10-28-2007, 08:48 PM
Gujarat has outgrown riot
Swapan Dasgupta
A decade ago, during President Clinton's embarrassment over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the White House spin doctors excelled themselves. At a time when the world was eagerly awaiting the publication of the Starr inquiry report, the President's image handlers put out the word that this was a hurdle he would find extremely hard to negotiate. Soon the beltway was agog with speculation of an extremely damaging report and Clinton's imminent resignation.
The Starr report, when it was released, was certainly an indictment of Clinton's waywardness. However, it was nowhere as damaging as the political grapevine anticipated. In the backdrop of soaring expectations, the Starr report came to be viewed as a virtual exoneration of the President and provided him a much-needed political respite. Clinton's handlers successfully created a mismatch between promise and delivery and neutralised the potentially damaging effects of the Starr inquiry.
The editors of Tehelka certainly succeeded in creating a buzz over a sting operation they promised would be "the most important story of our time" -- a claim that invoked visions of Bob Woodward emulating what the Google advertisement suggested the Indiana Jones' of the world do: Retire. It was also known that the story would centre on Gujarat and the one man who has defied the stormtroopers of secular fundamentalism. With Assembly elections a few weeks away, Tehelka's hype suggested that this was the end of the road for Narendra Modi.
There was never any ambiguity over the central aim of the sting: To secure the downfall of Modi. The covert filming of half-crazed killers and braggarts had one objective: To somehow implicate Modi. The reporter Ashis Khetan quite openly admits that he was initially despatched to Gujarat to do "a sting operation on Chief Minister Narendra Modi's involvement in a spate of fake encounter killings." When that pre-judged investigation failed, Tehelka fell back on the riots of 2002. It successfully exposed the warped minds of those who participated in the killings. However, there is no question that the sting was driven by the sole aim of securing the downfall of Modi by non-electoral means. Journalism was the means to a political objective.
Journalists are not historians; they live for the moment. The bloodshed that began with the jihadi arson in Godhra has been in the public domain for five years. The butchery at Naroda Patiya and the Gulbarga Housing Society in Ahmedabad has been dissected and some of the perpetrators identified and charged in the courts. Activists have made films on the 2002 riots and been showered with awards by a grateful Congress establishment. Novels centred on the Gujarat riots have routinely filled the remaindered sections of warehouses and "academic" studies have argued that "Hindu militancy" poses a greater threat than Al Qaeda.
The only problem with this inspired activism was that it left Modi politically unscathed. In the five years since the riots, Modi has established a few things. First, he has conclusively demonstrated that he has the popular mandate. Second, that despite loony voices on both sides of the sectarian divide, he is not going to be bogged down by identity politics. There have been no riots in the past five years and hopefully this track record will persist. The thrust of his administration has been rapid economic growth, administrative efficiency and modernisation. In five years, Modi has not only aroused regional pride, he has made Gujarat the best governed State.
The riots -- horrible as they were - are fast becoming history. The people of Gujarat, both Hindus and Muslims, have moved on. No one, and certainly not the Congress, wanted the forthcoming elections to be dominated by sectarian tensions. There are other pressing concerns. By resurrecting the riots, without at the same time being able to nail Modi personally, the sting has raised the communal temperature needlessly and fuelled minority victimhood.
This is not to suggest that Tehelka shouldn't have exposed the monsters; it should just have avoided the desperate search for a high political dividend.
Swapan Dasgupta
A decade ago, during President Clinton's embarrassment over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the White House spin doctors excelled themselves. At a time when the world was eagerly awaiting the publication of the Starr inquiry report, the President's image handlers put out the word that this was a hurdle he would find extremely hard to negotiate. Soon the beltway was agog with speculation of an extremely damaging report and Clinton's imminent resignation.
The Starr report, when it was released, was certainly an indictment of Clinton's waywardness. However, it was nowhere as damaging as the political grapevine anticipated. In the backdrop of soaring expectations, the Starr report came to be viewed as a virtual exoneration of the President and provided him a much-needed political respite. Clinton's handlers successfully created a mismatch between promise and delivery and neutralised the potentially damaging effects of the Starr inquiry.
The editors of Tehelka certainly succeeded in creating a buzz over a sting operation they promised would be "the most important story of our time" -- a claim that invoked visions of Bob Woodward emulating what the Google advertisement suggested the Indiana Jones' of the world do: Retire. It was also known that the story would centre on Gujarat and the one man who has defied the stormtroopers of secular fundamentalism. With Assembly elections a few weeks away, Tehelka's hype suggested that this was the end of the road for Narendra Modi.
There was never any ambiguity over the central aim of the sting: To secure the downfall of Modi. The covert filming of half-crazed killers and braggarts had one objective: To somehow implicate Modi. The reporter Ashis Khetan quite openly admits that he was initially despatched to Gujarat to do "a sting operation on Chief Minister Narendra Modi's involvement in a spate of fake encounter killings." When that pre-judged investigation failed, Tehelka fell back on the riots of 2002. It successfully exposed the warped minds of those who participated in the killings. However, there is no question that the sting was driven by the sole aim of securing the downfall of Modi by non-electoral means. Journalism was the means to a political objective.
Journalists are not historians; they live for the moment. The bloodshed that began with the jihadi arson in Godhra has been in the public domain for five years. The butchery at Naroda Patiya and the Gulbarga Housing Society in Ahmedabad has been dissected and some of the perpetrators identified and charged in the courts. Activists have made films on the 2002 riots and been showered with awards by a grateful Congress establishment. Novels centred on the Gujarat riots have routinely filled the remaindered sections of warehouses and "academic" studies have argued that "Hindu militancy" poses a greater threat than Al Qaeda.
The only problem with this inspired activism was that it left Modi politically unscathed. In the five years since the riots, Modi has established a few things. First, he has conclusively demonstrated that he has the popular mandate. Second, that despite loony voices on both sides of the sectarian divide, he is not going to be bogged down by identity politics. There have been no riots in the past five years and hopefully this track record will persist. The thrust of his administration has been rapid economic growth, administrative efficiency and modernisation. In five years, Modi has not only aroused regional pride, he has made Gujarat the best governed State.
The riots -- horrible as they were - are fast becoming history. The people of Gujarat, both Hindus and Muslims, have moved on. No one, and certainly not the Congress, wanted the forthcoming elections to be dominated by sectarian tensions. There are other pressing concerns. By resurrecting the riots, without at the same time being able to nail Modi personally, the sting has raised the communal temperature needlessly and fuelled minority victimhood.
This is not to suggest that Tehelka shouldn't have exposed the monsters; it should just have avoided the desperate search for a high political dividend.