Friday, August 6, 2010

Media Frenzy

I have a question first up.Have more Kashmiris(Kashmiri Muslims-now the media uses Kashmiris for them so liberally that even people like are me are brainwashed into thinking that the only Kashmiris who exist are the Muslims,forgetting that I am not) been killed in the last one month or is it less than the average number of people killed in Kashmir.The separtists keep shouting that more than 1 lac(100000) people have lost their lives in Kashmir in the last 20 years.Now if I believe them as Barkhas and Sagarikas do then every year there are 5000 people killed in Kashmir which means approx 13 per day.Now since July11,the total number of people killed is only 50.Isnt it less than what the figure ordinarliy should be?Am I being a death monger or am I belittling the loss of human life?Quite on the contrary,I am only calling the separtist bluff and the media naivette or willfull suspension of dibelief whichever suits you better.
We are bombaried these days with columns in newspapers and TV programmes who lecture us on how the Indian State has failed in Kashmir.Well it has.And how should understand the anger of the stone pelters(read roiters).We are consistently told that these people need to be listened to and they be given emplyoment while the Islamic Don Syed Ali Shah says quite the contrary.He says we are not fighting for better civic facilities or jobs.He is unequivocal in saying that we want Independence and not good governance.Yet column after column,one programme after another makes this nation feel guilty of "genocide" of "innocent Kashmiris".Now can anyone please tell these self appointed moral guardians of our "collective conscience" to please listen to Geelani and hear the speeches of Hafiz Saeed that mosques in Kashmir are loudly playing these days.
Fathom this..a young man or a woman or even a kid who throws petrol bombs or stones,burns public property,tears the unfirom of a policeman or simply lynches him.Does it give any sane man but the sleeveless siren any idea of this "innocent victim".Yet for the Indian media(except for one odd man out) such a person symbolises the innocence and purity of thought (of the Islamic kind may I ask?).What is the state supposed to do with a person whose intenet is reflected in the way he appears on the street.Is it the time to hear his greviances-real,imagined or perceieved.What about the Policeman whose eye was taken out by such an innocent group of people?Doesnt he have a family or are his human rights less legitimate than those of the mobsters who are the Indian Media's idea of an "innocent Kashmiri".
True human life is pious and shouldnt be lost and we keep repeating here,that no cause is worth one human life but doesnt the onus lie on both sides.Isnt it for the parents of these "innoncent Kashmiris" to tell their young ones that there are other more civil modes of protest available than the Islamic mode of protest.What does the Indian Media want?Should the CRPF and the local Police Garland the people who hit them with an intention to lynch them,should they cook mincemeat for the "innocent Kashmiris" who attack them?
And now all this bullshit about the "children of conflict" which a senior journo keeps going back to.My daughter is 5 and goes to a local school in Delhi.A month back me and my wife were asked to come to the school to discuss about my child.I was taken aback by the teacher told me.She said, my daughter needs a psychatirst because she belives that her father's house was burnt and one day they will go back to some land which she hasnt even seen.The teacher told me that my daughter is imagining things and should be shown to a child psychologist.Is she a child of the conflict too or just because she is a Hindu none of it sticks to her or just because Barkha looks the other way.