The Mega Media Blackmail

“I sleep, with the doors tightly shut,

I sleep, with the intruder alarm aptly in place.

I sleep, with a gun under my pillow,

I sleep, in my panic room”

The “so-insinuated” callous decision of the Supreme Court to execute combined with the “showcased” lack of sympathy by the President to commute or pardon has been widely reported by the media, so Yakub Memon has definitely earned some commiserations among the de facto rulers of the democracy, the people. How can a terrorist who has waged a war with the country, engaged innocent civilians into warfare, bred fear into the hearts of children earn such sympathy amongst so many of us? How are we able to judge the contention that he is innocent? Is he our true friend, were we involved in the investigation and interrogation when it was in progress, or were we the court judge who had to make the hard decision to grant the verdict to execute him provided all the necessary evidence? Then how come we know that he is not so evil and is being wrongly sentenced? On what basis is our opinion grounded so firmly? How come I know I am going to protest in support of a man who has hardly been closer than a thousand kilometer of radius of my existence? Our sentiments have been swayed to take a stand by the watchdogs of democracy, the media, which has the kept the most powerful and the fearless of men in check and has kept its liability firmly to the common man.

Now, here is a straight forward question, how has media successfully convinced us that the convicted terrorist deserves some mercy at least a commutation? A father breaking down on seeing his daughter, a pregnant wife left alone in an unfamiliar land, an innocent man being betrayed by his own treacherous brother to take the blame for mistakes that were never his own, sounds familiar? These were the tactics that have been widely used to create a picture of a man, who has been innocently convicted for “masterminding” an act of terrorism that has left many families destroyed. Did he leave his pregnant wife behind to fight against the atrocious actions of a colonial power like our freedom fighters or to protect a motherland from external aggression like our brave soldiers? But he left her behind to create more such pregnant women waiting for their husbands to return home, to create more daughters who may breakdown when their fathers name might be mentioned. The innocent father, husband, brother image so actively publicized by the media has nothing but emotionally blackmailed us to ignore the actions of a man who has been responsible for conspiring and executing the killings such fathers, husbands and brothers.

My intent here is not to express my opinions on the rights and wrongs of the verdict upheld or to gather support for or against Memon. I am simply trying to analyze the role the media is playing in this particular scenario. Let me draw a parallel; remember the hijack of the Indian Airlines flight in 1999? The demand was to release the prisoners from Indian jails in return for the hostages. At the time of negotiations, the media took a stand, it made the country sympathize with the passengers on board, it made us empathize with the families of the hostages by telecasting the terrors of these families in losing their loved ones and through these actions media justified its stand to make the government listen to voices of the people to release the prisoners in return for securing the hostages on board. Which the government did, not doing so would have been anti-national at least after all the polarization the media had done. It was appreciable of the media to take a stand and do what they did, but the story doesn’t end here, once the terrorists were released and the hostages secured, the media had taken a different stand altogether, it lashed out at the government for making compromises and bending to the whims of the terrorists, it now started telecasting the atrocities of the men who were released and spoke in volumes about the weakness of the government to stand its ground, releasing terrorists who were captured with great difficulty in return for a few Indian lives was suddenly made to seem like a very bad idea!

Today, the media seems to be preoccupied with granting some relief to an innocent Memon, now an interesting question is, if Memons life is spared from the death sentence, will the media hold on to its stand or would it make a 180 degree flip like the earlier case and start to showcase victims of the 1993 bombings and make the decision to spare Memons life a mistake? If so, then for justice it is but a lose-lose situation. Media has manipulated us to support relief for Memon but tomorrow, it will make us feel otherwise if his life is spared, do we have any opinion of our own after our thoughts have been so heavily polarized by this Mega Media Blackmail?

Prelude to War

“Whom the Gods love die Young”

Nothing is merrier than being young with the world on your shoulder; it displays a possibility so seductive, you start to feel that there must be something more important that you could be doing than just studying for an exam. Everyone has a reason to do something; the reason may range from a simple satisfaction in doing the work, to maybe a responsibility one could not simply avert, or from recent revelations probably an attempt to defend ones ideology. With so much to my credentials, it would not be a surprise if many attempt to ponder upon my own motivations. What made me work for the Students’ council for year or with the Gymkhana for more than two years? Why was I with Voices? What made me actively help in managing the Scholarship hike campaign when the nationwide protests were declared? What makes me lead when I could be happy following?

I have always walked that line very carefully, keeping secrets rather than telling lies, and here there is no secret to divulge. I have no ideology to defend; I am a person with a “mindset” rather than a “set mind”, this makes me adhere to sense and logic and accommodate conflicting notions without any pride and prejudice.   The unity in our campus that breaks the diversity in age, language and culture, or the position you hold here, when it comes to common problem, like mess subsidy or scholarship hike, when we all marched together, when we had a common issue to fight for, has always fascinated me. Anything done for the welfare of a larger community than oneself reduces the burden of one’s own consciousness and gives one the inner peace and outer strength to be of more service to the institute and then to the nation as a whole. While the unity in diversity fascinates me, I have grown to respect the diversity as well. To preserve the space for individual choices must not come at the cost that compromises on the unity; this might sometimes require us to keep some forces at check. The collective mind of such forces has no ultimate desire but a constant temptation for dividing the society, an obsession against the prevalence of unity.

Poisoning a popular mind, only a fool blames the victim. I am not someone’s puppet; I am not someone’s messiah, I will lead when I am sure of myself and seek guidance whenever necessary, I have always done what satisfies me and would continue to do so, no one dictates me as much as I dictate my own happiness and personal satisfaction.  I prefer to stand alone to preserve the unity rather than to stand together and break it.

It is not that I am too young to pick a side, but it is just that I am too wise not to pick one.

The King’s Court

“Though the rabbit came through the ordeal of the experiment, this must not be taken as an evidence of its harmlessness”

Justice nowadays can be as callous as the men who plot to topple the balance in hands of the goddess of eternal justice. In light of the recent verdict against the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, without encroaching on the rights or wrongs of the judgment, the highlighted fact that this case has been in the dockets for more than one and half decade swaying and meandering between “appeals” and “stays” makes one introspect the judicial effectiveness of the country. Being the largest democracy in the world, have we over-embraced the conception of democracy that the laws that stand to safe guard the citizens who abide by it now equally defends those who break it? Or is it made to look that way by the lawyers hired by these felonious men to dazzle and mislead the jury with legal jargon that is meticulously stitched to expose the case in the grey areas of the law?

 The notion of a court is to serve justice and punish the guilty. Over time, the two entwined concepts have drifted further apart and now have established their own domain in the system. The contentious impression that justice can be served only if there is equality has ensured equal representation on behalf of both the prosecution as well as the defense. A common man is usually unconcerned with the abstruse process involved between the filing of a case and the final verdict, and hence feels cheated when the system itself conspires the escape of an accused, on whom the rabble set little value upon for survival after an ordeal in court. Little would they want to know about the offender who has been hiding behind the façade of a counsel of lawyers, who flaunt their law school degrees, that boasts of their expertise to manipulate the law and also the judgment in favor of their client for a sleazy cut without much regard for truth and justice.    

In retrospect, the famous tales of Akbar and Birbal speak of speedy and unbiased judgments of a Kings court, where the plaintiff and the defendant are brought face to face under the direct examination of the king himself, where they are aided not by a lawyer with successful courtroom victories under his belt, but by one’s own truth, conviction and experience. The system just as simple and effective as it is, it also leaves very little chances of any external persuasions. A court room that in lucid terms defines the rights and wrongs and that pronounces a verdict fearless of any peripheral force. Our quest for structuring and making things as “democratic” as possible has now lead us to construct a system, whose turtle-paced judgments may be calculated for diligence, but seldom seems to achieve the justice as observed in a King’s Court over centuries ago.  

When is it, that people will realize that freedom is more than just the right to cast a vote in an occasional election but the fundamental right of every single human to live their own life? And when will they realize that one cannot live their own life as long as political and economic influences dominate every dimension of life? And the judicial system that’s very own existence perpetrates to justice feigns to be as blind as the goddess of eternal justice, who is but a silent observer in every courtroom of the country, blind and deaf.