Textbook case of media pressure

This article appeared in The Hoot and can be read from here.

The flip-flops of Pakistan’s Punjab government on the revision of the Urdu textbook of class 10 brought contrary reactions from the Pakistan media: the Janggroup opposed the removal of ‘Islamic subjects’, the Dawn and the Express groups gently disapproved the restoration of old pro-Islamic chapters while The Nation traced the root of this controversy to business rivalry between two publishers.

In February this year, after the Punjab Textbook Board revised the textbook, Ansar Abbasi, the conservative investigative journalist of The News, which boasts of the largest circulation in Pakistan, gave a matter-of-fact looking, but patently inflammatory chapter-by-chapter account of what was dropped and what was added on March 24. Abbasi’s column in Urdu in the group publication Jang was more aggressive and Geo TV, a group site, reproduced it verbatim. Check out how Abbasi lists the items dropped and added:

• The second chapter in the old edition on ideology of Pakistan endorsed that the country was created in the name of Islam, to make it an Islamic state. This has been replaced.
• A short story ‘Fatima binte (daughter of) Abdullah’ has also disappeared. The story is about a young Muslim girl’s urge to help the Muslim mujahideen in jihad against un-Islamic forces. The girl was martyred.
• A chapter ‘Nam Dev Mali’ was, instead, included. The writer of this short story described the death of the expert Hindu gardener as ‘having embraced Shahadat (martyrdom)’.
• ‘Travelling is the key to success’ has also been removed. It covered adventures, jihad…
• Poetry of an Indian poet Firaq Gorakhpuri has been included in the textbook and the poet is presented as a hero awarded by the Indian and Russian governments.

The Jang  onslaught was enough to panic the Punjab government.  Shabaz Shariff, the then Chief Minister of Punjab who Dawn credits as a proponent of the reformist changes in the textbook, agreed to restore the deleted chapters the very next day!

What was the response of the liberal media?

Dawn condemned the ‘craven electioneering politics’ behind the knee-jerk reaction of the government. Accepting the fact that ‘dominant religion and a jihadist ideology’ have seeped into the textbooks, it charged the ‘political elite’ as lacking the courage and commitment to go against right-wing sentiment. Pervez Hoodboy, the liberal nuclear physicist and columnist, castigated Abbasi in his column in The Express Tribune for stoking religious passions with his ‘Islam in danger’ argument. He read the impugned textbook and found Abbasi’s claims ‘a distortion of reality and wild exaggerations’. He also made another valid point: the book was meant for teaching Urdu; it should not be a supplementary text for teaching Islamic studies.

The Nation brought an altogether different perspective. It rubbished the allegation of ‘removal of Islamic chapters’ and pointed out that the contract, running into millions of rupees for publishing the textbooks, was given to a particular business house by the Punjab Textbook Board; the party that lost the contract chose to ‘cast any and every aspersion, with no sincere grievance behind the move except for financial benefit.’

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Don't subvert the legal system

This article appeared in The Hoot and can be read here.

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When you read that Bollywood celebrities have extended moral support to Sanjay Dutt in his hour of despair, you understand their camaraderie, dismiss it, if you are cynical as another celebrity endorsement and move on to the next headline.

When Markandey Katju appeals to the Governor of Maharashtra to exercise a power which he does not possess, you wonder: ‘If Katju had to write to someone who does not have the power to pardon, why did he choose Governor? Why not to the jail superintendent of Arthur Road or Pune prison that when Sanjay Dutt surrenders in the next four weeks as per the Supreme Court order, he should not lock him up?

When you learn the absurd reasons Katju advances for seeking pardon for Dutt, you realize that perhaps when he was busy mastering mathematics so that he could rap the Allahabad lecturer, he had forgotten law.

When Manish Tiwari and Ashwani Kumar support Katju’s appeal to Governor to grant pardon to Dutt, it is apparent that their political compulsions have blunted their legal intellect.

In other words you tend to dismiss the clamor of the aforesaid persons to secure clemency for Sanjay Dutt as biased or inconsequential.

 

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But when news channels use this chorus for mercy to Dutt to seek similar benefit for another convict in the Bombay blast case or an eminent lawyer cherry picks a paragraph in the Supreme Court judgement convicting Sanjay Dutt and advances a myopic legal argument for the release of Sanjay Dutt, you realize that a dangerous precedent is being created furtively to disregard the judgement of the highest court of the country.

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"Holes" in the SIT report

This article appeared in The Hoot and can be read here.

No sooner did the SIT’s closure report become public than Express News Service ofIndian Express and Vidya Subramaniam ofThe Hindu set out to puncture what they perceived as holes in the SIT report. Unfortunately, in their eagerness to be early birds, they don’t seem to have considered all aspects of the issues they are highlighting. What are their issues?

Preliminary Report vs. Closure report

The first of the Indian Express stories points to the inconsistencies in the statements of Narendra Modi and top bureaucrats between the Preliminary Report submitted by SIT in May 2010 and its closure report. Vidya Subramaniam also harps on this issue in her article on the “Many twists and turns of February 27, 2002.” This is at best a comparison between apples and oranges.

The Preliminary Report, as admitted by A K Malhotra of SIT who prepared the same, “was not an investigation contemplated by the Cr. P.C. The statements recorded during the enquiry, therefore, do not amount to statements u/s 161 Cr.P.C.” and the amicus curiae also mentions this in Para 3 of his Report whereas SIT’s Closure Report recorded statements of witnesses under the said section. What is the relevance of this section?

Sec 161 (2) makes it mandatory for a person to “answer truly all questions relating to such case put to him by such officer.” So the seriousness, which a witness may attach to a statement u/s 161 may be missing in a statement recorded otherwise. When A K Malhotra mentions in his report that some of the public servants claimed loss of memory, as they did not want to get involved in any controversy, one can understand that the bureaucrats might not have felt compelled to respond to the queries of Malhotra with full earnestness. Another instance, which substantiates this argument, is the fact that when Sanjiv Bhatt was questioned as to why he did not respond to SIT’s public notice calling for witnesses, he replied that he did not want to divulge the facts “unless he was under a legal obligation to do so” (page 33 of SIT report).

Thus, bureaucrats such as Swarnakanta Varma, Ashok Narayan, and P K Mishra, who were tentative as to Sanjiv Bhatt’s presence when answering Malhotra’s questions, were more “categorical” later when SIT questioned them for the Final Report-- a simple fact which Vidya subramaniam chooses to be sarcastic about. Also it can be seen from the SIT closure report that it tried to help the witnesses refresh their memory by showing the photographs of Sanjiv Bhatt and also by probing them further on each of the issues.

Another interesting fact, which the Indian Express story with the sarcastic title “Loss of memory in 2010; recall in 2012” chooses to ignore, is that loss of memory does not seem to be the exclusive privilege of bureaucrats. Zakia Jafri stated that when they were shifted from Gulabarga Society the irate mob would have lynched all of them but for the timely action by the police when her statement was recorded u/s 161 on 6.3.2002. However, she conveniently forgot to disclose this fact when she deposed before Nanavati Commission on 29.8.2003 (page 16 of SIT report). Similarly, Sanjiv Bhatt, who could not recollect on March 22, 2011 who accompanied him to the Chief Minister’s meeting, suddenly remembered them two days later and went to SIT voluntarily to record a further statement. In fact, while Bhatt is cursed with long periods of loss of memory, he seems to be also endowed with a remarkable recalling ability-- that he sent two faxes on 28.2.2002 (or 2.3.2002 as hinted by SIT) which he could not recollect when Sreekumar asked for such evidence in July, 2002, or while talking to A K Malhotra in 2010, or while giving a statement to SIT in March, 2011, he did in December, 2011, just within 9 years of sending them! It is a different matter that these faxes did not seem to have been received by the addressees.

The next discrepancy pointed out by Indian Express relates to Modi’s statement in the Legislative Assembly. While the Preliminary Report quotes Modi as having said “…govt. was considering a proposal for an ex-gratia payment of Rs. 2 lakh…” the Final Report says Modi “announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs. 2 lakh…., ordered a high-level enquiry.” So the discrepancy seems to be “considering a proposal” as against an “announcement” in the final report; also the ordering of a high-level enquiry. One wonders whether these qualify as discrepancies at all! Even if they do, both the reports quote from Assembly records, and Indian Express could have done some research before writing the story.

By definition, a Final Report is much more profound than the Preliminary Report because some of the issues in the latter would have been taken up for further examination, additional witnesses would have been examined, and further documents would have been perused. One of the major events that took place between the two reports was the recording of Sanjiv Bhatt’s statement as suggested by Raju Ramachandran in his interim report. Sanjiv Bhatt’s numerous allegations had to be cross-verified with other witnesses and documentary evidence. Additional facts emerged out of this extensive probe, which were recorded in the Final Report. SIT’s closure report has not disputed the conclusions of the Preliminary Report on what Ramachandran calls “the most important allegation” viz. Modi’s alleged statement in the Law and Order meeting on February 27, 2002. In fact it has added additional evidence to support the conclusion.

Read further my article in The Hoot.

Defamation Express

The defamation notice sent by Indian Express and its journalists to Open Magazine and Vinod Mehta raises one important question: Why only against Vinod Mehta and Open?

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Can one's self defense not be perceived by another as provocation?

The SIT closure report on the Gulbarga Society massacre case records in the first page that a huge mob of 20,000 Hindus had assembled near Gulbarga Society on February 28, 2002 with the intention of damaging properties, shops and houses of Muslims as well as Mosque/ Madarsa and that late Ehsan Jafri fired from his private licensed weapon in self defense causing injuries to 15 persons.

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