications, she is Contributing Editor, MxMIndia.

     

  • … no, not the PM, but the comment in a Washington Post article by its India correspondent amidst rumours that he apologized which he denied. But there's no reason for him to do that, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Much ado about the ‘tragic figure’….

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    What ridiculously thin skins we have, whether it’s the TV media constantly looking for slights against India or the government which reacts when it should just keep mum and keeps mum when it needs to react.

     

    An article in the Washington Post by Simon Denyer calls Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a “tragic figure”: “But the image of the scrupulously honorable, humble and intellectual technocrat has slowly given way to a completely different one: a dithering, ineffectual bureaucrat presiding over a deeply corrupt government.” (see: link)

     

    Denyer quotes Ramachandra Guha, Sanjaya Baru and Jagdish Bhagwati among other people, who have their own interpretations on why Singh has not been king in UPA 2.
    There’s nothing in the article that the Indian media has not been saying – in fact, Singh has received some very acerbic criticism especially in the last few months. But instead of taking it in our stride, we have to tear ourselves and our self-respect to shreds over this, like we did with Time magazine’s ‘Underachiever’ cover.

     

    One wonders whether news channels have staff on the job, scouring the international press for anything with possible anti-India content which can be turned into a sensational story. Because they never do it with the Indian media: call various opinion writers and columnists to their studios for daring to criticise the prime minister. Why, they might be able to dedicate a daily show to this. (Vinod Sharma versus Kanchan Gupta every night on TV, wow, what drama!)

     

    All day on Twitter there were rumours that the Prime Minister’s Office had asked Denyer to apologise, then that Denyer had apologised, then Denyer tweeted that he had not apologised and on and on it went. Why should Denyer apologise?

     

    On CNN-IBN, with Rajdeep Sardesai, Manish Tiwari of the Congress party tied himself up in knots over trying to balance a token nod to freedom of speech with why the Congress and government were upset. Denyer stuck to his stand.

     

    Does anyone remember the kind of press George W Bush received during his presidency? How many jokes were made about him being dumb, corrupt, controlled by his father, having used his brother to falsely win the first time, the folly of the war in Iraq…?

     

    The job of a journalist includes being critical. Even if the general public doesn’t like it, one expects that other journalists would know that. That should include TV.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator living in Mumbai. She is Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own.

     

  • After sympathising with the media at his rally, the MNS leader's love for the media didn't last long. Now, it's directed against the Hindi news channels who he finds irresponsible

    Ranjona Banerji: On how Raj Thackeray finds Hindi news channels ‘irresponsible’

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    And once more, into the limelight, Shri Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena: having basked in a bit of public attention after his rally last month, why not milk it?

     

    After all, a police commissioner was shunted out soon after he made just that demand and some members of the media actually said that his speech at the rally was not that bad. Plus, he even pretended to sympathise with the media, since they suffered at the hands of protesters at the Raza Academy rally, which Thackeray’s rally was protesting against.

     

    Of course, this love for the media was not going to last long. And now, here it comes: the famous Thackeray rage directed at the media. In this instance, it’s just the Hindi media. (The English media is exempt from rage this time but not from contempt: it apparently operates from a different planet.)

     

    Thackeray has objected to the fact that many criminals in Mumbai are from Bihar (huh? Vijay Palande, anyone?). And then these criminals infiltrate (either to or from, I didn’t quite understand this) Nepal and Bangladesh. And the Bihar police must control its own criminals and stop them coming to Mumbai (which has criminals of its own).

     

    Then he got angry with Hindi news channels for reporting what he said. He said their reporting was irresponsible (irresponsibility is something that Raj Thackeray understands very well). Having himself started a Mumbai-versus-Bihar debate, Thackeray is angry with the Hindi media for taking it further.

     

    He is also angry with the Bihar police for objecting to the Mumbai police, which did not follow some procedures when it arrested people from Bihar. This is the same Mumbai police that Thackeray had slammed at his own rally but how dare Bihar criticise anything or anyone from Mumbai?

     

    Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is hopping mad and has called Thackeray insane.

     

    Thackeray meanwhile is not just protecting Mumbai from the evil Hindi media and Biharis, but also from singer Asha Bhosale and Pakistani singers. The borders of Maharashtra are to be kept safe from all such elements. Bhosale has refused to listen to Raj Thackeray even though she loves him very much. The Hindi media never listens to any criticism or they would have stopped news broadcasts about ghosts and alien landings long ago (although perhaps when they talk about alien landings, they mean the English media). Nitish Kumar is furious. And Thackeray is overjoyed that he’s back in the news again.

     

    Incidentally, in Tamil Nadu, chief minister J Jayalalitha is saving India from young Sri Lankan football players.

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own.

     

  • The confusion over the CAG report remains and neither TV nor print has managed to adequately explain the various issues, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Confusion over CAG continues

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The continuing political crisis in India dominated TV headlines on Monday. The prime minister was forced to break his silence on the CAG report on coal allocations and the BJP continued to obstruct Parliament. TV news showed us both sides but the BJP’s recalcitrance appears to have affected its supporters. New channels seemed to feel that the prime minister’s statement has emboldened the Congress which has upped the ante.

     

    However, the confusion over the CAG report remains and neither TV nor print has managed to adequately explain the various issues. The best that I have read (or rather the most that I have understood) has been Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar’s column in TOI Sunday before last where he said the best way forward would be to scrap discretionary quotas. Other than that, between corruption, CAG, coal as a natural resource, bidding, auctions, allocations, the Centre, the states, industry, cheap power – there is almost too much going on for the average person to make sense of.

     

    Instead, what the BJP has now given us is a political war and that most commentators find much easier to understand.

     

    **

     

    Arnab Goswami, Sidharth Bhatia and Arati Jerath (the last two are friends of mine) had a tough time keeping a straight face on Monday night on the Newshour on Times Now as three members of India Against Corruption tried to explain the varying positions of Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi. Mayank Gandhi sounded the most reasonable, Shazia Ilmi was her usual verbose self and Abhinandan Sekri was like a petulant child. For all their sophistry, it was clear to all that they had no answers for Bedi’s position of refusing to support Kejriwal if he attacked both the Congress and the BJP. Nor could they explain why, until Sunday, the movement had consistently only attacked the Congress and not the BJP. Ilmi tried to claim that they had only to be stopped in her tracks by Goswami – and no TV anchor has been kinder or given more air time to the IAC movement than him. Bhatia was also quick to point out to Ilmi that IAC could not take credit for Santosh Hegde’s actions as Lokayukta of Karnataka and claim that as an example of how IAC took on the BJP.

     

    **

     

    Twitter, normally the bastion of the ‘Internet Hindu” and legions of BJP supporters, saw a stealth attack by Congress supporters who went all out with their ‘#RIPBJP” slogan. There came a time when this was even trending on twitter! I am surprised that Lindsay Pereira, editor of Mid-Day Online, did not pick this up in his Tuesday column on the internet since he is normally on the ball.

     

    **

     

    The media’s latest darling is Unmukt Chand, the captain of India’s winning Under-19 team. He seems to be a sensible young man so one can only hope that he has the strength to withstand this media onslaught with equanimity.

     

    **

     

    Just to comfort ourselves that the media elsewhere gets it very wrong sometimes as well, this is how NBC news reported astronaut Neil Armstrong’s death: http://gawker.com/5937870/nbc-news-reports-on-death-of-astronaut-neil-young

     

     

  • Governance and Opposition now happen from TV studios. The roundish building housing Parliament seems to have outlived its usefulness, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: When governance and opposition happen out of TV studios

    By  Ranjona Banerji

     

    Many years ago, the founding fathers of India worked very hard and gave us a Constitution. Because of that, we got a Parliament. You might recognise it from the outside — it’s a roundish building in New Delhi. But you might recognise it better from the inside: Large rooms with circular seating, an imposing looking desk along one wall and lots of people screaming and shouting and rushing to the centre of the room.

     

    You may be forgiven for thinking that these rooms (there are two significant ones) are contemporary versions of the Roman arena, where gladiators killed each other or got eaten by lions and so on. You may even think that given the Indian philosophical idea of non-violence of ahimsa, our founding fathers had created a non-violent arena where people could scream and shout without hitting or of course killing each other.

     

    In fact, no one really knows why this building and these two very specific looking rooms were made. As far as we can see, people shout and the person at the imposing looking desk says “Sit down, sit down”, albeit in Hindi. Sometimes the shouters listen and sometimes they don’t.

     

    Almost no one can understand what is going on. But it’s quite good entertainment. There are smaller versions of this thing in all the Indian states. Here the principle of non-violence does not apply. Not only do people throw things – microphones, chairs, tables – in these state versions of the roundish building but they also beat each other up. If they took off their clothes and exercised a lot, it would be like pro-wrestling (okay, ew!).

     

    Besides, almost everyone knows that every night some of these same people gather in television studios and speak and of course, sometimes shout. All the things that they don’t say in the roundish building, they say in television studios.

     

    The funny thing is that politicians – that is who these shouting people are – work very hard to get into that roundish building. They prepare themselves (no, not exercise, money and support collection) and then they fight elections. The elections give them the privilege of getting to Parliament and in some cases, apparently to govern the nation and in other cases to be the Opposition. At least that’s what that Constitution which no one has read in many years, says.

     

    However it is clear to everyone that the world has changed. Governance and Opposition now happen from TV studios. The roundish building has outlived its usefulness. Would it make a nice multiplex, do you think? Or in keeping with its past, a pro-wrestling arena?

     

  • The CBI ought to have known that Times Now (and Arnab Goswami) before leaving Suresh Kalmadi’s name out, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Watch out wrong-doers! Times Now is watching

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    All hail Times Now which has single-handedly managed to get Suresh Kalmadi’s name included in the latest CBI chargesheet as part of the investigation into the Commonwealth Games. The CBI had earlier left Kalmadi’s name out, only to find that the wrath of the nation-saver fell upon it. How it had the courage to leave Kalmadi’s name out in the first place beats me. It should have known that Times Now was watching. In fact, let this be a lesson to all wrong-doers across India: Times Now is watching.The rest of the media must now follow suit.

     

    Yet I distinguished some slight self-mocking in Arnab Goswami on Thursday night as in the middle of a debate on free speech versus hate speech he said with a wry smile that he had been accused of chairing kangaroo courts. I can see that he will fight them on the beaches and never surrender.

     

    Suhel Seth – for all that he can be annoying and is on my list of TV guests I don’t want to see again – was quite funny too. As Goswami and guests kept talking about the “Laxman rekha” between hate speech and free speech, at the end of the show, Seth asked Goswami if he had joined the BJP. Goswami was non-plussed. Seth answered words to the effect of “you keep saying Laxman rekha. Why don’t you say Moses’s foot?” Rahul Ishwar of the Sabarimala Trust looked really upset at this but luckily the programme was over before we could break into a huge fight.

     

    As far as free speech is concerned, by the end of the show, everyone agreed free speech is good, hate speech is bad and something needs to be done. I am not sure myself about using the term ‘Laxman rekha’ in this situation because one could see the line drawn by Laxman to protect Sita as circumscribing women and she breached it anyway.

     

    **

     

    We seem to be absolutely unclear about how to tackle hate speech in this country. While we have defamation, slander and libel laws, we are quite lax about them in general and we have not worked out how to transfer them to cyberspace. Clamping down arbitrarily on freedom of speech and expression is our normal way of dealing with content which spreads hatred.

     

    Therefore, the blocking of the twitter handles of journalists Kanchan Gupta, formerly of Pioneer and Shiv Aroor of Headlines Today received widespread condemnation, as did the blocking of the website of Pakistani journalist Faraaz Ahmed. The irony is that it is Ahmed who had researched, investigated and concluded that the images of Muslims being attacked, tortured in the video clips doing the rounds were doctored. Blocking him therefore made no sense.

     

    I do not know Aroor but have had some twitter conversation with Gupta and we are both columnists for Mid-Day. He is undoubtedly right-wing but that is hardly against the law. Nor can being right-wing per se be construed as being given to hate speech. If there are specific instances that Gupta and Aroor put up content that sparked communal violence they can be booked for that. But by just blocking them, the government has been both high-handed and arbitrary and has to be condemned.

     

    **

     

    The apparent squabble between Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni and former India batsmen VVS Laxman over a phone call, a retirement and a party seems to have divided the Indian cricket media between the two. However, it seems unlikely that this will become as big an intra-media battle as the Bhupathi-Paes tiff. Still, it’s quite amusing to watch it play out. My gut is that even though Laxman has been called a  gentlemen” and whatnot, Dhoni will win this one. He has more support and Laxman has retired

     

    Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views expressed here are her own.

     

  • Grammar Nazis, beware! Traditional verbs are passe, nouning is in!

    Ranjona Banerji: Verbs are out. Noun at all times!

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    I’m futuring here, forecasting trends. I am trying not to past it since backwarding is, well, backward. The need of the moment is to noun at all times and with deft efforting, avoid traditional verbing. Nouns are the new verbs and vital for tomorrow. At the London Olympics, you may have noticed that no one “won” medals. Rather, they “medalled”. In tennis as also in pro-wrestling, they “titled”, which did not mean that some monarch knighted them; rather they were called champion or something.

     

    I’m uncomprehending this trend completely at the moment but no doubt it’ll soon become second nature.

     

    The challenge is to remove verbs like “am”, “is”, “went”, “said” and such like and find nouns to substitute them.

     

    While we’re at it, we have to stop using apostrophes (and find an easier word than apostrophe) and we must abandon all semblance of spelling. There is no point having correct spellings of words if no one uses them. On Wednesday, the top trending topic on Twitter was “#ThingsIsayToMuch”. This upset a few people, some who wanted to know who “Much” was and others who fulminated on the missing “o” in “To”. This is all pointless posturing. You know what they’re called: Grammar Nazis. (And in India, people against Chetan Bhagat.)

     

    Language now has to be made impossible to understand to increase the challenge to human kind, since now we’ve achieved almost everything. Or at least, an unmanned craft has landed on Mars. Also since the whole world now speaks English, English has to accommodate the nuances of every language on earth.

     

    The top language is SMSes or Texting. This is a test of courage and comprehension. Words miss so many vowels and consonants (the only two building blocks of words) that it is a delightful exercise in trying to decipher them. You could write that as dcphr or as deiphr or as eie or even phdcr. The combinations are endless and make encryption experts of us all.

     

    My prediction for journalists then is full of hope. No grammar, no rules, no nasty chief subeditors making you re-do copy. Just a wonderful free for all where anything goes. Once language was about making sure we all understood each other. Now it is about universal confusion. But as long as we’re all talking to each other, what does it matter if we’re doing it correctly or not?

     

    Now I happying here. And the “am” is gone.

     

  • Yes, panic can spread through a mass communication system but stopping the system will not stop the panic. Humans have been victims of mass panic as long as they've been human and will use whatever means possible

    Ranjona Banerji: Shooting the messenger

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    As usual, it was shoot-the-messenger time during a crisis. And this time, instead of the perennially wicked journalist, it was social media which was deemed the villain. Of course, the social media can be villainous or it can be sweet (if sickeningly sweet then it is a villain in my eyes anyway) or it can be bland, informative, helpful and so on. What I’m trying to suggest is that it can be as good or bad as the people who use it.

     

    Anyway, given all the horrors of people being killed and people running away in terror and inflammatory pictures and messages being spread around, it was decided that the medium of the information was responsible. As a result of all this human bad behaviour, Twitter and Facebook have been looked at askance, websites have been blocked and no one is allowed to send more than five text messages a day.

     

    This is not the first time this short-sighted method will be applied and it won’t be the last. Yes, panic can spread through a mass communication system but stopping the system will not stop the panic. Humans have been victims of mass panic as long as they’ve been human and will use whatever means possible. The same methods can be used to spread peace, love and good will as well (okay, that’s a stretch but technically it is possible).

     

    Anyway, the government of India went on its blame-the-messenger spree, TV anchors thundered for action against the culprits (stretched on the rack Torquemada style or stuck in the stocks so that village people can throw potatoes at them) and the rest of India put up with it. A few people tried to point out that in recent memory, rumours of a murderous monkey man caused panic in Ghaziabad in the pre-Twitter era and before that, the Ganesha-drinking-milk story sent people into a massive frenzy. No mobile phones and no internet in those days.

     

    But facts must never stand in the way of truth, as a Twitterer said to a journalist who dared to point out that figures in Assam do not match stories of recent mass migration of Muslims.

     

    And so it is on Twitter. And on the receiving end of the rage of the social media’s users was Sagarika Ghose of CNN IBN. She suggested in her tweets that the government needs to look at hate-spreaders on Twitter and Facebook as well. This may have been an emotional response but it was ill-thought-out and made her the brunt of enormous outrage. As is usual with the internet, the attacks were vicious, rude, cruel and far beyond the norms of accepted civilised behaviour. It is a fact that the anonymity of the internet prompts people to behave in ways they would not in normal social settings. At the same time, you also see how easily all our veneers of civilisation can be stripped away. Ghose’s tweets may be contestable but the attacks on her were unwarranted.

     

    Nature of the beast. The problem, though, is not the media. It’s the humans who use it. Now what to do?

     

  • The reason for this little history lesson: Because most Indian news channels apparently think that Indian Independence has something to do with military might

    Ranjona Banerji: A lesson on India’s Independence

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Independence Day, one is pained to point out to India’s media, celebrates India’s independence from British colonial rule. As many people in the world are aware, though evidently not the Indian media, India achieved this independence through non-violent means. This method of fighting for human and civil rights, by appealing to the moral conscience within all of us, inspired other oppressed peoples the world over. Most famously, Martin Luther King Junior who fought for civil rights for Black Americans in the 1960s and later Nelson Mandela who fought against apartheid in South Africa were inspired by India’s unique battle for Independence.

     

    The man who steered this course of action to success was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

     

    The reason for this little history lesson: Because most Indian news channels apparently think that Indian Independence has something to do with military might. The focus was on Indian soldiers fighting for India’s boundaries. In fact, there is no connection at all between the military and Indian Independence. And much as we have decided that Gandhi has got too much publicity already and perhaps we cannot tell the difference between MK Gandhi and Indira Gandhi (and have developed an anathema to the surname), the fact is that the struggle for Independence cannot be disentangled from the Mahatma.

     

    Also even if we love Hindi cinema and we are all excited by rightwing propaganda which tries to move the discussion away from Gandhi, the RSS had almost no role to play in the events of 1947 and neither did Bhagat Singh. There is always room for critical discussion on those times – and for disagreement – but no Indian new channel is interested in the intellectual rigour required for a meaningful conversation on how India got its independence.

     

    In 1947, just as a matter of interest, the army was under British rule. It was not involved in our freedom struggle. Running to the National Defence Academy to eat with the cadets – I refer to CNN-IBN – is sadly inappropriate on a day which celebrates non-violence.

     

    If the media wants to glorify the armed forces (and it is impossible of course to expect a dispassionate analysis of India’s military from its news channels which are always stuck in rah-rah nationalism) then it should wait till January 26. That is when we have a military parade, remember?

     

    As an aside, the media might now end this struggle to search for freedom fighters. The mathematics and mortality rates are both against it. India became independent 65 years ago. You may honour the youth who were inspired by the freedom struggle but all the meaningful players are long gone.

     

    That’s it. Class dismissed.

     

    The writer co-authored and co-edited a book on 50 years of Indian Independence with Ayaz Memon in 1997, called India 50: The Making of a Nation.

     

  • The winner of the ads I don't understand category came in this morning papers (and not on television oddly enough) with Blackberry saying an asterisk had something to do with action

    Ranjona Banerji: When ads hit a miss

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    This time I think Airtel has hit a miss: the “what’s mine is yours or what’s yours is mine or what’s mine is mine song” makes you reach for the mute button on your remote. I suppose all good things have to come to an end and Airtel did pretty well with its earlier songs about friendship and sharing. It is testament to good advertising that while I do not actually remember the songs, I do remember them as being listenable.

     

    The grouchy old man as in Ranbir Kapoor for Tata Docomo has outrun its usefulness and is starting to grate. Sooner rather than later, their own customers are going to start thinking about how they’ve kept waiting on the phone, how the service slows down at the wrong time usually and the difficulty of trying to get a human on the line when you have a complaint…

     

    Most people are now feeling the same way about Anushka Sharma, especially her of the Reliance 3G ad. Most feel that she’s too nasty. I feel the worst she can be accused of is grossly exaggerating Reliance’s service. I know it’s a script but perhaps Reliance (or its ad agency) might remember that people are not quite that stupid all the time. Speaking of which, why doesn’t that boyfriend just switch to the same service and end her smart-aleckyness? Maybe he likes her just the way she is? He seems to be a tolerant chap with a sense of humour. Or perhaps his service doesn’t have goons masquerading as bill collectors?

     

    Car buyers although must be quite silly because the “caaaaaaaaar” ad is back. Nissan Sunny is it? I have only one question: whhhhhhyyyyyy? But then I remember the brand so maybe the brand has won but then if I ever buy a car it won’t be this one for sure because I don’t want to sound like a prime twit as I say, “Driver, caaaaaaaaaar le ke aana” to a lift full of strangers. At the very least, I would know the name of my own driver.

     

    If I had to buy a car, it would be a Renault Fluence not because I like it or I know anything about cars but just so I could shut up my show-offy upstart host with his horrible American accent and his skin-crawl-worthy bragging about his things.

     

    The winner of the ads I don’t understand category came in this morning papers (and not on television oddly enough) with Blackberry saying an asterisk had something to do with action. I’m not a Blackberry boy (or girl) and I have some other idea about the usefulness of asterisks, so I was at a complete loss. The ad ran over two pages but more space does not always aid comprehension.

     

    Finally, I now firmly believe that the most irritating song of all is the inspirational one from Hero MotoCorp. All this hysterical urging of India to go has led to all the Indians coming back empty-handed from the Olympics. Trying to make money and tempting fate at the same time? All that you get is bad Karma!

     

  • Indian news channels forever want to whip up public sentiment and push up rating points with some badly directed drama, rues Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: Outrage Unlimited on news telly

    Ranjona Banerji

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    Expectedly, Indian new channels were very moved by the attack on a gurudwara and the deaths of at least six Sikhs in the American state of Wisconsin on Sunday. However, their pain is not tempered by any sense of journalism so they tend to jump straight into a series of discussions based on unworkable premises. Regardless of how patriotic TV news people in India are and how they care about the plight of Indians abroad, the Indian government cannot send the army to protect Sikhs in America or indeed people of Indian origin anywhere else in the world. Nor can Indian investigating agencies jump in. Also, to have a bunch of understandably upset but substantially uninformed people competing for air time is unproductive. Not surprisingly, senior journalist Chidanand Rajghatta looked visibly disgusted on Times Now.

     

    It is also not possible for Indian TV outrage to change the USA’s gun laws. Such a discussion, earnest and less hyper though it may have been on NDTV, is also an exercise in self-indulgence.

     

    Arnab Goswami of Times Now was very upset that Sikhs are targeted in the US. I cannot remember any similar pain or any dramatic debates when it appeared as if people from Andhra Pradesh were being targeted. South India too far away from the purview of TV news?

     

    But what is new in what I’ve just said? It happens every time and each time, it looks more and more like a farce to whip up public sentiment and push up rating points with some badly directed drama.

     

    **

     

    Indian newspapers chose not to lead with this story although most put it on the front page. They also presented readers with the facts, sans comment. What comment can there be so soon after such a terrible crime, as the investigation is unfolding and facts are still being revealed?

     

    **

     

    It’s still Olympics time. The marvellous exploits of Usain Bolt captured imaginations worldwide and even in self-obsessed India. Indian wonderwoman boxer Mary Kom’s medal prospects also excited a nation so short on Olympic medals.

     

    But let’s consider the curious case of shooter Vijay Kumar who won a silver medal in London 2012. In the run-up to the elections, shooters were definitely in focus and newspaper after newspaper told us that Abhinav Bindra – gold medallist in Beijing – Gagan Narang and Ronjan Sodhi were our best medal prospects. We also saw some of them in TV promos telling us that they were “Olumpians” and Indians. But Vijay Kumar got nary a mention.

     

    Early on, Narang got a bronze so perhaps the hype was justified in his case. Bindra did have a gold, so who would guess that he wouldn’t even make the grade in London. Sodhi got nowhere very fast.

     

    So, as it turns out, India’s best medal in shooting came from Kumar, a subedar in the Indian army. Kumar’s credentials are excellent – he has three golds from the Commonwealth Games and medals from the Asian Games and other international tournaments. Why didn’t he get any media attention before the Olympics?

     

    Conversations with sports journalists have revealed a sad story of laziness and reliance on PR. The other shooters were more media savvy and journalists were just not bothered to find out about people like Kumar. This would be mildly acceptable if Kumar came out of nowhere to win. But that is not the case.

     

    Kumar himself was a little shocked that the media was presenting him as an outsider. He told CNN-IBN that they may not have seem him as a medal contender but he always knew he was! Indian sports journalists are often the best of our breed but lately…

     

    As it stands, Kumar’s the only silver medal winner for India so far at these Games…

     

    Ranjona Banerji, senior journalist and commentator, is Contributing Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are her own.