Title: A skewed media
Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Mid-Day
Date: March 2, 2000
Our national press has
all its values skewed. It couldn't care less for its readers or, for that
matter even the country's national interests. Ask me why.
A couple of weeks ago,
we had a visitor none other than President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia.
Some time later, we had yet another'. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen
and his wife. Ask the person sitting next to you in a bus or train whether
they had heard of Wahid or Hun Sen. The reply would he a blank face and
questioning silence.
Here is a man who had
the courage to stand up against the Suharto dictatorship, who rules over
the single largest Muslim nation in the world and whose country offers
ample opportunities for Indian entrepreneurs - and the national press treats
him with disdain. Hun Sen may not be the prime minister of a powerful country,
but Cambodia with its Hindu connections to India should be a nation that
matters to us.
Did anyone watch how
Mrs Hun Sen greeted Prime Minister Vajpayee? He was extending his hand
while she was giving him a respectful namaste, head bowed. How much more
cultured can one be? And yet the press has treated Cambodia as if it does
not exist. I call it a shame. But when President Clinton comes calling
on us, page after page will be devoted to his arrival, stay and departure.
To get the attention
of our national press, an alien has to he white, rich and powerful. We
are still stuck with our colonial hangover. And may I bring to the reader's
attention another interesting and significant omission on the part of our
'national' press? I am referring to the role played by the RSS and the
VHP in Orissa during and after the devastation wreaked by the cyclone.
The RSS has always been
the first go to help people in disaster-hit area to help people in distress.
It kept up its reputation in the matter of Orissa as well. Intrigued that
no newspaper had the decency to report on what the RSS and VHP have been
up to in that sadly neglected state, I made my own inquiries. And this
is what I learnt. The first thing the RSS did on learning of the cyclone
disaster was to send its relief workers to the affected areas.
Corpses had to be disposed
off. No policeman would so much as touch a dead body. The task of cremation
was undertaken promptly by the RSS cadres, seeking no monetary compensation.
When the cyclone receded and the torrential rains stopped, there were the
swayamsevaks, out in the field to be greeted by local swayamsevaks in their
khaki shorts. When Red Cross vans pushed through the mud and the slush
guiding them to where they were most wanted were again these lads in their
khaki shorts, who did not even wait at the end of the day to be thanked.
Sufficient unto the day
was the service thereof. And now that the first phase of relief work is
over, one would think that the RSS boys would pack up and go. But they
are still on the job. The RSS Relief Committee has now shifted its focus
to rehabilitation. It has identified 149 villages in 12 districts for adoption.
Their immediate needs are being met. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad has so far
provided 8,800 cows belonging to 3,000 families with cattle feed.
Six VHP veterinary doctors
are taking care of domestic animals and will leave only when their services
are no longer needed. Plans are ahead to supply four lakh coconut saplings
to those whose trees had been felled by the cyclone. Not had for a bunch
of fascists, what? One would have imagined that our national press would
make a comprehensive survey of the post-cyclone scene in Orissa.
But that's not news,
is it? It is more comforting to damn the RSS as fascists. It satisfies
editorial egos. And now may I shift from Orissa and the RSS to the RKM.
RKM stands for the Ramakrishna Mission. According to The statesman, the
Mission has achieved the unbelievable: it has appointed a Muslim teacher
to teach Hindu scriptures at its Vidyamandir at Belur, where the Mission's
headquarters are situated.
If this is not revolutionary,
what else is? The man named to teach the shad-darshana - the six darshanas
- is one Shamim Ahmed on whom the responsibility has devolved to teach
students Sanhkya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimansa and Vedanta. Ahmed
is a former student of the Presidency College, Calcutta, but neither the
183-year-old Presidency College nor the 143-year-old Calcutta University
ever had a Muslim in the philosophy department to teach Vedanta or Sankhya.
The Ramakrishna Mission's
Vidyamandir has broken new ground. Swami Vivekananda, founder of the Mission
would no doubt have applauded. Swami Atmia Priyananda, principal of the
Vidyamandir is reportedly quite happy with Ahmed's performance so far.
He is quoted as saying: "Shamim is a very popular teacher and our students
like his method of teaching."
The decision to appoint
him was apparently unanimous. It speaks as much for the scholarship of
Ahmed as for the catholicity of the Ramakrishna Mission. It takes some
courage for a Ramakrishna Mission school to appoint a Muslim to teach Vedanta
to its children.
Wishing to do some study
of Sant Jnaneshar, the other day, I chanced across an excellent book on
him by, of all people, a Jesuit, Father Felix Machado who is based in Rome
as 'Staff Member for Asia Desk' at the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious
Dialogue, the official organ of the Pope in the Vatican City
The book is entitled
Jnaneshwari: Path to Liberation and causes a preface from another Jesuit
I greatly admire, Fr Raimundo Panikkar. Fr Panikkar's The Vedic Experience
is a classic of its kind. A Catholic writing on the Jnaneshwari. A Muslim
teaching Vedanta to children at a Ramakrishna Mission School. And the RSS
rushing succour to Orissa and giving aid to all those who needed it, irrespective
of their caste, creed or religion.
I find this most heartwarming.
Our national' press misses these stones. What's so exciting about a Muslim
teaching Vedanta or a Christian writing about Hindu mysticism? Nobody has
been torched to death, has one? So where's the news? I despair for today's
media. Somewhere it has lost its way in its crass materialism. I look back
with nostalgia to the pre-independence days when the mesa had a mission,
and I was a young reporter.
(M V Kamath, veteran
journalist, take, on all comers)
