Time To Arrest TagoreFor Hurting British Sainiks’ Sentiment
By Siddharthya Swapan Roy
20 November, 2012
Countercurrents.org
For nearly two days 24 hour TV channels in India celebrated Bal Thackery’s death ad nauseam From what I know the shouting of anchors, shiny garish colours of sets and graphics and a screen full of creepy crawlies put together with ads running on loops, TV news nowadays can make the nausea in the ad nauseam far literal than literary.
But since the shouting is yet to make everyone madly polarised there were a lot of voices that criticised Bal Thakeray and his politics in no uncertain terms. Pressed between the outright indefensible nature of Thackeray’s crimes against humanity and democracy and the need for TRPs (combined with a worry about the glass that covers their studios and office buildings), TV anchors came up with a superb golden mean. They said they are only being polite about a man who has died. Mentioning it was part of “Indian tradition” to be polite to dead people they not only added extra insurance to their abundant glass but also gave some room for the TV savvy Sainiks who dress suave and make a case for brutes.
Had it not been for the internet domain which, due to the absence of a pressing needed to be profit making and regulated, is a lot more balanced in its conclusions, a good number of news watchers in India would have torn some more Indian hair in typically Indian neo-liberal exasperation.
But seated amid this sick yet polite joke, I came upon a joke of my own.
Let us for a minute agree that no matter what a fellow did when alive we must forgive and forget once he is dead and start saying nice things about him. Just for argument sake I mean.
So by this logic I guess its time to praise Gen Michael O’Dwyer and forget the Jalianwallahbaug massacre!
In fact using some permutation combination of the new IT law, pliant policemen, always-absent-in-the-face-of-fascist-onslaught-yet-secular-Congress party and its never-to-be-seen-but-in-scams Minsters along with a generous amount of claims of hurt sentiments, we can even get Gurudev Tagore arrested for hurting British sainiks’ sentiments! He did give up his knighthood in protest of actions by a powerful man with loads of hired guns didn’t he?
Siddharthya Swapan Roy is an activist and freelance writer . He is reachable at [email protected]
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