Page 94 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

Gujarat 2002 and the Indian news media 83
Acts of political violence should be viewed as political performance enacted by
state and non-state actors. Such acts do not take place in a vacuum, but within
political frameworks that privilege or marginalize the pursuit of certain ideolo-
gies, values and beliefs. Violence is central to a democratic framework that sees
the state having legal control over organized violence (police, army, security
forces and vigilantes of ruling parties). In Hansen’s words, political performance
‘comprises the construction of images and spectacles, forms of speech, dress and
public behaviour that promotes the identity of a movement or party, defines its
members and promotes its cause or worldview’ (2004: 23).
This formulation is particularly useful in multicultural societies that witness
constant tension between majorities and minorities, widely constituted as ‘insiders’
and ‘outsiders’, or as ‘us’ and ‘them’. In such contexts, the macro-dimensions of
religion, community, language and ethnicity are played out at the micro level as pol-
itics of permanent performance. Most acts of political violence take place between
unequal groups or actors, which places the news media in a piquant situation: both
sides court journalists, but they may be despised too if their professional output does
not fit within contending frames. It is not uncommon for dominant political actors
to hail the news media when convenient and to heap flak on them when they do not
toe the ‘party line’. They become damned if they report and damned if they don’t.
It is also not uncommon for dominant political forces, including their supporters in
the news media, to brand or stereotype journalists who may not be amenable to toe
the ‘party line’. In media and political circles in London or Delhi or elsewhere, the
political inclination of most journalists is known. The problem arises when a jour-
nalist with no ostensible allegiance towards any party or ideology comes to be
branded simply because his or her output does not fit into certain political frames.
The chapter is also informed by my personal experience of covering the activities
of the Hindutva forces, including several defining events, for The Times of India
1
and other publications between 1988 and 1999. Some of the events I covered
were based in Gujarat or had strong connections with the state. I have some expe-
rience of the damned-if-you-cover-damned-if-you-don’t conundrum. The very act
of reporting that the Hindutva forces were making waves through their grassroots
political mobilization in Gujarat in 1990 invited opprobrium from some ideolog-
ically driven journalist colleagues and others. It betrayed the hope that by merely
not reporting certain political events, somehow, the growth of certain ideologies
would be prevented. It also implied that the English-language press had over-
weening status in a country of 1 billion plus people, of whom barely a small but
influential minority uses the English language.
When journalists face sustained criticism from political actors, many ask the
question: are the news media responsible for political violence or do they merely
report political violence? That the Hindutva forces went on to wield power in New
Delhi in the late 1990s and become one of the poles of Indian politics – despite
trenchant criticism in the English-language press over the years – suggests a
disjuncture between the spaces that English-language journalists inhabit and the
vast non-English reality in India. As Smith (1980: 160) observed, ‘India is a coun-
try with an intellectual elite which is perhaps further alienated from its own masses