By Ranjona Banerji
The children of Uttar Pradesh who use NCERT textbooks will not be taught Mughal history in Class XII anymore.
A few years ago, even after the historic landmark year of 2014, there would have been some noise in the media and in the public discourse. RSS ideologue and “educator” Dinanath Batra has received flak for his attempts to “rewrite” Indian history to suit his parent organisation’s historical fantasies in order to indoctrinate new generations of Indians.
But now, we take all this in our stride.
Indian history will be falsified. Indian children will be under-educated. History and fact embarrassing and/or unacceptable to the Hindutva majoritarian mindset will be removed from Indian life and consciousness. Presumably the East India Company forays and the colonisation of the Indian subcontinent will also soon become inconvenient to the RSS and its captive media?
This is the media which after all is far more excited about publicising some dubious poll which announced that Narendra Modi is the “world’s most popular leader”. Whatever that means.
This is a media which reports poker-faced that India’s home minister, Amit Shah, announced that all rioters would be hung upside-down if the BJP returned to power in Bihar. Law and order comes under the aegis of the home ministry. But evidently, the Home Minister can openly contravene all provisions of the rule of law in India.
Modi himself has claimed that a contract has been given to “someone” to dent his image. He used the word “supari”, a term used by the Bombay/Mumbai underworld to hire a contract killer. The media is very excited here, knowing that the accusation is not aimed at them since the media does nothing to dent Modi’s image and everything to bolster it. Instead, the media tells us the etymology of the word “supari” and betelnuts and so on. Fascinating stuff that proves how effective journalists are at using internet search engines.
The Indian education system is bad enough as it is. In the years that I have conducted entry-level tests for journalists in various newsrooms, it is hard to be optimistic about general levels of knowledge. I know we are proud of our schooling in that we can learn by rote and regurgitate. But the ability to think is not as cherished and this failing is now evident in every aspect of our lives. Not least the media because low-paying jobs do not always attract the best talent.
Having said that, I now think of overpaid TV people who show no greater talent or skill. Well, one hears that at the top levels, TV people are often hired for family contacts and proximity to the powerful. True or false?
I now segue and spin to an emerging problem. A captive pliant media, which ignores the basics – forget speaking truth to power – but even basics like protecting Constitutional rights, with ignorant and undereducated elements outnumbering the committed and talented, over-dependent on the internet for information, unable to research and search for information will soon turn to AI to “assist” in their work.
Imagine what will happen then?
Even if you consider the best aspects of ChatGPT for instance, what does it do for any hope for independent journalism if journalists depends on basic Artificial Intelligence to do most of the work? It will happen. It happened with the internet.
Like this: via Hindi cinema. The number of young journalists who have argued with me in the mid-2000s that the Mumbai riots of January1993 were a response to the bomb blasts of March 1993 was very distressing at the time. Finally, when faced with paper evidence, they all claimed they had got this idea from a Hindi film. And even that they had misunderstood, apparently.
I’ve only looked superficially at the media. Just repeat state-sponsored ignorance across all areas of life and then…
Well, what?
Any ideas?
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and columnist. Her views here are personal. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays.