In 1988, as a rookie reporter in The Statesman, an English newspaper published from Delhi, I was sent on an assignment to cover a gangrape of a girl in Naraina in west Delhi. It was a "crime" story, not part of my beat, but I was the only one around, besides the bosses thought I needed to be "blooded".
So I found myself a pen and notebook in hand, a diffident expression on my face, outside the house of the victim. Her mother wailed loudly as relatives tried to console her. Some of my more distinguished colleagues from other newspapers blithely asked questions that seemed rather intrusive to me. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, stood in one corner, spoke briefly and in a low voice to a cop, found the when's and where's of the case, and headed back to the office.
I was agitated about what I had just seen and a bit excited too about my first visit to a crime scene. Sitting in the car on my way back, I composed my thoughts, pondered about the opening line of my copy, and went to meet the News Editor.
He had a phone cradled in the crook of his neck, and was busily editing a copy in front of him and shouting instructions on the phone. He asked me about the story. I told him it was a gangrape, and he barked on the phone: "Front page". I added that the victim was a minor, and he said on the phone, "front page, three columns, box item", and then he smiled at me and said, "Good job, Rajan".
Then he asked me about the girl's family. I said her father was a rickshawpuller and she was a Dalit. The smile froze, he said on the phone, "Two paras, page 4, she is a nobody", and then waved me away dismissively. I felt like a nobody too.
Twenty years on, as I scan newspapers, looking for stories covering crimes against Dalits, I find little has changed in the way the Indian media reports issues related to the country's marginalised classes.
By the placement of the story, in page 8 or page 13, we denigerate its importance, and by limiting the number of words to tell the story, we ensure poor visibility. And then, we blame the coverage or the lack of it on what the reader wants to read, thereby absolving ourselves of any guilt.
In an increasingly insular world, the mainstream media does its bit and more, by distancing the reader from the sort of news that a certain set of journalists are loathe to cover. And then by dubbing the effect as the cause, some of us flaunt the Bollywood gossip section of the paper and claim this is what the reader wants. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I cannot recollect if any Indian newspaper has ever carried out a reader survey in which readers, in overwhelming numbers or even otherwise, have said they would like to read about men who are closet readers of Mills and Boons (that one did make Page 1 of a national daily recently), rather than read about the eight-year-old Dalit girl in Bihar whose five fingers were chopped off by the same sickle with which she had gone to get some spinach from her field and by mistake had strayed on to the field that belonged to a member of the upper caste.
Or, perhaps more importantly, why does it have to be an 'either', 'or' issue? Why can't the reader read both the stories?
By no means is the Indian media alone in this askewed coverage of the marginalised classes. If the Indian media is guilty of ignoring certain issues, the Western media is surely guilty of exaggerating the same issues.
The past seven years I have worked with the best media houses in the West. Their (very deliberate) dumbing down of India -- both the new India of the soaring sensex and software outsourcing fame, and the old India of starving masses and snake charmers -- leaves me equally incensed.
I was once asked in a party how I found stories that sell in the western media. I had had a drink too many and didn't quite realize I was in the company of my present employers and a few with whom I hoped to work in the future. Before I could stop myself, I found myself saying, "It is simple. You go to google, type "India" and then type "weird", and then laugh your way to the bank."
Oh I could go on and on. Just substitute "weird" with "starvation", "witchcraft", "ghosts", "sati", "Kashmir", "religious riots", "outsourcing" and "BPO", and you would have covered most issues that interest western journalists in India.
In a year when General Musharraf met Prime Minister Vajepayee in Agra and the world press had a field day speculating on the imminence of a nuclear conflict, the "Monkey Man" story (a 12 feet apparition that looked half human and half monkey, and merrily jumped over 20 feet high roofs, and was seen by residents of east Delhi, or so they claimed) caught the imagination of the western media like no other story from the region did.
I even worked with a documentary team, interviewing people about what they had seen. We spoke to experts on simian behaviour, took measurements of windows from which the monkey man came in. It was all very serious stuff, I must say. The most difficult part of the shoot was keeping a straight face when the correspondent, seriousness personified, asked a terrified victim if he had ever heard the monkey man speak. The victim took a moment to think, and then said, "Yes, in Hindi."
I am serious about the google bit, about finding stories. Type "Muslim", "India" and "short skirts". You are likely to find the Muslim tennis sensation Sania Mirza, and boy, do you have a story or what! Fatwa (ooohhh mmmm, that sexy sexy word, the fatwa) issued against Sania, Sania defies the clerics... the headlines just keep coming.
Poor Dalits though neither jump over 20 foot roofs nor wear short skirts and hit mean forehands. Not surprisingly editors struggle to allocate print space to such non-newsmakers.
Actually that's not entirely true. Everytime they get raped, erm... well... ok... everytime they get gangraped, or paraded naked in front of a whole village, or a youth gets stoned to death because he stole bananas, the conscience-keepers ensure the stories find some print space.
It would, of course, be absurd to think that stories of violence against Dalits would get more print space and better display than, say, the shocking, shocking incident of Richard Gere smooching the Bollywood starlet Shilpa Shetty.
Last year while working on a Channel Four documentary on the changing face of Dalits in India, I met Dalits from all corners of life, talking to them on phone, reading about them, researching stories.
I heard the debate over Mayawati's election win in Uttar Pradesh. Some described it as an act of social engineering that got the socially marginalised Dalits shaking hands with the politically marginalised Brahmins to forge a new vote bank. Others simply described it as a one-off phenomennon which was a function of the political exigiency of that time.
I have had a former CPI(ML) cadre and currently a Dalit activist, Arun Khote, explain to me how Dalits end up as victims of even those crimes that are not necessarily targetted against them. According to Khote, in two completely diverse issues, first the serial killings in Nithari, near NOIDA, and then the uproar over land acquistion in Singur in the Left-ruled West Bengal, most victims were the Dalits. Of the 22 people killed in Singur, 17 are Dalits and in Nithari over 80 per cent of the girls killed were Dalits. Khote explains: "A serial killer selects his victims with care. In this case he selected victims from the most sociallly disenfranchised class, those whose families are least likely to be in a position to fight for justice."
As part of the documentary, I met the Dalit millionaire, Hari Pippal who proudly showed me around his super-speciality hospital in Agra.
Later on, while working on another story, I met three sisters (the youngest of them, Rani, just eight years old) who every day carry human excreta on their heads.
Rani's eldest sister told me Rani can't sleep at night without a cloth tied around her nose. "Even in her sleep, she can smell the shit", she explained.
I think I am getting to be like that. Everytime I open a newspaper to read, or switch on the telly and watch a news channel, everytime I see reams of newsprint spent on the India Fashion Week, everytime I see the media giving more space to Harry Potter than farmer suicides in Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh, I get a stinking feeling too.
One of these days I might tie a cloth, too, over my nose when I go to work.
So I found myself a pen and notebook in hand, a diffident expression on my face, outside the house of the victim. Her mother wailed loudly as relatives tried to console her. Some of my more distinguished colleagues from other newspapers blithely asked questions that seemed rather intrusive to me. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, stood in one corner, spoke briefly and in a low voice to a cop, found the when's and where's of the case, and headed back to the office.
I was agitated about what I had just seen and a bit excited too about my first visit to a crime scene. Sitting in the car on my way back, I composed my thoughts, pondered about the opening line of my copy, and went to meet the News Editor.
He had a phone cradled in the crook of his neck, and was busily editing a copy in front of him and shouting instructions on the phone. He asked me about the story. I told him it was a gangrape, and he barked on the phone: "Front page". I added that the victim was a minor, and he said on the phone, "front page, three columns, box item", and then he smiled at me and said, "Good job, Rajan".
Then he asked me about the girl's family. I said her father was a rickshawpuller and she was a Dalit. The smile froze, he said on the phone, "Two paras, page 4, she is a nobody", and then waved me away dismissively. I felt like a nobody too.
Twenty years on, as I scan newspapers, looking for stories covering crimes against Dalits, I find little has changed in the way the Indian media reports issues related to the country's marginalised classes.
By the placement of the story, in page 8 or page 13, we denigerate its importance, and by limiting the number of words to tell the story, we ensure poor visibility. And then, we blame the coverage or the lack of it on what the reader wants to read, thereby absolving ourselves of any guilt.
In an increasingly insular world, the mainstream media does its bit and more, by distancing the reader from the sort of news that a certain set of journalists are loathe to cover. And then by dubbing the effect as the cause, some of us flaunt the Bollywood gossip section of the paper and claim this is what the reader wants. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I cannot recollect if any Indian newspaper has ever carried out a reader survey in which readers, in overwhelming numbers or even otherwise, have said they would like to read about men who are closet readers of Mills and Boons (that one did make Page 1 of a national daily recently), rather than read about the eight-year-old Dalit girl in Bihar whose five fingers were chopped off by the same sickle with which she had gone to get some spinach from her field and by mistake had strayed on to the field that belonged to a member of the upper caste.
Or, perhaps more importantly, why does it have to be an 'either', 'or' issue? Why can't the reader read both the stories?
By no means is the Indian media alone in this askewed coverage of the marginalised classes. If the Indian media is guilty of ignoring certain issues, the Western media is surely guilty of exaggerating the same issues.
The past seven years I have worked with the best media houses in the West. Their (very deliberate) dumbing down of India -- both the new India of the soaring sensex and software outsourcing fame, and the old India of starving masses and snake charmers -- leaves me equally incensed.
I was once asked in a party how I found stories that sell in the western media. I had had a drink too many and didn't quite realize I was in the company of my present employers and a few with whom I hoped to work in the future. Before I could stop myself, I found myself saying, "It is simple. You go to google, type "India" and then type "weird", and then laugh your way to the bank."
Oh I could go on and on. Just substitute "weird" with "starvation", "witchcraft", "ghosts", "sati", "Kashmir", "religious riots", "outsourcing" and "BPO", and you would have covered most issues that interest western journalists in India.
In a year when General Musharraf met Prime Minister Vajepayee in Agra and the world press had a field day speculating on the imminence of a nuclear conflict, the "Monkey Man" story (a 12 feet apparition that looked half human and half monkey, and merrily jumped over 20 feet high roofs, and was seen by residents of east Delhi, or so they claimed) caught the imagination of the western media like no other story from the region did.
I even worked with a documentary team, interviewing people about what they had seen. We spoke to experts on simian behaviour, took measurements of windows from which the monkey man came in. It was all very serious stuff, I must say. The most difficult part of the shoot was keeping a straight face when the correspondent, seriousness personified, asked a terrified victim if he had ever heard the monkey man speak. The victim took a moment to think, and then said, "Yes, in Hindi."
I am serious about the google bit, about finding stories. Type "Muslim", "India" and "short skirts". You are likely to find the Muslim tennis sensation Sania Mirza, and boy, do you have a story or what! Fatwa (ooohhh mmmm, that sexy sexy word, the fatwa) issued against Sania, Sania defies the clerics... the headlines just keep coming.
Poor Dalits though neither jump over 20 foot roofs nor wear short skirts and hit mean forehands. Not surprisingly editors struggle to allocate print space to such non-newsmakers.
Actually that's not entirely true. Everytime they get raped, erm... well... ok... everytime they get gangraped, or paraded naked in front of a whole village, or a youth gets stoned to death because he stole bananas, the conscience-keepers ensure the stories find some print space.
It would, of course, be absurd to think that stories of violence against Dalits would get more print space and better display than, say, the shocking, shocking incident of Richard Gere smooching the Bollywood starlet Shilpa Shetty.
Last year while working on a Channel Four documentary on the changing face of Dalits in India, I met Dalits from all corners of life, talking to them on phone, reading about them, researching stories.
I heard the debate over Mayawati's election win in Uttar Pradesh. Some described it as an act of social engineering that got the socially marginalised Dalits shaking hands with the politically marginalised Brahmins to forge a new vote bank. Others simply described it as a one-off phenomennon which was a function of the political exigiency of that time.
I have had a former CPI(ML) cadre and currently a Dalit activist, Arun Khote, explain to me how Dalits end up as victims of even those crimes that are not necessarily targetted against them. According to Khote, in two completely diverse issues, first the serial killings in Nithari, near NOIDA, and then the uproar over land acquistion in Singur in the Left-ruled West Bengal, most victims were the Dalits. Of the 22 people killed in Singur, 17 are Dalits and in Nithari over 80 per cent of the girls killed were Dalits. Khote explains: "A serial killer selects his victims with care. In this case he selected victims from the most sociallly disenfranchised class, those whose families are least likely to be in a position to fight for justice."
As part of the documentary, I met the Dalit millionaire, Hari Pippal who proudly showed me around his super-speciality hospital in Agra.
Later on, while working on another story, I met three sisters (the youngest of them, Rani, just eight years old) who every day carry human excreta on their heads.
Rani's eldest sister told me Rani can't sleep at night without a cloth tied around her nose. "Even in her sleep, she can smell the shit", she explained.
I think I am getting to be like that. Everytime I open a newspaper to read, or switch on the telly and watch a news channel, everytime I see reams of newsprint spent on the India Fashion Week, everytime I see the media giving more space to Harry Potter than farmer suicides in Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh, I get a stinking feeling too.
One of these days I might tie a cloth, too, over my nose when I go to work.
2 comments:
Dalits have themselves to blame for what you call "less than ordinary" lives. Dalits are mostly lazy and lot of them are unhygeinic. I know lot of Dalits, they will never improve, they will never change, not because of lack of opportunities.
"Dalits have themselves to blame for what you call "less than ordinary" lives. Dalits are mostly lazy and lot of them are unhygeinic. I know lot of Dalits, they will never improve, they will never change, not because of lack of opportunities."
Aboe is not only comment from some one but representation of caste mind set of indian society who belives On birth based superiority basis on Hinduism. This society do not belives on equality.
Unfortunately the ignorant, biased and caste mind set of Indian media having the same attitude towards 167 million people of India.
It is also important that Dalits has proved them selves but it is still waiting for the visibility for their success story which has been prevented for long time.
For information Dalits who are 1/3 population of the total unorganized sector workers are contributing more then 20% in the GDP of the country.
Its only Dalits and other marginalized Doctors who have been benefitted due to reservation are still serving to the rural India. Most of the candidates from reserve category are serving to the country on various level. But in other hand most of the doctors, engineers and professionals who have secure digrees on the cost of the common people are serving to the corporate or to earn more money for levish life they go to abroad.
One can cross check it.
Dalits are the victims and in the receiving end. It is responsibility of so-called civil society to stand against the practice of untouchability.
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