The media and the nuclear deal
S R Ramanujan
The initial skepticism in the Indian media over George W Bush’s visit and the furious debate over the nuclear deal has miraculously transformed into euphoria and overwhelming approval of the deal. Of course, dailies like the Hindu and the Deccan Chronicle truly reflected the "beliefs" of their editors. The largest English daily, the Times of India, in fact, went overboard when its headline screamed "It’s A Deal. A Very Big Deal". The Hindu could not have been more pedestrian and staid when it said "India, US clinch deal on nuclear separation". The New Indian Express was no different. Its headline was "India, US seal N-deal". The Pioneer was non-committal with its headline "India smiling".
The television channels were the ones which were whipping up a sort of frenzy both for the deal and the street protests. The channels were overtaken by the events at a breakneck speed in a time span of less than 48 hours. The uncertainty over the deal disappeared the moment Bush landed in Delhi. The scale of protests was unexpected, though not "unprecedented in decades". The K-factor became a non-factor. The bottom line of the deal was too good to believe. Otherwise, scientists like Anil Kokotkar would not have turned "approvers". As a result, the channels were struggling to pack too many stories into the limited time available and trying to be one up above the competitor.
What was most interesting was that there was complete disconnect between the SMS-polls which were showing an approval rating of more than 70% for the deal and Indo-US friendship, and the studio discussions involving the Left and Muslim leaders who were spitting fire and brimstone on Bush and the deal in channels like NDTV and CNN-IBN. In this "melee" even Speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s absence from the Taj Palace lunch went off as a passing reference while newspapers like the Hindu for whom whatever Chatterjee does is news, remained silent. May be, his health did not permit him to attend because a few days before he was admitted to the AIIMS. But, readers/viewers were not told about it. Was he a silent sympathizer of the Left protest? One does not know.
The competition between the two channels was also quite funny. If IBN had Time’s South Asia correspondent on its panel because of tie up with Time-Warner group, NDTV brought in Newsweek editor. Ambassador Blackwell was of course common to both. If Prakash Karat was on NDTV, Sitaram Yechuri was the choice of IBN. But, both the channels were united on one thing. They were going ga ga over Bush and the nuclear deal. In fact, one of the anchors in these high-brow channels asked a Left leader whether the Left reaction would be the same if a similar deal were to be struck with the erstwhile Soviet Union. In terms of footage, NDTV had an upper hand having lined up with the host network - ABC, whereas IBN did not have this advantage. As a result, IBN looked odd when it had the tag "Exclusive" for its visuals of Bush’s departure at Delhi airport.
As regards the street protests, both the print and television did not do much to put them in perspective. All the protests were either from the Muslim-dominated areas of Lucknow, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Western UP, Kashmir, Bhopal or from areas of Left influence like JNU, DU, W Bengal, Kerala etc. As it is, the Muslim passion was quite raw in the wake of cartoon controversy and Bush visit more or less coinciding with this, the minorities wrath was not difficult to channelise. But the analysis was on predictable lines. The Deccan Chronicle in its edit page article warned the government in a strong language. "Prime Minister Singh is able to recognize the signals from Washington with considerable ease, having spent some of his time there and the rest of his time in converting US influenced economic policies into Indian language. But not being an elected leader, he is not being able to understand, or even correctly read, the powerful language of the Indian street, for those who are seeking to dismiss the massive demonstrations of the last week as "just another show" are doing so at the government’s peril." According to this writer, the scale of protest was not witnessed in India for decades and "those who did not spend their time in Hyderabad House, but with the demonstrators, were stunned with the anger, the spontaneity and the passion of the thousands and thousands of people (read Muslims) who had come together to raise a voice against the US" (Parenthesis mine.)
Let me give an example of the spontaneity of protest in Hyderabad as reported in the Indian Express.
"Around 1-30 PM, scores of slogan-raising youths rushed out of the mosque even as the Task Force teams and RAF personnel took positions. The unruly mob initially ran towards Shalibanda side and started raining stones on the shops and houses. Immediately, the police positioned on the other side of the mosque resorted to lathi-charge to disperse them. However, the mob returned to the Mosque. Once inside, the miscreants used the place of worship to rain stones on the police. They smashed the flooring and used the stones as missiles. Some used their footwear to show their protest. Meanwhile, some youths came out and burnt the effigies of the US President and later retreated into the mosque".
There was another "spontaneous" protest in Lucknow on Friday. The Deccan Chronicle reported that the protestors vandalised and looted over 20 shops before setting them on fire. A nationalized bank was also set on fire. The processions began from various mosques after Friday prayers and when the processions reached Maulviganj locality, there was violence when some of the shopkeepers refused to down their shutters. It turned into a communal clash taking the lives of at least four people.
If this is what the DC writer calls "spontaneous response" or unprecedented in decades, there can be no argument. Well, this is not to say that Muslims in India, like their co-religionists elsewhere, have no reason to be angry with Bush for his atrocities in Iraq and the mess he has created thereby for himself and his country. The point is whether we should mix up issues, and the question is whether his visit and the nuclear deal will do good to India or not. If it does, what should take precedence is the national interest while there can always be a peaceful protest for Bush’s Iraq policy.
The Left cannot escape blame either for having egged on the minorities to take to streets. But, surprisingly, the Times used strong language in its editorial against the Left responses over the n-deal. The editorial said: "The Left’s objections appear rooted in the idea that any dealing with the US makes us a vassal state. The nuclear pact itself is refutation of this idea, as New Delhi has enhanced Indian interests through the negotiations. Leftist idea that India can never negotiate with western powers as an equal can only be explained in terms of a deep-seated inferiority complex, perhaps racial in nature - so much for their anti-colonialism…Beijing has called on India to abandon nuclear weapons…more interesting is the Left’s response, or lack of it, to Beijing’s hegemonic demand. If Washington has made the same demand they would have hit the streets in protest by now, which exposes their double standards".