It’s been barely three days since a bloodthirsty monster called Adil Ahmad Dar rammed a vehicle laden with 300 Kgs of explosives into a CRPF convoy and killed over 40 jawans in Pulwama district of Kashmir. All because he hated people ‘who drink urine of cows’, whom he accused of ‘occupying’ his land. His hatred for people following certain beliefs and imagined practices left more than 40 families devastated and an entire nation in grief.
Some of these jawans were about to get married. There was someone waiting for each one of them to come back home to share some happy news. Someone was to hold in his hands a baby for the first time after being a father. Someone maybe wanted to say a sorry in person to his wife for that stupid tiff he had last time when he was home.
As a journalist, there are so many stories, human stories, that you can bring to your readers about these jawans.
Instead, in the last three days, the Indian media, especially the English language media, has been able to bring to you only the human stories about the terrorist Adil Dar.
Stories about how the monster was just an average boy who became a terrorist because someone in the Indian Army had asked him to rub his nose on the ground – an unverified claim by his lying father, who in all probability, like his monster son, also imagines every Hindu drinking urine of cow as first thing in the morning while he sips his Kashmiri kahva.
If you know about a father in Bihar who lost his son in Pulwama attack, but is ready to send another son at the border to teach Pakistan a lesson, it’s not because you read an article about him in one of these English publications, but because you saw it on Twitter or got that video clip or screenshot of a tweet forwarded to your WhatsApp by someone in your social circle.
The English language boutique ‘liberal’ media is just stuck on the terrorist. Each day we are being told some new ‘human’ angle about the monster.
Initial reports in the publications like The Wire and Scroll, which were duly shared by many people from Pakistan, informed us how Adil was just an ordinary guy who wanted to become a maulvi. He also used to take part in stone pelting. This was profile of an ‘average’ next door peaceful Kashmiri boy they painted.
Perhaps they soon realised that this is not something that might be easily palatable to the rest of India, so came the next round of humanising the monster, and this time Congress mouthpiece National Herald took the lead. The terrorist loved watching cricket and was a fan of MS Dhoni, they said.
Dhoni, whom the monster would imagine as gulping urine of cow during drinks breaks, and who flaunts his army uniform due to his honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel, will be the favourite cricketer of someone who sees Indian Army as an occupying force? Well, Rahul Gandhi’s newspapers says so, so must be true as everything Rahul Gandhi says.
Apart from this, interviews and profiles of his family members were plastered over in the English language media. One report in Hindustan Times subtly mentioned how Adil’s mother chanted “religious slogans” when a crowd started gathering in. No mention of what those slogans were, what they signify, and what was the reason for shouting slogans for a crowd. Remember this same crowd finds a “Jai Shri Ram” chant or an “Angry Hanuman” poster a call for violence, but some slogans shouted in presence of a charged-up crowd are just “religious slogans”.
Pictures of his parents were meticulously chosen for publication, where they appear to be in grief, though going by their accounts and beliefs, they appear satisfied that their son did a great job and is currently enjoying in heaven, where the terrorist too believed he was destined to go.
The terrorist and his family are painstakingly being sanitised, their views and deeds whitewashed, even as tears have not dried up for the martyrs.
You’ve to wonder what makes the media behave this way. Why such desperation to give human angle to a monster? This is not for the first time. Remember the tweet by Barkha Dutt, where she intuitively used the phrase “son of poor headmaster” while referring to the terrorist Burhan Wani.
There can only be two reasons for this and both are dangerous – delusion or collusion.
Delusion that they are working for some grand peace project that can be achieved by not hating each other – as I am doing by repeatedly by calling a dead young man as a monster – but by ‘understanding’ each other.
Sorry, I don’t have time. When someone is pelting stones at my house, I will first make sure my windows and doors are strong and locked. I have no plans of asking the stonepelter to add me on WhatsApp where we’d share good morning forwards and win each other’s hearts. In fact, I’d call up the cops and want the bast*rd to be beaten up in lock-up. If any of the journalist thinks that I’m being too hateful, let them allow me to pelt stones at their houses with impunity, and let them also add me on Facebook and WhatsApp where it’s incumbent on them to win my heart. I am open to learn how to love.
But on a serious note, yes, one can go beyond immediate anger and knee-jerk reactions to look at the ‘bigger picture’. I don’t deny that. But understanding terrorism is a long-term project that doesn’t necessarily have to involve humanising a terrorist. Take that up as academic study, not as a mean to showcase your literary creativity by dishing out fiction.
If you want to discuss root causes of terrorism, all for that, but you know that the root causes you like to advertise – poverty, inequity, and blah blah – are all phony and they won’t stand the test of either logic or facts, so you need fiction to propagate those theories. Root cause is primarily an ideology that you for some reason can’t put your fingers on.
People are free to be deluded. Extremely religious or extremely ‘liberal’ people are often deluded. But deluded people setting up narrative through mass media is dangerous. It will make us a deluded nation, which we can’t afford when the enemy is devious and scheming.
If the media persons are not deluded, and this humanising of a terrorist is all rationally thought about, then they are in collusion with Jihadists and Islamists, which is even more dangerous. Do remember that Pakistan’s official Kashmir policy is to use the media to further their agenda.
The possibility of Indian mainstream media filled with Jihad sympathizers is very real and it’s not limited just to journalists in Kashmir. It’s a known fact that many mainstream journalists have been members of Left leaning outfits during their college days. Even someone like N Ram of The Hindu, who doesn’t just have editorial but management control over the newspaper, was the vice-president of the SFI, an outfit linked with CPM and often accused of violence on campuses, during his college days.
The same ideology and cult mindset, which is seen in violent student outfits, gets institutionalized in various media organisations as they get infested with former members of the outfits joining the company. What later manifests in the O’Sullivan’s Law.
Further, the Leftists have aligned themselves with the Islamists globally (except in Islamic countries, where they are butchered regularly if they profess atheist beliefs).
Why the Leftists love to get in bed with Islamists is another issue, and it requires as much a discussion and analysis as why people turn to terrorism, but the truth is that there is an obvious element of collusion. The results are humanising a terrorist who clearly didn’t treat others as humans.
And the worst part is, they are humanising him while shielding his dehumanisation of Hindus. There is virtually no mention of the hatred he had for people ‘who drink cow urine’.
What end objectives are being achieved though this collusion is not hard to guess, and it is very sinister.
There is a need to protect ourselves not only from Adil Dars, but from those who find a Dhoni fan and an innocent teenager in the guy who is the face of ISIS 2.0 – a face that we will unfortunately see more often as an army of media men are ready to put a halo around it.
