Author: Jaya Jaitly
Publication: www.india.com
Date: November 27, 2000
There is something very
strange about our public responses to issues, especially the reaction,
or the lack of it on certain occasions. Remember Water? Not the drought
in Gujarat, or the lack of clean drinking water in most villages, but the
English semi-intellectual, semi-social film which director Deepa Mehta
tried to film in Varanasi?
It became a national
event, but was it really one? How many people speak English in this country?
How many out of them would have gone to see Deepa Mehta's film? How many
widows were actually in the know of what the film contained and did they
express their views? Did it really eventually matter whether a film, any
film for that matter, is filmed or not? Even if there was some lumpen censorship
or lethargic responses from the Uttar Pradesh government, and even if there
was a case for anyone's right to make a film (the Censor Board could have
censored it or the public could have rejected it at the box office) did
it really deserve those interminable 'expert' discussions on Star TV?
All sound and fury
Did every media person
have to rush around with pen or microphone, asking every ally of the NDA
or any high brow in sight what their opinion was? Did pages of newsprint
have to discuss ad nauseum how artistic freedom, woman's freedom, had been
trampled upon by saffron, communal forces, etc? Eventually, the widows
real problems sank without a trace while much noise was vented.
Recently, a far more
important event took place, which received not a murmur in the way of response
or even commentary, except from the Samata Party, and that too was hardly
reported. The Lashkar-e-Toiba (Army of Puritans), a terrorist outfit,
operating out of Pakistan had the temerity to threaten women, the government
and cable operators in Kashmir.
Just when census operation
in Jammu and Kashmir was to begin, it declared that none of the 20,000
school teachers and others deputed to count the population should dare
to take up the work. It also forbade the cable television operators
from beaming anything other than the BBC, Discovery and Pakistan Television
channels to their audience. Finally, it
The Lashker-e-Toiba wanted
to sabotage a head count of how many people actually lived in Jammu and
Kashmir yet no section of government, or the people spoke out against this
restriction on gathering of fundamental information concerning each person
residing there.
The ban on all satellite
and our national channels is even more revealing. Not only it actively
promotes the Discovery Channel because of its totally harmless and apolitical
content, and promotes PTV for obvious reasons, but it also apparently loves
the BBC because it is the only international channel that inevitably has
its correspondents ending their bulletins from Kashmir by saying they are
reporting from 'Indian-administered Kashmir'. What happened to both
the nationalists and the freedom of information, anti-censorship, freedom
of expression campaigners here?
As for shooting women
in the legs, well, there could hardly be anyone who would approve of such
thing, and yet there was no sound from the defenders of human rights, freedom
of dress code groups, feminist of all hues whether 'secular', 'saffron'
or non-aligned, neither from political parties who fight Hindu fundamentalists
when they ask college girls not to wear short skirts, nor from political
parties who believe Indian women have right to chose their mode of dress
to go to college, nor from editorial writers who opine daily, nor ulema
who should be saying that even if girls don't wear burqa they shouldn't
be shot in the legs and crippled.
The list of those who
fell silent could go on. Suffice it to say that the orchestra of
noise makers deafened us with their silence, and we turn to the United
States of America for help in declaring the Lashkar-e-Toiba a terrorist
outfit. Will they believe us if we fall silent at the wrong moments?
We have not even cared to remark upon the wonderful fact that not a single
young girl in Kashmir paid any attention to the threats. They simply
went about their business.
