A sinister mid-night knock. An arrest without rhyme or reason, not even a warrant. Display of brute force, despite age and stature. Denial of democratic rights and some human rights, too. Manhandling of relatives, followers and whoever else that came within arms length. En masse rounding up of party colleagues & co-borns.
All round condemnation cutting across party lines and State frontiers. Widespread rioting with normal life coming to a standstill. The landing of a central team in the State capital to assess the situation. And a government on the defensive, knowing not what to do, faced now with the prospect of Presidential intervention, either as a reprimand which may lead to the release of the arrested leader or in the form of Art 356, as demanded by NDA.
This is putting it all in a nutshell, the happenings of yesterday and the current scenario too, as one is bound to decipher from the cacophony of sound bytes and never ending visuals on the tube, not to speak of the screaming headlines and front page edits by ‘ neutral ‘ editorial eminences.
What a formidable mountain of facts, all in black and white and technicolour too and what an array of indignation, ranging from the voting public to the vote-gathering politicos, all forming one huge edifice that the government finds so hard-pressed to surmount.
The weight of ‘ visual evidence ‘ and pressure of public opinion ‘ as seen through the media prism ‘ appears so overwhelming that one would run the risk of getting whisked away to a mental hospital if one were to strike a different note. After all the President himself has taken the initiative and called for a report, and none less than the PM has expressed anguish followed by the entire who ‘ s who of the Indian political theatre. But then does all that mean we have an open and shut case for the summary indictment of the current TN regime?
That may be so if seeing is believing. But what about all that the TV -addicted nation has not seen or was not allowed to see? Have we been treated to the whole truth or the edited version that only presents the convenient truths? This distinction is vital and could make all the difference to the direction of public and political opinion, which as things stands now, appears to be against Jayalalithaa ‘ s action.
It is important because the entire edifice of Karunanidhi ‘ s incarceration rests on that single ‘ three minute footage ‘ of what transpired beamed endlessly by the Sun TV which, providentially for Karunanidhi, is owned by his nephew ‘ s son and was at hand, even more providentially at that. Most of the torch bearers of public opinion and the public themselves too have directed their condemnation more to the manner of arrest and not the arrest per se.
The enthusiasm and the eagerness with which people and politicos were sought out for their comments even before they could brush their teeth betrays a singular and sinister motive on the part of the TV channel to erase any iota of doubt or misgivings that could take root by the passage of time. Even a hot cuppa of coffee would have stirred their senses, adequate enough to smell a rat if not perceive a conspiracy.
For the Sun TV it was imperative that the emotions have to be inflammed before the deluge of reason extinguishes it. And the gullible public and the politicos rose to the bait like hungry fishes, their grey cells numbed by sleep and shock of the event.
Surely, those three minutes clippings were not the only footages of that fateful morning in Karunanidhi ‘ s bedroom. No sensible cameraman would keep switching his camera on and off for the sake of selectivity and would certainly have captured the entire scene as long as it lasted with the hope of editing it in future. The undisplayed portions would doubtlessly have more footages and sound recordings that can throw greater light on the fracas, which could be for or against the warring contentions.
Again, there is also the official version emanating from the police that all was well until the camera crew stepped in and then it was pandemonium, as if the dramatis personae were just waiting for the cue. Given the reputation of police in general, one cannot be blamed for being sceptical, but does that mean they are wholly wrong just as the Sun TV clippings are deemed the whole truth?
But than, even Karunanidhi has the reputation of making rhetorical mountains of hollow mole hills. Does not the entire fracas as seen on the TV also carry an unmistakeable tinge of melodrama, with the master script-writer who had donned the lead role too overdoing his bit? Maybe Karunanidhi ‘ s arrest was pre-ordained given Jayalalithaa ‘ s past utterances, but does not the camera-scoop show seem pre-arranged too and enacted to perfection and to the desired effect? Why should Karunanidhi cry murder, when his rational mind would have known well that that is not possible?
Do rational habits too die hard with the Thaanai thalaivan regaining all his old touch? One certainly cannot dismiss this lingering unease that more than the police it was the cameras that triggered a violent reaction in that room on that fateful Saturday morning. And also that there was more the cameras had captured than what was purveyed.
And there is another question too that casts a shadow on the motive of the Uncle-Nephew- Son trio. Why was the Sun TV alone awakened much before sunrise, when all the other TV channels were fast asleep? Surely for the DMK, its leaders’ arrest was a momentous event and with the ‘impending police high-handedness’ and the surefire drama, would it not have meant great publicity value if all TV journalists, not to speak of its own friendly journos were also alerted?
Surely, the agile nephew, if he had wanted credible coverage of the ‘imminent outrage’ on his uncle, could have well brought along other TV channels too. All it would have taken is a few phone calls and the eager ladies and gentlemen of the free media would have appeared on the scene in a jiffy. Surely, the journos in the Sun TV would have had the contact numbers of their professional bretheren, for it was just the other day that they had all rubbed shoulders to press for press freedom?
Such a gesture would also have been Sun TV ‘s way of doing a good turn to their media friends for their spontaneous solidarity? But then, all that would be expecting too much from what is essentially a media arm of a political master. Not that the otherwise explosive mediamen are going to complain, because their affinity to Gopalapuram is voluntary and most often, Pavlovian! The Marans, father and son, are no morons and have an agenda that goes beyond a media ‘ s urge for exclusivity.
Calling in the other media would have meant not only losing on that exclusivity, but also forfeiting the potential to use the footages, politically. And how well they are reaping the fruits of their monopoly? And so it is that, news is what the Sun TV shows and says. The public, the PM and the President too, all have no choice but to see and believe what the Sun TV bids them to.
The idea is not to hold a brief for the Jayalalithaa dispensation, though rational minds would only jump at that conclusion. The point is that the whole episode looks too lopsided to be wholly true and also there is the unseemly haste and eagerness to establish the Sun TV footages as the sole basis for public opinion as well as future action.
And combined with the absolute lack of interest in the official version, it does seem that even the minimum precaution of hearing the other viewpoint has been deliberately buried in the din and given a go by. It is really a pity that while a duly elected government with a huge mandate has to beg for attention, those who should really be on the defensive have turned aggressors with not a single mind in the land bothering to ponder over their culpability or their motive behing this orchestrated facade of a defence.
All because they control a media that has the eyeballs, notwithstanding the fact that its holding company has a bankrupt vote bank. Blessed are these members of the former first family(ies), who are in power even when they are not in power!
Truth has to lie somewhere between and that can be known only if the master cassette of the visuals are seen by independent and impartial men, maybe the President himself.But then demanding the original footages in full would be impinging on press freedom warranting another demo by our media mob. Even the President could be stopped on a Delhi street and an unannounced procession to Rashtrapathi Bhavan would be deemed to be in order if K.R.Narayanan were to seek the tapes.
Is not Sun TV more a media now that has to be protected at all costs and less a political tool that deserves to be treated with suspicion? So let ‘ s all kiss our pursuit of whole truths goodbye and instead switch to Thamizh maalai. Chiththi should be due any time now! So, Hurry up!