Certain sections of the electronic media have in the garb of nationalism, commandeered military choices and are aggressively setting the agenda on the India-Pakistan dispute
Days before last Sunday’s India-Pakistan final at Oval, which India lost resoundingly, the foreplay in television studios resembled the meticulous preparations for the 1971 war. While the Oval encounter is seen as war by other means, the India-Pakistan world hockey league semi-finals which India won resoundingly, a few miles away from the Oval, went untrumpeted. Such is the combined power of TV and cricket. At least three channels did not cover the cricket match. Instead, they were focussed on Rawalpindi’s war by a thousand cuts in Jammu & Kashmir. Thank heavens, we are not fighting the war some in the electronic media want us to.
India and Pakistan are fighting a generational war — at least for 100 years — according to theirguru Stephen Cohen. Started in 1947, the war has not ceased. For Rawalpindi, it’s the low-cost, high-gain proxy war in J&K. That’s the battle India has failed to deter and defeat and Pakistan has failed to win, notwithstanding the blood-letting. The chimera of victory is being unabashedly created by the electronic media. Every night, Pakistan is being wiped off the map, including by surgical strikes, vociferously lauded by TV cheerleaders even as coffins of Indian soldiers draped in national colours have become the real breaking news.
Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat, the most visible and most audible Army chief in recent times, saluting the martyrs at Palam, has become a defining image and the rootcause of the war of words following the Gogoi mega-episode and sundry remarks like ‘dirty war’ and ‘all is fair in love and war’. Some of our channels have appropriated exclusive rights to nationalism and erroneously placed the Army like the one in Pakistan — beyond criticism.
Similar but lower key skirmishes are being waged on Pakistani television, though all on Urdu channels. Pakistan has no English channel. Not long ago, as the convenor of an uninterrupted annual India-Pakistan dialogue since 2003, I was ambushed on, probably Dawn news channel, by the combined verbiage of now late lt Gen Hamid Gul, father of the Inter-Services Intelligtence (ISI) and his lashkar mentor Hafiz Saeed. Times Now and Geo TV and some other channels used to co-host confidence-building measures’ programmes in the pre-beheading days. The official India-Pakistan dialogue remains suspended since January 2013 due to the mutilation of an Indian soldier in January 2013 — the longest interruption since the dialogue started in the 1990s.
Enter the redoubtable anchor saying: “just as well”, and asking: “Whom do we talk to, any wayIJ” TV gladiators, the usual suspects, jump in. One of them says: “let me tell you…”, a beginning of the rant which lasts 10 minutes. “Pakistan has not learnt its lesson from 1971… it deserves to be obliterated and India can do it.” End of yelling and screaming as the anchor switches off the audio of the Pakistani Air Vice Marshal who has begun brandishing Rawalpindi’s latest tactical nuclear weapon, the Nasr. Abusive and combative after the first strike, Rawalpindi’s Gang of Four heaps insults and indignities on everything made in India and on top of it, gets rewarded with $500 each. End of debate Number One at super prime time.
This slanging match repeats itself routinely and the cows don’t come home. To qualify to appear on these channels, you have to be a nationalist, preferably a patriot with lung power and a long index finger to wag across the line of Control (loC) and at the Pakistani panellists. It helps if you can sometimes end up crying to prove your bona fides. Patriotic belligerence is the hallmark.
Clearly, the proxy war has become a binary: Either you are with us or against us. Remember, after 9/11, George W Bush had sent pugilist and ex-Marine Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage to Gen Pervez Musharraf, threatening to reduce Pakistan to the Stone Age, if...
After the Mutually Assured Destruction of India and Pakistan, Debate Number Two, though seemingly infructuous, is about making peace and transforming the narrative as managers of conflict resolution would have it, to resuming the India-Pakistan dialogue. Given the growing levels of vigilantism, intolerance and zero appetite for engagement, the shrinking peace constituency in both countries has been virtually silenced. Still, peaceniks like Mani Shankar Aiyar and Sudheendra Kulkarni are invited and tested for nationalism, by the Anchor and usual military and social activists for whom Pakistan is like a red rag to a bull. The new normal of Indian nationalism has reduced the boycott of Pakistan to five No-es: No coverage of cricket; no showing of its films and TV serials; no shows by its singers and artists; no exchange of school-children; no barter in California almonds — apparently financing terrorism in J&K.
In Pakistan, despite the expected miracle from the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, cinema owners regularly troop to PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority), urging it to lift the ban on Indian films. They are directed to meet the ISI chief, who, as a Ramzan concession, agrees to lift the ban on Tubelight and other Indian films. In Nawaz Sharif’s (or is it Qamar Bajwa’s) Pakistan, money speaks, as Saudi and Qatari royalty may tell you. The Pakistani media used to be free in the Musharraf era. Now it is back in the vice-like grip of the ISI. Bole TV is apparently its mouthpiece and ARY, like most of our anti-Pakistan channels, is virulently anti-India. Geo TV, on the other hand, is seen to be soft on India. But making peace with India for Pakistani televisionis taboo for the time-being.
In this April and May, during two back to back Track Two India-Pakistan dialogues in Dubai and Kathmandu, the media was awarded the spoiler’s badge. Given assured revenue from popular content, was there a way to create a common media market which might incentivise anchors and their gladiators to lower the decibels and de-escalate the rhetoric during crisisIJ While three prominent owners from media houses from both sides considered this confidence-building measure, two were non-committal while the third thought the time was not ripe. He coined the term, ‘competitive patriotism’, which panellists took to mean TRP.
Wagah and Husainiwala Retreat ceremonies shown on television, pass of as war by other means. Many boot-stomping soldiers making hostile gestures, have suffered from self-inflicted injuries, leading to the advisory that nationalism can be injurious to health. During shrill TV debates about war and peace where exchange of nukes and abuse is the new normal, sections of the electronic media have in the garb of nationalism, commandeered military choices and are setting the agenda. War mongering is not their remit. Nor is my country-my flag.
(The writer is a former Major General of the Indian Army and strategic affairs expert)