Storm in a Teacup

The whole Gurmehar Kaur s***storm that’s in the news these days is such a bread-and-circus (non)event. At least not anywhere near as big a thing as it is being made out to be. The easiest part of all this is to the unacceptable death and rape threats made to her just for voicing an opinion. That’s totally wrong.

Having said the obvious, look at other aspects which are not so black and white. Take her pic with the placard:
“I AM A STUDENT OF DELHI UNIVERSITY. I AM NOT AFRAID OF ABVP. I AM NOT ALONE. EVERY STUDENT OF INDIA IS WITH ME. #FIGHTBACKDU #STUDENTSAGAINSTABVP.”
This one is complicated because it involves many issues. Does she have the right to an opinion? Absolutely. Is she right in saying that many others agree with her? Obviously. But is it true that every (or even most) students of India agrees with her? Obviously not. So some counter-responses were only to be expected. Nothing very interesting in any of this.

And that should have been the end of it, but this is the Age of the Internet. Anything you post can be raked up. So out stumbled an earlier pic of the same girl where she said this about her dad, a martyr of the Kargil War:
“Pakistan did not kill my dad, war killed him.”
Martyr’s daughter or not, that is so unbelievably stupid (and wrong) on so many levels. So is it really a surprise why that line would irritate and anger so many Indians? All Virendra Sehwag did was to mock the sheer illogical’ness with his own tweet:
“I didn’t score two triple centuries, my bat did. Bat me hai Dum ! #BharatJaisiJagahNahi”
And yes, Randeep Hooda found Sehwag’s tweet funny. Surely, both Sehwag and Hooda have a right to their opinion… just as much Gurmehar does to hers. Celebrities have a right to voice their opinion too. Period.

But the media’s stance that one cannot criticize the daughter of a martyr defies any sense. Guess what, tomorrow we can be grateful to a commando for killing a terrorist; and the day after that, we can criticize him for evading taxes. One good act doesn’t make him immune to criticism for his other acts. This is just common sense, but the media likes controversy, doesn’t it?

Notice the irony in all this? The very same media who label as jingoism any right-wing nationalism or patriotism are now using the sacrifice of a soldier as defense against all criticism of his daughter. The media will talk about freedom of speech, but resent Sehwag and Hooda for exercising their’s.

Of course, this very hypocrisy then feeds into the next round of recriminations and name calling from the other side. And so the circle continues… until we stumble onto the Next Non-Event That Tears Us Up, that is.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn
Read more

Handling of the Satyam Scam

The Satyam scam. How does that fit into Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s book on reforms in India, Backstage ? The reason is that, as both NASSCOM and the government of India felt: “(Satyam’s) collapse would create a great deal of disruption for clients worldwide and seriously damage India’s reputation as a reliable source of software services.”   Therefore, the government decided to work with the private sector to “organize a quick takeover by a reputable new buyer, who would quickly restart the company”. But that could not be done overnight. In the meantime, the new board would have to reach out to Satyam’s clients and “reassure them that the company would survive”.   For the new board to have credibility when it made that statement, it had to be staffed with people who understood the private sector, the IT sector in particular, and commanded respect and trust. Deepak Parikh from HDFC was made chairman, and other members of the board included a former NASSCOM chairman, CII member,
Read more