June 2, 2002

These are trying times. The holocaust in the Indian state of Gujarat has shown what the venomous rhetoric can do when put into a planned deadly action. The consensus of all the impartial and concerned commentators has been that the Gujarat pogrom against Muslims was a result of a long process of preparing the majority community for the assault. Arundhati Roy, the name synonymous with a writer’s conscience in today’s world, has plainly called it the “footstep of fascism” which has decidedly appeared in India. And, she has also made it clear, to fight this menace would take more than just lamenting. “Fascism itself can only be turned away,” she says, “if all those who are outraged by it show a commitment to social justice that equals the intensity of their indignation. “Are we ready to get off our starting blocks? Are we ready, many millions of us, to rally not just on the streets, but at work and in schools and in our homes, in every decision we take, and every choice we make?

“Or not just yet...

“If not, then years from now, when the rest of the world has shunned us (as it should), like the ordinary citizens of Hitler’s Germany, we too will learn to recognize revulsion in the gaze of our fellow human beings. We too will find ourselves unable to look our own children in the eye, for the shame of what we did and did not do. For the shame of what we allowed to happen.

“This is us. In India. Heaven help us make it through the night.”

While surfing the web in search of the resources on Gujarat made available by people outraged by the events of the past three months there, I was constantly troubled by the shamefully venomous rhetoric against the Qadianis revived recently by the counterparts of the Sangh Parivar, on this side of the border, and proudly displayed by the purveyors of hatred among the media. The difference of degrees apart, has anyone noticed that for several decades now, the ground has been left open to the hate-mongers who find it extremely easy to say the most hateful, the most outrageous things against the minorities?

This is how a pogrom begins. At any rate, this is how it was initiated and sustained in Gujarat, as the draft report prepared by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) with the collaboration of another organization, Shanti Abhiyan, or the campaign for peace, submitted to the Editors’ Guild of India describes. The report is available at the PUCL website.

In the first part of the report, the role of Gujarati and English language newspapers has been briefly analyzed. The framework of analysis was as follows.

Headlines: were the headlines provocative or inflammatory?

Photographs: where did they appear? What kinds of photographs are used?

Language: Has the language been derogatory, offensive or biased?

Sources: Where does the paper get its information from? Are interviews referred to or sources identified? Who are the people interviewed?

Rumours: are the news reports substantiated?

Editorials and analytical articles: What are the perspectives offered to the readers?

Incorrect reporting: Are there reports which we know to be false?

While analyzing the contents of the Gujarati paper Sandesh (Baroda), the report categorically concludes that it “crossed all limits of responsible journalism and has been at its inflammatory best”. The major characteristic of Sandesh, in the period after the Godhra train massacre, has been “to feed on the prevalent anti-Muslim prejudices of its Hindu readership and provoke it further by sensationalizing, twisting, mangling and distorting news or what passes for it. The average Hindu reader in Baroda feels that he is getting value for money and ‘real’ reportage”.

Clearly selective usage of words and phrases serves to identify and further communalize the minds of people. More significantly and often with tragic consequences it also serves to denounce all Muslims as religious fanatics and all Hindus as devotees. In doing so entire communities are sought to be demonized or lionized disregarding the fact that both communities are heterogeneous and cannot be stereotyped in this manner. In addition, it also serves to justify, condone and valorize any kind of violence against the victims of the post-Godhra riots who are in overwhelmingly large measure impoverished Muslims across the State.

The said newspaper, according to the report, systematically fuelled the massacre by spreading false information. Although the code of conduct of the press in India does not allow naming of communities involved in the violent conflagrations, Sandesh effectively circumvented it. The report says: “Scattered across the newspaper there are numerous reports where ‘mobs of religious fanatics’ abducted tribal women and therefore had to face the wrath of the people, or when rumours that ‘religious fanatics’ were about to attack a temple caused tension in certain areas in Baroda city, which brought ‘devotees’ out on the street to protect their place of worship. Areas in the city and state with a large population of Muslims are described as ‘mini-Pakistans’, denoting both danger and enemy thus creating grounds for the use of the most extreme violence.”

The rumour about the abduction of tribal (Adivasi) women by Muslims was one of the ways to enlist them as mercenaries in the pogrom. Such rumours are said to have been common in places where vested interest want to mobilize people of a community to commit acts of violence against the members of the other.

Although no such report has been prepared on the role of newspapers in Karachi’s decade-long violence, everyone in this city has the memories of those violent days and how this violence was sustained by the newspapers. I, for one, distinctly remember having read a report displayed in a box at the top of the back page in a big national Urdu daily, informing the readers about the abduction of a whole bus on the Super Highway with women from Karachi on board. Needless to say, there had not been any such incident.

According to the PUCL report, Sandesh used headlines to provoke, communalize and terrorize people. On February 28, 2002 the main headline says: 70 HINDUS BURNT ALIVE IN GODHRA. Another report on the front page says: AVENGE BLOOD WITH BLOOD. This is a quote from a statement issued by a VHP leader. Sandesh has simply used his words as a headline. In another instance on March 6, 2002 the headlines scream HINDUS BEWARE: HAJ PILGRIMS RETURN WITH A DEADLY CONSPIRACY. In reality hundreds of terrified and anxious Haj pilgrims returned accompanied with heavy police escorts to homes that could have been razed to the ground.

Most reports concerning the post-Godhra violence usually begin with a preceding sentence namely that, ‘In the continuing spiral of communal rioting that broke out as a reaction to the ‘demonic/ barbaric etc., Godhra incident...’. The denunciatory adjectives used liberally to describe the Godhra incident are strikingly absent in reporting the subsequent genocide. This introductory statement reinforces an hierarchy in the two sets of crimes that were/are being committed. This hierarchy has been established by the VHP and even the Chief Minister Narendra Modi when he justifies the genocide in Newtonian terms. This calls into question the supposed objectivity of Sandesh as a newspaper. Repetitive justification of the post-Godhra violence serves to neutralize the horror and injustice of the subsequent violence.

There is a locality in the North Karachi Township called the “Godhra Camp” or the “Godhra Colony” near the Nagin Chowrangi which apparently houses the people who migrated from Godhra in Gujarat. This was presented by the Sandesh on March 7, 2002 in a report which claimed to have discovered Godhra’s ‘Karachi connection’.

Similarly, on March 1, 2002 the headline of a news item claims that a ‘mini-Pakistan’ is in existence in the Navayard area of the city. The article goes on to say that ‘pockets’ are being created in the city and instructs the police to take note of the reportedly ‘criminal’ Uttar Pradesh migrant labourers who live in this area.

Much mystery and terror seems to surround the term ‘pockets’, almost as if a small basti of Muslim migrants from UP who had their houses and hand carts burnt by a mob of over 2000 was planning a grand conspiracy in their ‘pockets’. The term ‘pockets’ when combined with the unauthenticated information about people with criminal records living here, seems to suggest that it is a hideout of some sort which, if not wiped out could create a law and order problem.

That the basti, (named Roshanpura) today lives in complete terror and has a huge question over their livelihoods, is indeed a sign that such reports are feeding into some larger machinery of which Sandesh is only a mouthpiece.

The PUCL report about the coverage of the violent Gujarat events concludes that Sandesh has “consciously sought to project a communalized version of events and inflicted serious and long-term damage to a society already fragmented along communal lines. It has been our experience that its Baroda readers particularly Hindus frequently quote Sandesh reports to refute any arguments in favour of moderation and restoration of communal harmony. We have found that, over the past month of violence people’s own experiences in their neighbourhoods as well as reports in the national media are often relied on less than Sandesh’s reports.”

Sandesh’s sale has reportedly fallen in recent times. It is plausible that it has been resorting to sensational and irresponsible reporting in a bid to boost sales. Rings a bell, doesn’t it?

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