More interesting than the alternative cooing and aggressive roars of the PM and the Home Minister is the media attitude to human rights. Generally, all post-Nehru PMs have been critical, even scornful, of human rights groups. In fact, through an Orwellian device, the latter have been obliterated from both the electronic media and the mainline print media.

No doubt, the electronic media cannot be expected to squeal a note of protest about flagrant violations of human rights. I have yet to hear or watch on DD or AIR a single report of human rights violations in Kashmir, Punjab, the Northeast or against custodial deaths, The mainline print media occasionally carry these reports but fail to follow them up. The main burden of the expose work is carried by the “little” magazine or by conscientious editors of papers with limited circulation.

However, the impact on the public mind is through the mainline papers. Here, by a skilful combination of special pleading, “balanced” comment and downright lies, a xenophobic attitude is created in the urban middle class, This is the key to the understanding of the current Government’s war against Amnesty International, Asia Watch etc. It cannot be explained away in simple “domination” terms. In fact, it is a class phenomenon where the mind of the elite bureaucracy meets the mind of the press elite. Both work out subtle theses to take the public for a ride.

The basic pattern is to present Government handouts as legitimate and credible news or comment. The Times of India (October 7) carries a Home Ministry report with a banner headline: “India refutes Asia Watch report.’ This is worthy of semiotic deconstruction to expose the basic altitudes not only of the ruling classes but its media collaborators. ‘The opening paragraph refers to the Asia Watch report about police killings in Andhra Pradesh as “highly questionable and replete with dangerous prejudgments about a country and a system dealing with 800 million people.” Notice the style. The Asia Watch report obviously dealt with specific cases, The Home Ministry rejoinder takes flight to Olympian heights of the destinies of 800 million people, not of the insignificant few referred to, The operative word is “dealing.” These 800 million are no longer individuals; they are cases to be dealt with. Here’s the gulf-a tragic one between the civil righters and the Government.

True to its high-flying start, the rejoinder goes on to the recent chief ministers’ conference and the proposed setting up of a human rights commission. The rejoinder itself indicates the commission is being set up under pressure the pressure to show to the world that human rights “cannot be seen as a preserve of practitioners of terrorism.” So, if such pressure had not been there, we would not have had this nuisance of a commission. The ambience of bad grace under pressure is very much there.

The rejoinder then goes on to the history of the Naxalite movement, its atrocities, and the defeat sustained by the Naxalites in the elections. The peroration is worthy of quoting “The scathing indictment would seem to suggest that the state is the enemy of the people, never mind that India has survived as a society for thousands of years and as a vibrant democracy” etc.,

Even for a Government department, this turgidity and turbidity takes some beating. Nowhere is there a discussion of a single instance of violation of human rights or custodial death is it the Ministry’s case that no such violations or deaths have taken place? I don’t think even the hardened and insensitive Ministry will say that. The pity is that such an unworthy document is positioned in a space of high media visibility. Let me go to another similar document this one in the Economic Times (September 28). This dealt with the Amnesty report on India, ‘Torture, rape and death in custody,” released in March last. The ET report too dealt with a Government rejoinder and was headlined “All-out bid to counter Amnesty charges.” It’s interesting to compare this with the recent TOI report. Both are exercises in obfuscation, But the ET report gives specific instances and it’s revealing to deal with them. Out of 415 cases of human rights violations, two have been replied to. When the details of the replies in these two cases are examined, they are found to fully vindicate Amnesty’s allegations.

The patent intellectual dishonesty of the Home Ministry in dealing with Amnesty’s charges is exposed in one specific case, The Home Ministry, replying to the case of a DMK youth wing leader reported to have died in custody in Madras, says: “The parents of the youth were against lodging a complaint and opposed to a post immune.” This is cited as an example of accurate research by Amnesty.

It’s amazing that the correspondent who reported this “reply” docs hot check its accuracy. If he had turned to the original Amnesty report of March 92 he would have found this case on page 170 with a note “Affidavit filed at Madras High Court on February 7,1991, by local advocate containing details of death in custody.

Now, an affidavit has high value unless disproved by evidence or examination. In the face of an affidavit the police had no business to (a) close the complaint and (b) return the body without a postmortem. The whole affair has a Most sinister ring. And yet the Home Ministry (and the paper) expects the gullible reader to swallow this glaring untruth. The fact is that the media is no longer interested in “truth,” if the charge emanates from abroad. This comes out even in an article on Human rights concerns’ by an eminent columnist, Harish Khare (TOI, September 22) “It must also be presumed that the proposed human rights commission is not being conceived as a barking dog, expected to bark louder whenever Amnesty International or Asia Watch or our own PUCL snarls at the Indian authorities. It is therefore necessary that the human rights groups in India must define their agenda in indigenous terms independent of the West’s selective concerns with human rights.”

 The whiff of xenophobia is inescapable. If you follow up “foreign” human rights organizations’ charges you are implicitly a traitor.” There’s a double standard for human rights-one for the West, one for us. Such xenophobic thinking would be farcical if it were not so tragic. For it is not restricted to the reporters of TOI, ET, Mr. Khare and their ilk. These people reflect a deep-seated hatred of “foreigners” common among us and which serves as an alibi to cover up Our Savage injustices.

There are two escape routes out of this suffocating self glorificatory moralistic culture. First, the human rights commission being setup under such dubious auspices, These things have a self-propelling logic. As a wit said, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. The hypocrisy here might boomerang-puppets have a habit of turning against puppeteers. Second, to meet the xenophobic media storm, Amnesty, Asia Watch etc. must make their publications freely available in India so that media lies can be nailed immediately. I managed to get hold of Amnesty’s two reports on Punjab with great difficulty. The man who handed them over in a pokey shop on one of Bombay’s thorough fares looked furtively before doing so. As if he was selling Satanic Verses or a set of dirty pictures.

By: Iqbal Masud

However, the impact on the public mind is through the mainline papers. Here, by a skill full combination of special pleading, “balanced” comment and downright lies, a xenophobic attitude is created in the urban middle class, This is the key to the understanding of the current Government’s war against Amnesty International, Asia Watch etc. It cannot be explained away in simple “domination” terms. In fact, it is a class phenomenon where the mind of the elite bureaucracy meets the mind of the press elite. Both work out subtle theses to take the public for a ride.

Article extracted from this publication >> October 23, 1992