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COVERT (16-30th November 2008)
The Insecurity of Petty Ideas
By M.J. Akbar
The times have changed. Patriotism used to be the last refuge of
the scoundrel. The scoundrel is now the last refuge of patriotism.
This is not because the cad and the poseur have filled up, but
because we are busy chopping democracy up into little pocket-sized
units of petty patriotism.
- Read more
COVERT (1-15 November 2008)
The Quiet Shift to New Horizons
By M.J. Akbar
The sound of a stereotype crumbling travels deep into the individual
psyche and the collective consciousness. The two largest democracies,
India and America, comparable in size, demographics and ethnic
tensions, have both heard such a rumble in the last few days. The
trigger in both cases might have been the relentless pressure that
elections bear upon social relationships, the amoral quest for power
that brings subterranean flows to a boil.
-
- Read more
COVERT (16-31st Oct. 2008)
Who
wants to be the pinprick inside a bubble?
By M.J. Akbar
It often needs a startling image to convey the dimensions of a crisis.
Bloggers have time to discover such startling analogies. Someone on
the net has had the time and patience to conjure up this image about
$700 billion, the most dramatic figure among the many mountains of
cash that Governments have doled out to capitalism's poster boys in
order to save capitalism.
- Read more
COVERT (1-15 Oct. 2008)
Fuse of self-destructive terrorism gets shorter
Governance is the easy
part of being in power. You govern through systems. Systems are
protected by institutions. Institutions grind their way forward on
hierarchy, oiled by memory or precedence. When there is need for
innovation, change is sifted through a time-consuming committee. The
end product may not be brilliant, but it comes with minimal-risk
insurance: it will not do damage, and might even do some good.
- Add your Comments
COVERT (15-30 Sept. 2008)
Fluff-and-bluff can't change harsh truths
By M.J. Akbar
We may have all missed the most interesting point in the kerfuffle
over the Indo-US nuclear deal. Dr Manmohan Singh and Mrs Sonia Gandhi
have emerged as the greatest advertising team since World War II. They
have sold a personal obsession as a nation's lifeline. The strategy is
not dissimilar to that employed by Germany and Italy in the war:
repeat a lie often enough and it will be perceived as the truth.
High-decibel propaganda has this hypnotic effect on the masses. To use
a term from theatre, there is a wilful suspension of disbelief.
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COVERT (1-15 Sept. 2008)
Three Questions
for the Wandering Indian
By M.J. Akbar
To jaded Delhi eyes, the sky is much more vast in Canada. That could
only be an illusion, right? Wrong. The horizon is not limited by
claustrophobic cement, concrete, stone; the vision is not trapped by
the tensions of road-crawl, or blocked by the arrogance of bullies who
believe that a steering wheel has lifted them out of the demands of
common decency. It is not distance that makes Canada seem like a
frontier, although it takes a while to ingest that London is only a
midway point between Delhi and Toronto. This frontier is not merely
the boundary wall of the familiar; it is also the gateway to new
space.
- Add your Comments
COVERT (16 - 31st August 2008)
Why Mumbai is the
heart of Muslim Terrorism
By M.J. Akbar
There
are only two Mumbai Muslims whose lives have been made the subject of
movies that were released commercially. One film was official,
financed by the Government of Pakistan. The other was unofficial, and fictionalised, made by the Mumbai film industry. The film on Mohammad
Ali Jinnah was a tribute to a stalwart whose admirers will not
tolerate a word of criticism against him.
- Add your Comments
COVERT (1-15th August 2008)
The
Headmaster of A School for
Scandal
By M.J. Akbar
In the end it's the jokes that get you, isn't it? SMS, that deadly
virus, has been spreading sound bites like "Sting is King". Its first
cousin, email, has been circulating emotional pleas to the heartless
Finance Minister: "Don't you know how old MPs are? They have bad
backs! Can't you print Rs 100,000 notes instead of measly little
thousand-rupee notes??? Do you know how heavy a sack of 30 crores is?"
There are heart-rending stories of MPs breaking down because they did
not know how to take their loot, collected in Delhi, back to the
security of their small towns.
Add
your comments
COVERT (16-31st JULY 2008)
CHECK THE IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND THE POSSIBLE
By M J Akbar
In
times of meltdown,
the great eagerness is of course to get a glimpse of the future. The
tendency, but naturally, is to track the future along the seam lines
of what politicians can do. There is a much surer way of negotiating
such minefields. Check out what politicians cannot do, and you will
get a far better idea of what they will do.
Add your Comments
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COVER IMAGES & LINKS TO M J AKBAR PRINT BYLINES IN COVERT HERE |
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M J Blog - Post Global Washington Post |
Hugo Chavez's defeat
in the referendum is extremely welcome, not because Chavez was
defeated but because democracy won. A hint from Indian democracy,
where someone in power is defeated virtually every month, given
the number of states in the Union and the haywire schedule of
elections: it is always the one per cent that makes the decisive
difference. It’s that one percent that is beyond the reach of
either oil or any well-oiled state machinery. God is on the side
of One Percent....
-
PostGlobal is
an interactive conversation on global issues moderated by Newsweek
International Editor
Fareed Zakaria and
David Ignatius of The Washington Post. It is
produced jointly by Newsweek
and washingtonpost.com
Post Global:
MJ's Washington Post Blog
 .



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READER'S LETTERS |
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First article of
your series CRESCENTS & CROISSANTS in
TOI really appealed me, only respecting and understanding of
religions of each other is a modern era’s tool to spread
the message of ISLAM or any other. Basically all leads to almighty
or SARVASHAKTIMAN. To club humanity in one chain this has become
must to understand Allah/God/Ishwar, following your message we
only can quote Mahatma Gandhi- Ishwar, Allah tero naam sabko
sammati de Bhagwan.
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Is
Decline to the Fourth Estate here...
Never
let your head stoop as a Journalist
M
J Akbar Shunted Out Unceremoniously!
A
black day for Indian journalism
As
long as the ink flows
How
Free is Indian Media?
M
J Akbar ka Safar
HAVE YOUR SAY! POSTED
ON YOUR BLOG ON MJ? Send your
Link to be posted here.
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FREE SPEECH
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'F*** All Editors'

The hard truth about Indian journalism: proprietors matter, editors
don't
KHUSHWANT SINGH
in OUTLOOK [Opinion] 24/3
[
READ MORE IN FREE SPEECH]
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The power of fear is immense and intense. It is axiomatic that evil of
the magnitude perpetrated in Mumbai, through a collusion between
Pakistan-based hate-filled terrorist organisations like
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Indian fifth columnists will have a direct
impact on the political mood of the nation. It is inevitable that the
mood will reflect on polling in an election season. But we need to
understand the nuances of this impact carefully. The hyperinflation of
knee-jerk analysis can be toxic to the truth.
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BYLINES
ARCHIVE SINCE SEPTEMBER 2004 |
|
BYLINES:
2008
December
Antulay
is the Simi Garewal of Indian Politics
The
real Con called Conspiracy Theory
Biting
the BBC bullet
Fettered
by fear, Muslims fritter away their vote
What's
general about a general Election?
Two-nation
theory has bred practice of hatred
Gagsters
and Gangsters
Policy,
Profile, Politics:Match gives you Game
November
Toothless
Leaders turn tough nation...
The
26th of November
Mumbai
Attacks
Would
anyone dare issue a fatwa against Iqbal?
Is
there a Plan B, Mrs Alva?
The
Insecurity of Petty Ideas
The
economic partition that still grounds us
In
the semi-final analysis…
The
paucity of hope: Pleaders can’t be Leaders
Free
and Independent
US
& us: United they stand, divided we fall
The
Quiet Shift to New Horizons
October
In
black, white and grey
Why
Zardari said what America wanted to hear
Who
wants to be the pinprick inside a bubble?
Deep
Inside India, Secularism is a Way of Life The
Parallel Streams of Anger
September
Is
it really Muslims whose credibility at stake?
Fuse
of self-destructive terrorism gets shorter
Tentacles
of dread and the terror Gameplan
Plants
and Implants
Fluff-and-bluff
can't change harsh truths
Fundamentalists
flourish in secular vacuum
For
Peace with Pak, India has to be Strong
On
Sharada Prasad
August
Soiled
Past
Fasadi,
not Jihadi
There
are no Role Models
Why
Mumbai
is the heart of Muslim Terrorism
Melody needed Poetry, Sound needs Phonetics
Identity
Wars
Band
aid for Cancer
July
Headmaster
of A School for Scandal
Inflation
hits Delhi Politics
Check
the Impossible to find the Possible
How
Public is Public Opinion?
Have
you ever heart a cake crumble? (Covert)
June
War
and Consequences
Are
economic reforms the solution to communal riot...
The
Fine Art of Doing Nothing (Covert)
How
Pakistan insulates India from terror
Equality
is a right, not a favour for Muslims
The
myth of forced Islamic conversions
There's
something about Indian secularism
Calculator
vs Calendar
The
Secret Diaries of Manmohan, Advani
May
From
Promise to Compromise
Double
Jeopardy
The
Dance of the Ghosts
Will
we, Won't we?
The
Alibi Game
April
9%
for 9%
Inflated
Egos
Maya
and Reality
A
Bali Diary
March
A
real chance in Kashmir
The
World is Round
The
Long Onion Road
Double
Play
February
Queue
and Collect
Free
for All
A
Dhaka Diary
A
Wealth of Questions
January
Friends
and Masters
A
Roman Diary (Blood Brothers)
Knockout
Time
A
Policket Quiz
FROM SEPTEMBER 2004-2007
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- 2004
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- 2004
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- 2004
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2005
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2006
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- 2007
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- 2007
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- 2007
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- 2007
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- 2007 |
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CURRENT BYLINE :
Small boys, big
game
By M.J. Akbar
| January 3,
2009
There is only one relevant question in an election year: who will win?
The pundits have begun to get themselves into the usual tangle, most
of the tangle created by the spin of bias. The right thing to do would
be to admit that no one really knows, but that would reduce a column
to just one sentence. Since pundits get their money from columns
rather than sentences, this is an inadequate solution to their
dilemma.
If they must stretch their wisdom to a thousand words, may I offer a
suggestion? They are making a mistake by looking at the big boys. The
elections of 2009 might well be a game whose result is determined by
the small boys.
Allies, rather than principals, could be the key to the formation of
the next coalition in Delhi. It will also depend on how many seats the
Third Front gets, and on which side its partners fall if they have to
choose between the UPA and the NDA.
The three major allies of the Congress are Lalu Yadav in Bihar, M.
Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu and Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra. There is
bad news for the Congress in all three states. The Chennai street is
buzzing with talk about a triumphant return for Jayalalithaa. Between
the pain of family feuds and the disgust of unprecedented corruption,
the DMK seems to have lost it. It is often forgotten that the DMK has
been in power in Delhi for two terms, first as an NDA partner and then
in the UPA. That is a lot of temptation for DMK ministers in Delhi to
handle, and they handled it by succumbing totally. They may have begun
life from the usual humble origins, and they could be out of office
soon, but trust me, they will never be poor again — for many
generations.
In Maharashtra the Congress is facing a double-whammy. There is a dip
in both voter-support as well as in the cadre. The voters have shifted
to the Opposition after two nearly-full terms of a best-forgotten
chief minister, who has had, uniquely, to be dropped twice. A good
section of the Congress cadre has moved to Sharad Pawar, who has been
building his party as a regional force for the state, on the lines of
Telegu Desam and DMK/AIADMK. He has nominated an heir, his daughter,
and the next general election may see her shift into the Lok Sabha
from the Rajya Sabha. His best legacy is not a victory in 2009, but a
strong party structure that can survive the ephemeral phases of
democracy. Pawar is sharp enough to see the future clearly. For 2009
is a transition, not a horizon.
The UPA bastion in the east is crumbling. Nitish Kumar, with the
simple offer of good governance, has made substantial inroads into
Lalu territory. Muslims are moving towards him in substantial numbers,
and Lalu Yadav's traditional vote-bank rhetoric about the BJP will not
stop the drift, since the voter has made good governance his
pre-eminent priority. The Congress has the difficult task of not only
preventing erosion in its own numbers, but also compensating for the
losses that will be suffered by its allies.
Since 1991, allies have gained far more from alliances with the
Congress than the other way around. Lalu Yadav has boxed the Congress
into just four seats out of 40 in Bihar. When a party does not contest
seats, it withers at the roots, which is what has happened to the
Congress. Mulayam Singh Yadav will not concede more than 15 seats out
of 80 in UP; Mamata Banerjee will keep the Congress down to 10 out of
42 in Bengal. Congress will gain in states like Kerala and Punjab, and
could improve its numbers slightly in Rajasthan, but that will not
easily offset losses in big states like Maharashtra, Andhra and Tamil
Nadu.
One assumes that Congress believes it can use the BJP bogey to bring
in the Left and Third Front parties into its coalition after the
results. This will not be easy. The Left believes it has been
betrayed, and abused, by Dr Manmohan Singh, inside and outside
Parliament, over the strategic alliance with the United States. It is
not likely to hand over leadership of any alliance it supports to the
Congress. Congress might offer to prop up a minority government from
outside, but other parties will recall what happened to I.K. Gujral
and Deve Gowda. They might prefer stability to a temporary triumph.
The balance will, in any case, swing towards the alliance with the
larger numbers. To be in play, the BJP-led NDA must deliver over 220
seats. Will that happen?
Why don't we let the electorate tell us in April and May? The pundit
pontificates. The citizen votes.
Before we bury another year (this one with great glee) it is only
appropriate to write an epitaph for 2008.
A word coined by the growing tribe of wordsmiths, and an email doing
the rounds (both gleaned from the special Christmas issue of the
Spectator) seem to be the perfect epitaph for the dreadful year just
behind us. The word is quite a good one, not the least because it
resembles an expletive: "funt", meaning "financially untouchable". But
the email is more fun:
Socialism: You
have two cows. State nationalises one and gives it to your neighbour.
Communism: State takes both and gives you some milk.
Fascism: State takes both and sells you some milk.
Capitalism: You sell one of your cows and buy a bull; herd multiplies,
economy grows. Sell them, and retire on income.
Lehman Brothers Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them
to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by
your brother-in-law at Bear Stearns, execute a debt/equity swap with
an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with
tax exemption for five. The milk rights of six cows are transferred
via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the
majority shareholder who sells the rights of all seven cows to your
listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows,
with an option for one more. You sell one cow to buy the President of
the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet
provided with the press release. The public then buys your bull.
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A Real Con Called
Conspiracy Theory
By M.J. Akbar
| December 27, 2008
If you forgot the source of a quotation in our parents' generation,
you could safely attribute it to Winston Churchill. Churchill smoked
Cuban cigars, drank champagne for breakfast, painted for pleasure and
won wars for a living. He was the authentic hero of the age of
imperialism in the English-speaking people. If you cannot recall a
source now, the safest thing to do is to attribute it to Warren
Buffett, who eats hamburgers, plays bridge, thinks up witticisms for a
hobby and makes money for a living. He is the authentic hero of the
age of capitalism in the dollar-speaking world.
It was Buffett, I think, who said that it is only when the tide runs
out that you discover who has been swimming naked.
Well, with the next general elections only weeks away, the tide is
running out on politicians who have dominated the last five years. To
our increasing amusement, we are beginning to discover that there
might be a whole nudist colony swimming in the political waters. Once
upon a time, only the emperor had no clothes. But democracy is a more
egalitarian business.
The position of chief nudist fluctuates, but at the moment there would
be no questions asked if the award was handed to Abdul Rahman Antulay.
Let me point out right away that Mr Antulay is far smarter than the
emperor, who seems to have lost his wits after a child pointed out
that he had lost his clothes. Mr Antulay has taken pre-emptive action
to fool the child. If you throw dust in the eyes of the beholder,
there is a good chance that your nudity will not be recognised. Mr
Antulay has spent six of his eight decades in politics. You learn a
great deal in the process.
One simple question will expose how nude Mr Antulay was under the
enveloping tide: Can he name one single thing, anything at all, that
he has done for minorities as the Union Minister for Minorities?
He could possibly reel off the number of occasions on which he has
broken down and sobbed publicly, either in sympathy at their plight or
in exasperation at his inability to persuade the system to deliver.
The tears might even have been genuine. But they do not add up to
re-election.
If the performance is poor in Delhi, it is pathetic in Maharashtra. An
exceptionally good story in Mumbai Mirror revealed that the Congress-NCP
Government had not spent a single rupee out of the Rs 167 crores
allotted to the Minorities Development Department till 15 December.
Not one rupee. It is sadder still that the more hysterical elements of
the Urdu press, who spend yards of newsprint on conspiracy theories,
simply ignore such a story. In fact, if you want a quick portrait of
the Congress Government in Maharashtra then all you have to do is
check out one statistic: only 34% of the State's annual budget of Rs
29,000 crores has been spent till the middle of December. And so Mr
Antulay picked up conspiracy fluff floating down the media mainstream,
which had found some anchorage on urban shores, in order to reinvent
himself as a martyr for a "Muslim cause" — that Hemant Karkare had
been "martyred" [some Urdu papers refer to him only as "Shaheed"
Karkare] because he was on the point of discovering the truth about a
"Hindu" hand behind the Malegaon bombings. Even as a theory it was
extraordinary: it implied that some quick-thinking fellow police
officer had misled Karkare into going to the exact spot where he would
get killed, certain that the Pakistani terrorists would not be able to
get anyone who went to Taj, Oberoi or Nariman House, but would
certainly kill the officers who went towards the Chhatrapati Shivaji
railway station.
All the clichés were trotted out: that Antulay feared no one but God
[loud applause], that he did not care for office ["Take my
resignation!"] et al. But the record shows that while it takes very
little to persuade Antulay to offer to resign, it takes a great deal
to force Antulay out of office. When the Babri mosque was demolished,
and Mumbai suffered two months of riots, Antulay did not even offer to
resign from Parliament. There were two reasons: one, three and a half
years were left before the next general elections, not just three and
a half months. Two, P.V. Narasimha Rao would have accepted the
resignation immediately. Actually, even three and a half months are
too long. When the Congress Government humiliated him through a
statement in Parliament debunking the conspiracy line, all he did was
to sheepishly agree and accept that there was no longer any need for
an enquiry. Of course, the man who fears no one but God was permitted
to keep his job, however marginal it might be.
Siddhartha Varadarajan, writing in the Hindu, had the finest
conspiracy theory of the whole lot: that Antulay was a BJP plant in
the Congress. It is certainly more logical than the suggestion that
Mumbai police officers conspired with Pakistani terrorists to kill a
top officer of their force. At a time of serious tension, all Antulay
did was break the unity fashioned in Parliament. Just when it seemed
that India was speaking in one voice, he split the Cabinet and handed
Pakistan a public relations coup. His bid for pseudo-heroism has given
Pakistan effective ammunition in the psychological skirmishing that
has become a substitute for open warfare. Before asking India to
unite, the Prime Minister might have asked his Cabinet to unite. His
abject retreat will not change the Pakistani narrative. Islamabad will
accuse Delhi of using pressure to ensure silence.
It is only appropriate, if one has begun with a quote, to end with a
misquote. Churchill is, by my guess, the second most fecund source for
anecdotes and bon mots in English; the most fertile is of course
Shakespeare, who was also familiar with tides in the affairs of men.
Shakespeare also understood the politics of power better than most, as
his history plays indicate. But since he wrote of heroes, he did not
investigate the clothing of politicians at ebb tide. Hence, a
variation: "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, when taken at
the ebb, leads on to misfortune".
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Biting the BBC
bullet
By M.J. Akbar
| December 20, 2008

The butler who calmed
his feudal lord by noting that the uproar was a mere revolt and not a
revolution, had a point. A revolution needs the brains of a Gandhi or
a Lenin, not to mention a replacement for the object of destruction. I
would be loath to replace the BBC. I would not even dignify my little
protest with the label of 'revolt'. Moreover, it was Gandhian, which
makes it even less glamorous. Perhaps the only relevant part of my
response was non-cooperation.
During the sixty hours of unabated terrorism in Mumbai, the one group
that was almost as much in demand as security forces was journalists.
With media desperate to fill space or time, a journalist could pass
off any amount of gibberish as on-the-spot wisdom. Many international
radio and television stations did not even demand, or perhaps expect,
correct grammar: mangled phrases and minced diction can sound quaintly
ethnic.
It was after the last terrorist had been shot in the Taj that
something snapped during a telephone conversation with an extremely
polite news anchor from the BBC in London. I refused. I said that I
would not cooperate with the BBC as long as it described the murderers
of Mumbai as "gunmen" rather than calling them what they were:
terrorists.
The BBC is full of friends, with whom one has a happy and fulfilling
professional relationship since the 1970s. I am privileged to consider
the father of the BBC in India, Mark Tully, as a friend. Rita Payne,
who headed the South Asia service for television till recently, is
another. It was suggested that I might consider writing to Richard
Porter, head of BBC World News Content. Perhaps my language was angry,
but it only reflected the rage one felt: "I am appalled, astonished,
livid at your inability to describe the events in Mumbai as the work
of terrorists. You have called them 'gunmen', as if they were hired
security guards on a night out. When Britain finds a group of men
plotting in a home laboratory your government has no hesitation in
creating an international storm, and the BBC has no hesitation in
calling them terrorists. When nearly two hundred Indian lives are
lost, you cannot find a word in your dictionary more persuasive than
'gunmen'. You are not only pathetic, but you have become utterly
biased in your reporting…Shame on you and your kind."
Mr Porter's reply was worded in far more courteous language. "The
BBC's policies on the use of the word 'terrorist' have long been a
subject of public discussion. The guidelines we issue to staff are
very clear — we do not ban the use of the word terrorist, but our
preference is to use an alternative form of words. There is a judgment
inherent in the use of the word, which is not there when we are more
precise with our langu |