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| Escaping the shoe missiles | | |
Late last year when an Iraqi journalist hurled a goodbye kiss “shoe” at outgoing US President Geroge Bush in Baghdad, an unusual precedent of the sorts was set for India to follow more aggressively. Beginning Home Minister P Chidambram, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, BJP leader LK Advani, MP Navin Jindal have all narrowly escaped this potent missile. The first shoe-tossing episode at Union home minister P. Chidambaram’s press conference was a rude reminder that an individual’s socio-political mindset may distort the professional view in contemporary India. In many spheres, most people working in the modern sector do leave behind their primordial loyalties, and clinically defer to the professional hat they wear even when they are sometimes uncomfortable with it. But it is well to expect surprises when an ancient and diverse society is engaged in the painful and tortuous process of seeking to come to terms with modern institutions and democratic life, as the journalist Jarnail Singh has shown. Everything Mr Singh has said subsequent to the spectacle shows him to be an ordinarily mild-mannered and responsible individual who will brook no truck with mischief. But it is evident that the savage violence unleashed against the Sikh community in 1984 has a moral and emotional salience for him and countless others even after 25 years. This is not to condone the correspondent’s transgression, but to understand it. The newspaper the journalist in question represents has clarified that Mr Singh was not assigned to cover the home minister’s press conference. As such, he attended with the sole aim of lodging his protest. Many journalists have gone on to become prominent politicians, but that journey cannot begin at a press conference. Indeed, a newsperson’s job will cease to have meaning in a democratic system if it became difficult to distinguish it from that of a political representative, or any other newsmaker. For the health of our system, it is necessary to separate pamphleteering from journalism. Mr Singh appears sensitive and responsible enough to be aware of this. Nor was it his purpose, it is more than clear, to physically hurt or insult Mr Chidambaram. He seemed to have consciously tossed the shoe away from the home minister. In this respect, Mr Singh’s protest appears quite different from that of Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi who hurled his shoe with force at former US President George W. Bush. And yet, the action of both was in the service of a cause. How the Congress Party responds to the Jarnail Singh affair is a separate discussion. It is true that at a technical level Jagdish Tytler has not been held guilty by a court of law for instigating anti-Sikh violence after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. As such, he cannot be barred from seeking election to the Lok Sabha, even though he has bowed out of contest. At the level of perception, however, many Sikhs hold him to be culpable. Should the Congress, then, withdraw his nomination? Will it lose Sikh votes in the general election if it does not? These are purely political questions. The broader point is that a political party should seek to avoid offering high-profile positions to individuals until doubts about them have been laid to rest in a law court if the matter has been taken there.
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