Who said, “Truth is the first casualty of war”? It is a phrase that has many a parent – from the Greek dramatist Aeschylus to a US senator by the name of Hiram Johnson. But much like other aphorisms, it is endlessly transmutable because it has a kernel of truth.
Who said, ‘You are either for us or against us’? Was it Narendra Modi while addressing the ‘Mera Booth, Sabse Mazboot’ programme even as Indian Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was being held in Pakistan? Wrong. It was President George W. Bush in November 2001 as Afghanistan was being pulverised by his forces under Operation Enduring Freedom.
The reason why the Indian prime minister does not have to utter such words is simple: The Indian media has already demonstrated that they are with him, right or wrong, no questions asked. But because no questions are asked, a figure like “300 terrorists” being killed in Balakot bounces off TV news and front pages as cold facts, stirring up a tsunami of patriotic flag-waving and shouts of “they take 40, we take 400”.
A tweet from one ‘Dr Praveen Patil’ represented the zeitgeist of that moment:
The casualties on the Pakistani side are said to be over 300 as is being estimated, this is truly an India that is capable of getting 10 Paki heads for every Indian life
Same army, same air force, same defence capabilities, but a new India with the sheer force of political will!
— Dr Praveen Patil (@5Forty3) February 26, 2019
The piece, ‘The Airstrikes Had Three Targets, But Hit Bullseye in Just One’ (February 27) had issued an early and important warning that “the unverifiable and seemingly exaggerated accounts of the airstrike making their way to the Indian media will make it very difficult for the Pakistani side to do nothing.”
If that figure was more closely interrogated, the Indian media could have been spared the opprobrium of having its accounts contested by a phalanx of foreign correspondents who painstakingly fact-checked the casualty figure. So from where did this figure of 300 emerge? Indian intelligence sources had claimed that some 300-odd Jaish men had been moved to Balakot after the Pulwama attack.
The fallacy of Indian media reporting lay in collapsing that number with that of those presumably slaughtered by the Indian air force strikes. It was only after the embarrassment of being called out by the world and the Pakistani media, did “top government sources” in India inform the media that “limitations of technical intelligence and lack of ground intelligence at this point make any assessment of terrorists killed in the attack purely speculative” (‘Radar imagery confirms 4 buildings in Jaish madrasa were hit: Official’, Indian Express, March 2).
The point to note here is that the authorities put out this clarification in hindsight. When they briefed the media about the Jaish men having moved to Balakot, they did not strike that necessary cautionary note.
Also read: Indian TV Media’s Blatant Endorsement of Hyper-Nationalism Is Shameful
We know that the government routinely weaponises information for its propaganda purposes. But are the Indian military and intelligence establishments – which have so far been successfully firewalled from political agendas – also following the same strategy? It would seem so. To push the three defence chiefs on to the line of media fire, where they were completely out of their depth (their parading of shrapnel was bizarre, to say the least), made it seem as if the executive was not up to the task and was shooting off the shoulders of the defence forces.
Mercifully, we were spared a similar spectacle during the release of Varthaman, whose dignity and poise at all times – even when forced to perform before a video shot by his Pakistani captors – was much remarked about (‘Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman Returns to India’, March 1). A Modi hug was just what the wing commander did not need, although there is no guarantee that he will dodge one in the days ahead.
The piece, ‘Opposition Parties Accuse BJP of ‘Politicising’ Pulwama Attack’, quotes Mamata Banerjee as saying, “The way Modiji and Amit Shah are giving statements every day, it seems they are the only patriots in this country and we are not.” But then, Banerjee should remember that they, being in power, are within hugging distance of the targets that matter.
A courageous Twitter user, Shilpa Rathnam, borrowing from Franklin D. Roosevelt, put out the words ‘War is young men dying and old men tweeting’, when Indo-Pak hostilities were at its height (she also took on her trolls by defying them to troll Roosevelt if they had the courage).
There was also that significant tweet from well-known Pakistani journalist and peace activist Beena Sarwar, which resonated with people across the subcontinent: “The only war that Pakistan and India should fight should be against poverty, illiteracy and violence. #SayNotoWar #AntiHateChallenge” (‘#Abhinandan, a Human Face to the Costs of War, Empowers Voices for Peace Online’, February 27).
Of course, the anchors in their sickeningly uniform (pun intended) discourse will have none of this and neither will the old generals to whom they pay handsome honorariums along with tea and biscuits to sound the war bugle in their studios. Some of these moustaches huffed and puffed and seemed positively cross that the wing-commander episode played out as it did.
Television emerged “not merely mouth-pieces or supporters of Narendra Modi and his administration – they are the force multipliers, the bellicose media wing, in place to not just propagate but also to drown out other voices”. (‘Indian TV Media’s Blatant Endorsement of Hyper-Nationalism Is Shameful’, February 28).
De-escalation – at a point when a lovely war seemed to be getting going – was the last thing they wanted. But The Wire should hang on to its position well articulated in an editorial (‘Editorial: India and Pakistan Should De-Escalate Now, March 1) that “Kinetic operations may yield benefits at the tactical level in the fight against terrorism but it is foolish to think the problem of terrorism can be defeated by military means alone.”
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Nothing can better end of all this talk of war than to introduce a period into the narrative. So put your hands together for the LiveWire piece, ‘We Need Men to Talk About Periods: Oscar Winner Guneet Monga’ (February 28). I wish, though, that Ms Monga had not expressed the thought that she wanted “every girl to know that each one of them is a goddess”. What every girl should know is that she is a human being with human rights, an idea that the participants of a long march – an event that received, unsurprisingly, scanty attention from the media – incubated and circulated.
The Garima (Dignity) March involved a 65-day, 10,000-kilometre rally across 200 districts of 24 Indian states, and many of the marchers were survivors of sexual violence and rape. One marcher in Rajasthan encapsulated her learnings in another The Wire report, ‘At Dignity March, Survivors Fight Stigma of Sexual Assault’ (February 12). They ranged from repairing bicycles to maintaining hygiene during periods. She also noted that people spoke about how those who have been sexually assaulted should not be blamed for being raped, adding, “we think the male members of our society should have also been invited here. They need to be sensitised about the topic.” The irony is that some – like Priya Ramani – who have attempted to do just that, are now facing defamation cases (‘#MeToo: Court Grants Bail to Priya Ramani in Defamation Case by M.J. Akbar’, February 25).
Also read: Building a Feminism That Centres the Voices of the Oppressed
These are women who want their rights and dignity, not the adornment of goddess-hood. Gunmeet Monga would do well to read ‘How Cultural Nationalism and Women’s Rights Locked Horns in the 19th Century’, February 11) which talks about how women in India had battled over punishing decades of the long 19th century and over the early years of the short 20th century, just in order to emerge from the status of “goddess” to that of citizen: “… century-long debates about her consent, her entitlement to life, her immunity from death, did slowly create a new notion of the woman as a rights-bearing subject of the state”.
This piece is part of a brilliantly conceived series showcasing the work of academic feminists. The series could not have come at a more opportune moment, and I am not just referring to the fact that next Friday is Women’s Day. It reminds those who conceive of feminism as a narrow, shriveled thing that indeed “there is no linear or one way of understanding and experiencing feminism” and that feminism’s strength lies in its multiple layers of understanding with dimensions ranging from class, caste and location. It also prompts us to consider one of the lesser but equally important aspects of journalism – the understanding and expansion of existing knowledge and scholarship. This series, I would hazard a guess, will not perhaps be among The Wire’s most ‘shared’, ‘liked’ and ‘tweeted’ sections, but it will stand the test of time and remain a source of referencing and scholarship for years into the future.
One small bone I have to pick with the editorial desk is this – while the pieces are hyperlinked in the introduction to the series, it would have been great if some of the arguments made, that find echo in other pieces, were also hyperlinked – or at least that each piece carries the titles of the various others that comprise the series, so that the interested reader would have seamless access to the entire body of work.
The themes covered so far (apart of course from the one just cited) are: ‘The Indian Women Who Fought Their Way Into the Legal Profession’ ’ (February 13), ‘Building a Feminism That Centres the Voices of the Oppressed’ (February 15), ‘Discovering the First Generation of Feminists in Kerala’ (February 17), ‘The Women of 1971, on Either Side of the Bengal Border’ (February 19), ‘The Bhasha Writer and Her Women’ (February 21), ‘The Gap Between the Feminist Understanding of Sexual Violence and the Law’ (February 21) and ‘How the Feminist Conversation Around Sexual Harassment Has Evolved’ (February 28).
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Many readers have written in on the war-like situation prevailing in the country. The People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism (Battini Rao, Convenor, PADS (95339 75195, battini.rao@gmail.com) sent in its statement condemning violence against Kashmiri students and traders after the Pulwama attack. It noted that these “so-called ‘nationalist’ attacks on Kashmiris are a deep-rooted conspiracy to alter and control the political character of Indian society” and “are designed to create a frenzied atmosphere so that the Indian public comes to accept the violation of democratic norms as a natural state of affairs.” Realising what is that stake, the organisation demands:
- Criminal proceedings be instated against Bajrang Dal/VHP/ABVP leaders who led mobs against Kashmiri students and traders,
- All students suspended and rusticated from educational institutions be taken back immediately, and
- All Kashmiris living outside the valley be provided adequate security
It also calls upon all democratic citizens and civil society organisations to reach out to any Kashmiri students and traders in their campuses and localities, show them solidarity and protect them against any attacks, verbal or physical. In particular, the police need to be reminded that all citizens are to be protected by law, regardless of their ethnic or religious identity.
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