How do they do that? How do so called sedate and respectable newspapers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and so on, do that? Well, people have been watching their reporters closely for some time now. Edward A. Gargan is such a reporter that furnishes most of New York Times’ reports from the subcontinent. A monumental task for a single man! But he does it superbly, one would say, when one looks at the pages and pages of news he supplies to this newspaper, thanks to modern technology!
For instance, Gargan recently covered magnificently the entire story of the dismissal of the Pakistani premier and the dissolution of the parliament, by Ghulam Ishaq Khan, in the NYT edition of April 19, 1993. When one thinks of it, it is truly a remarkable feat that he accomplished; and he did all that from New Delhi!
Now a journalist friend, recently returned from India, informs us that most foreign reporters stationed in India, do their reporting from the watering holes they frequent. In fact, the uncertain, definitely uncomfortable and often dangerous law and order situation in Islamic Pakistan, Bangladesh and little Sri Lanka, have literally forced them out of those countries; and so they send in their reports from the safe haven that is India, at least for now, before India’s Moslems succeed in turning the darul harb into a veritable jihad-land as they have done to Srinagar in Kashmir, Malappuram in Kerala and lately in Bombay and Calcutta with their bomb attacks, almost repeating the tales of Lebanon.
However, the nature of their reports do not indicate any sentiment of gratitude to India. Their reports continue to be mischievous, anti-Indian and always slanted in favor of Islamic Pakistan and Bangladesh, perhaps for reasons of Abrahamic cousinship with the Moslems however barbaric, as opposed to the ‘soft’ Hindu ‘idolaters’. These apologies of true journalism desist from sending in all the truth; they send only that part which suits their sinister goal of making India look bad to the western world.
India too has her share of ‘Gargans’; they live in Washington D.C. and the commonality lies in the fact, that they too, hide facts from the Indian public. This story is a story of such a reporter from India. His name is Bharat Bhushan. It must be noted that of late India has been flooded with Bharat Ratnas and Padma Vibhushans; a name like Bharat Bhushan should not unduly surprise anyone!
After the recent fiasco on the west coast, one of our friends reported the matter to India’s Indian Express Daily. His letter ran thus:
“India does not seem to have much luck with her ambassadors sent to the US. It is common knowledge that Asaf Ali, the defender of Swami Shraddhanand’s murderer Rashid Ali, and later India’s first Moslem ambassador in the US, was recalled when during his tenure as ambassador, a ship-load of weapons ordered by the GOI, was sent to Karachi instead, where the ship was summarily impounded.
“Since then the US has seen a great number of non-descript ambassadors, all related or close to the Nehrus, ranging from B.K. Nehru to Tikki Kaul. The current ambassador, a supporter of the Babri Masjid Committee, is no exception.
“The cancellation of invitation that had been extended to the current Indian ambassador Siddharth Shankar Ray, by the representatives of the NRIs on the west coast is eloquent! The reason for cancellation given, if true, is very serious indeed which in the case of an ambassador of any other country would trigger a strong reprimand from the prime minister, if not a recall!
“Siddharth Shankar Ray has been accused of seeking to meet only anti-national Moslem and Khalistani groups including Moslem militants from Kashmir, in preference to the NRIs of India. Consequently, an emergency meeting was called by the NRIs, objection was taken to the ambassador’s conduct in trying to avoid a meeting with the Indo-Americans as one group. His invitation was invalidated and cancelled by the general body of the NRI members. This is a shame for any ambassador, even if he happens to be the grand-son or great-grand-son of Deshbandhu C.R. Das, a fact that Siddharth Shanakr Ray never forgets to mention to his audience in his lectures…”
Our friend’s letter was not published by the Indian Express in India. Bharat Bhushan’s boss, Prabhu Chawla, faxed him a note requesting him to ‘contact’ our friend who had sent in the information to the Indian Express in his ‘letter to the editor’. India’s ‘Gargan’, to wit, Mr. Bharat Bhushan, sent in a fax message to our friend requesting to contact him in Washington, which our friend promptly did. Bharat Bhushan requested our friend if he could supply him with all the details of the matter and confessed that he did not know how to go about collecting the information. Our friend suggested to him that he could consult west coast (Indian
Bharat Bhushan apparently did all this. In additon he was sent whatever information our friend or his friends in the west coast, had. Their collective information was faxed to Bharat Bhushan.
Bharat Bhushan contacted the embassy and when called by our friend inquiring if he had all the information he wanted, Bharat Bhushan replied in the affirmative. When asked if he was going to write up the story, that his boss Prabhu Chawla had requested, he replied that he was NOT going to report the matter to India as it had had ample coverage in this country. When asked, “What about the coverage for the Indian public?” he replied that he had to ‘balance’ the news and it was not necessary (in his own judgment of course) to report it for the information of the public in India.
The ‘balancing’ this reporter was refering to, is a disease that occurs only to Indian media-men. They always report ‘both sides of the story’ even when there are no two sides. And in doing this cleverly (but grotesquely), they deliberately hide the facts of the matter. Thus Hindu-Moslem riots are reported as one community attacking the other and the other community retaliating and the army being brought in to clamp down the curfew, etc. etc. In the meantime, of course, the reader does not have a clue on who started the trouble in the first place! This is a ploy to make a lot of noise but say nothing! And if there is one sided atrocity, depending on which community did it, they either report it in full or do not report it at all. Thus Kashmir situation was not reported for months during which time attacks were being made on Hindu-Sikh population there; but behold, now it is being reported five-fold when the Indian military attempts to re-instate order!
The similarity between Gargan and Bharat Bhushan is that both try to ‘cover’ the story without moving their posteriors unless on rare occasions when forced to do so. The final result is a ‘cover up’. Thus Gargan covers the whole of Pakistan from his watering-hole in New Delhi and Bharat Bhushan does the same and covers the entire west coast from his hotel room in Washinton D.C. and uses his Solomonic judgment to decide which report India’s public should or should not have!
Verily, the two great democracies have many things in common, although only part of the way!
(A. Ghosh)
Houston,
Aug. 29, 1993.
