Ill Informed Critiques by Self Appointed Reformers

Open Letter to Arnab Goswami: Part 2

Dear Arnab, When I sent Part 1 of my “Open Letter” I did so with the full awareness that I might become a persona non grata not just for Times Now but also for many others who see you as a role model. However, I am encouraged to continue by the fact that within minutes of mailing the letter and posting it on MANUSHI website, I got numerous messages from discerning viewers and respected public figures telling me I had done the right thing. That assured me that my critique is not off the mark. Therefore, here is a little more of a medicinal dose. Though the examples I offer of your inquisitional style are from my personal experience, I chose them only because these are typical illustrations of how you brow beat people. This one is to illustrate your imperious attitude towards rural India For example, on July 16, 2012, when your office called me to be part of the News Hour debate on certain resolutions by a panchayat of Assara village in Baghpat district, I was most reluctant to join the show because of past experience of being prevented from disagreeing with your danda marka approach. But your office persevered and assured me that you would give me a proper hearing. One of the several requests that day included an SMS which said: “Ma’am Arnab just said without you, discussion is half dead…plz Ma’am join us by 9:20.” My bad luck that I did not catch the intended meaning of those ominous words; I failed to understand that I had been chosen as the day’s sacrificial lamb. Since most Khap leaders and village panchayats heads don’t speak good English you did not want to waste time on them and since very few among the Delhi intellectuals want to incur your deadly wrath by opposing you on your turf, or take a politically unfashionable position on Khap panchayats, you needed someone to be the straw woman to carry out your “operation demolition.” I fit the bill perfectly. ‘What fun’, you thought, ‘to expose Madhu Kishwar, a known defender of women’s rights for being the sham that she really is and lump her with those who you consider relics of medieval barbarism!’ Your panel was predictably filled with people who echoed your own views ably. Out of six, there was just me who had a different view. Any half sensible T.V. anchor would have allowed a tiny little space for a divergent view in order to convey the impression to viewers that he is not altogether one sided in his presentation. But not the one-and-only Arnab Goswami! ( Actually your tribe is increasing every day). You began with what I consider a well practiced technique of trapping someone into either giving you the exact answer you want or take the risk of being put in the same dock you have reserved for those you label Taliban, retrogressive, barbaric, inhuman, corrupt, venal, chalta hai species. That is why I refused to bite your bait and refused to answer the silly question you began with. Instead I asked for the opportunity to say what I had to say on the subject. But you did not let me complete one sentence. You shouted me down using your inane question as a stick to beat me with for the crime of daring to differ with the Almighty Arnab Goswami. The job of an anchor is to facilitate a discussion, to make available diverse points of view so that viewers can make an informed choice on various subjects, which are outside their own domain of knowledge. Even if you did not get a chance to train at a half-decent school of journalism, you should have learnt at least elementary courtesies from your mentor Pranoy Roy, one of the best, most sophisticated T.V. anchors we ever had. Arnab ji, Did you even know how to even spell “Khap” before “honor killings” gave you the grand opportunity to unleash your crusading zeal to browbeat the “uncivilized” rural communities who are allegedly involved in “barbaric medievalism?” On that day, you were raging about the restrictions allegedly imposed by a Khap Panchayat on the use of mobiles by young people and a resolution passed in that meeting that young women below a certain age should not venture out to markets and bazaars without a family member acting as an escort. Incidentally, this was a meeting of a newly formed, self styled Samaj Sudhar Sabha of Assara village. But you insisted it was a Khap Panchayat meeting because that makes for easy stereotyping. A  Tehelka report in the July 28 issue actually suggests that this particular meeting was actually stage managed at the insistence of TV reporters and mischievously dubbed as a Khap Panchayat. In that meeting attended by a section of Assara village in Baghpat district, several resolutions affecting both men and women were passed. It was well reported by The Hindu. These resolutions included a ban on giving and taking of dowry, making it compulsory for families to send their children (both boys and girls) to school, stopping youngsters from using earplugs to listen to music when they are walking in the streets, some restrictions on the use of mobile phones and asking young women not to go to markets without an escort from the family. But you hammered selectively on just two “sexy” issues--those that in your view constitute a “barbaric” infringement on “individual freedom”. Even in urban areas, families are trying to figure out ways in which they can allow their daughters to satisfy their aspirations for education and careers without risking their lives in our lawless cities. The elite class looks for safety by sending their children out in chauffer driven cars. I know highly educated urban families who do not let their daughters go out alone after a certain hour. Recently a very bright young student from an elite law college from another state of India came to intern with Manushi for 6 weeks. Her father is an eminent doctor who did his higher education in the UK. Her mother too is well educated. Even though she stayed with close relatives while in Delhi, her parents sent a middle-aged ayah to keep a hawk like watch on her movements in the city. What is so barbaric about rural families asking their daughters or young married wives to avoid going alone to goonda -infested markets?  I would like to know if in your own family you allow teenage girls or your women to come home alone late in the night in a Mumbai local train. This is not at all to suggest that restricting the movements of women is the appropriate response to increasing crimes against women. I am of the view that in the long run it makes things worse for the entire society. Even men’s lives become unsafe in societies where women are expected live under the shadow and protection of men. However, people can’t be treated as being “uncivilized” or ‘criminals” for thinking that they cannot afford to risk the lives and safety of their daughters while waiting for long term solutions. Incidentally on the same day that you were raving and ranting on this “suppression of women’s freedom” by Khaps, T.V. Channels were also repeatedly showing visuals of the brutish attack on a teenager by a whole mob of politically connected lumpens in the most fashionable commercial area of Guwahati. We also saw visuals of the horribly scarred face of Sonali, a young woman who was blinded and disfigured after an acid attack by a pervert whose sexual advances she had snubbed. These are not solitary instances. Such attacks are becoming common all over India in almost all our towns and villages. It is also well known how young women- in towns, cities and villages- are being sucked into the sex trade by men who seduce them with the promise of marriage or entry into the glamorous world of modeling or a role in a Bollywood film or a T.V. serial. Their own boyfriends and lovers end up blackmailing them by putting their nude pictures or sex acts on You Tube or Face Book. As for mobile phones, even “liberal and modern” parents and teachers are finding this instrument to be a major menace. You chose to ignore the fact that this “decision” (mostly ignored) was taken after a young boy of Assara village was run over by a speeding train because he did not hear it coming since he was listening to music through an earphone. In classrooms, students pay no attention to what is being taught because they are busy social networking on their mobiles. At home, many of them chat with known and unknown friends till the wee hours of the morning. Mobile phones are being increasingly used for downloading pornography. Even “liberal” and highly educated parents in metros are trying to figure out ways of limiting access to mobiles and the Internet. Do rural families have no right to watch over their children? When a tiny elite minority arrogates to itself the right to dictate terms to the vast majority of people, it is called authoritarianism, not democracy. The social reform agenda cannot be dictated and imposed in this imperious manner. It has to be a two way street. Those we criticize and demonize have the right to hold a mirror to us. Leave alone making it a two way process, you do not even allow “them” the right to defend themselves against ill informed, criticism.  For example, the vast majority of people in India may seriously disapprove of urban couples from wealthy families who leave their children in the care of underpaid servants while they go partying all night and come home drunk in the wee hours of the morning. Do you give them the right to have such people sent to jail for neglecting their kids and their children put in government run child welfare institutions? Majority of people in this country find the pub culture a real menace because many of these places unfortunately double up as pick up joints for call girls. Moneyed goons and rowdies gravitate to such places. Do you give them the right to demand action against parents who allow their daughters to become call girls or those who allow their sons to get drunk at pubs and create a ruckus for all? You would be horrified at such an encroachment on what you consider the cherished freedoms of your class and biradari. The elite have blindly copied the pub culture of London and New York without understanding what makes it a viable lifestyle there and a high risk venture in India. Even the manner of procuring a liquor license ensures that pub owners operate must seek the patronage of political and police mafias. It is time you and your tribe of self appointed reformers understand that social reform is not going to be a one-way street with the urban educated elite defining the agenda, mode and limits of social reform issues to be given salience. It is time for you to stop imagining that your class of people has the monopoly of desirable, “progressive” values and life-styles while rural communities are cesspools of social obscurantism and retrogressive culture. One has to “earn” the right to criticize and point out other people’s flaws. That comes only when they perceive you as a caring well-wisher not as an arrogant imperious outsider in the tradition set by our erstwhile colonial masters. What have most of us self appointed social reformers done to earn that respect, that trust? Nobody has ever seen you spend time and energy on the life and death struggles of rural communities. Count how many minutes of your life or T.V. time you spent on the impact of crop failures on the lives of farmers due to the failure of the government to provide irrigation. I have never seen a farmer on your program discuss the budget or even NREGA meant for the ostensible benefit of farmers. Are you there for them when they don’t get electricity to run their water pumps? Have you ever made common cause with them when they battle government policies that depress farm incomes? Have you ever raved and ranted at the many draconian sarkari restrictions imposed on our farmers that prevent them from accessing markets where they can get a better price for their farm produce? How many minutes of T.V. time did you give the anguish of farmers whose lands are arbitrarily acquired by the government without paying due compensation? Are you there to share their anxiety about their children getting such shoddy education in village schools that the new world of opportunities is virtually shut out to them? If you have never shared their trials and tribulations, why should they accept your credentials as someone whose heart is bleeding for the well-being of their women? Our colonial rulers did precisely that at one time. They focused obsessively on the hapless plight of Indian women in order to justify imperial subjugation of all Indians - men and women alike. They tried convincing us that they were here for our own good to “civilize” us. You too, Arnab, are screaming the same message when you bring in a whole array of panelists who demand that Khap Panchayats and various kinship, and jati panchayats be banned because they are unwanted relics of the barbaric medieval past. You probably don’t know that medieval India was an extremely prosperous, technologically advanced and highly accomplished society. The Europeans braved hazardous sea voyages mesmerized by the legendary wealth of medieval India and the beauty of its industrial products. Europe may or may not have experienced the “Dark Ages” in medieval times but medieval India was a bright shiny place. As long as the urban westernized elites of India insist on treating their less educated and un-westernized fellow citizens as a lower species they have no moral right to try to reform them—that too through draconian laws that empower the police to arrest them at will and send them to rot in jail forever.