Grapes of War

Writing of the ongoing confrontation between India and Pakistan has exposed shades of media jingoism to the extent that the unthinkable will soon be credible

AS INDIA and Pakistan embark on a new phase of their dysfunctional relationship and a welter of opinions malformed, deformed and uninformed flies as thick as shrapnel, IA Rehman’s ‘situationer’, which appeared in Dawn on Friday titled The Wages of Living by Hate, provides a very necessary sanity check. Writing of the ongoing confrontation between the two countries, he focuses on “the war of words between their mediapersons”. He notes that since the limited war over Kargil, media jingoism on both sides has demonised the other to the extent that the unthinkable will soon be credible.

Indeed, Kargil was this region’s Gulf War, a conflict made for media and offering leverage for domestic politics. In both cases, civilian populations and political leaderships were safe because of distance. The US was too far away to fear physical damage. India and Pakistan are too close to each other. One cannot really nuke the other. It would be mutually assured self-destruction.

Rehman looks back on more gracious times, when Indian and Pakistani journalists and even military commanders kept up civil relations at the personal level, irrespective of the posturings of the political leadership. It seems unthinkable at this time, when we are growing acclimatised to the disgusting rhetoric of a jaw for a tooth, and with Pakistani media claiming mounting Indian casualties. Which means that while everyone from the Gandhi family to Twitter trolls agree that this is a jolly good thing, it is an unfolding story.

But it was interesting to see no one in government shooting from the lip. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who had once waxed ecstatic about “56 inch rocks” over a cross-border operation in Myanmar, was remarkably sober in an interview with Barkha Dutt. And Sambit Patra claimed allparty unity rather than victory for his party, which it is his job to do.

There is a fairly wide range of commentary out there. The 56 inch mob is strutting its stuff on social media. At the other extreme is the opinion that Indian special forces have been up to all sorts of things over the years, but only Narendra Modi has the smarts to encash it in PR.

But TV stations have pulled out the predictable stock footage of universal soldiers engaged in black ops shot at undisclosed locations, probably cinematic. The Quint, which had gone off at half-cock last week, tracked the chitchat on the other side of the border after India announced surgical strikes. Remarkably, the language of Inter Services Public Relations is not unlike an account parodying the North Korean government: “The notion of surgical strike linked to alleged terrorists bases is an illusion being deliberately generated by Indian to create false effects.”

The escalation between the nuclear neighbours is making the international news, particularly after the Washington Free Beacon coincidentally put up an audio track from a fundraiser in February, in which Hillary Clinton had expressed fears about Pakistani nukes falling into the wrong hands. NBC, CNN, BBC, the New York Times, the UK Telegraph, almost everyone has taken note, for the excellent reason that the Indian government came clean shortly after the operation, informing diplomats. True, Aleppo remains the world’s most important hotspot, but at least the world is now hazily aware that Bhimber, too, exists.

On the other hand, Sushma Swaraj’s excellent speech at the UN General Assembly, which drew banner headlines all over India, was snowed under in the international press by the US presidential debate, with which it coincided. The New York Times ran n Associated Press copy and in the UK, neither the Guardian nor the Independent had a story at all that day. Can’t blame them. For entertainment value, there’s no comparison between complicated historical wrongs in South Asia and dead simple craziness like the following conversation:

Hillary Clinton: “I have a feeling that by the end of this evening, I’ll be blamed for everything that’s ever happened.” Donald Trump: “Why not?” The debate was a foregone conclusion because one contestant had brains and wit and had prepared. The other enjoyed none of these attributes, but you will find an astonishingly large number of people on social media darkly hinting that the defeat of Trump indicated conspiracy. They do not appear to be bots.

Clinton took the lead with, “How are you, Donald?” There was no corresponding, “How are you, Hillary?” The cards were stacked against him. It has been hard to take anyone named Donald seriously ever since the House of Mouse created a bad-tempered duck by that name. All Donalds who wish to achieve fame transform themselves into Dons, like Bradman. And here, one of the Donalds, let on by Clinton, referred to the Wall Street crash as a business opportunity.

Moments after the debate ended, TV studios the world over swung into action with meta-debates of their own. Debates about the debate, so to speak, between liberals and conservatives who were surprisingly easy to tell apart. The liberals talked and behaved like liberals. The conservatives tried their best not to talk and behave like conservatives, and they smiled a lot in an accommodating sort of way. Spotting them was good fun, but generally, these debates told you nothing you didn’t know or suspect already.

On the other hand, NPR’S fact check of the debate, produced by a whole posse of reporters and analysts, framed the issues much better than all the jousting in the studios. Besides, they called out the blather in Trump’s scare-mongering. For instance, in response to the idea that auto jobs were leaving Motown, NPR clarified that the unemployment rate in Michigan and Ohio is better than the US average. And in response to the idea that Beijing was allowing the Renminbi to fall free, an international correspondent responded that China has been selling off foreign reserves to prop up the currency.

NBC Nightly News host Lester Holt, who moderated the presidential debate at Hofstra University, said: “The audience here in the room has agreed to remain silent so that we can focus on what the candidates are saying.” If Indian anchors followed suit and flashed their tonsils a little less freely, perhaps we too would have a fighting chance to understand what’s going on in our neighbourhood.