The Tamil Nadu-based media exerted high decibel
pressure on Indian foreign policy with regard to Sri Lanka. MAYA RANGANATHAN sees this is as a
recasting of public space. Pix: the 12-year-old Balachandran
Posted/Updated
Sunday, Mar 24 23:43:39, 2013
The differences in media on India’s
stand on the US resolution in the UNHRC against Sri Lanka for war crimes seem to
have dissipated post-vote. Indian media is united in opinion that the UPA-led
government at the Centre bungled yet again: the English language media and those
in other regionsberate it for succumbing to pressure
from its electoral ally, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, and the Tamil
media in Tamil Nadu for ignoring the pressure from
the State.
While the
policy implications of either of those arguments in a globalised world and in a
country run by a coalition comprising regional parties are best left to
policy-makers and constitutional experts to analyse, the media coverage in the
run-up to the UN vote and its impact upon the people and polity is significant
for two reasons. First, it signals more ways in which media in general and
regional media in particular recasts the public space, an area effectively
theorised by Robin Jeffrey in the context of the boom in the regional press in
the 1970s; Arvind Rajagopal in post-television India of the 1990s; and more
recently Ursula Rao in the context of news as culture. Secondly, it shows how
domestic political or electoral estimations have come to exert “strong influence
on Indian polity towards the problems of another country.”*The latter issue is more complex in a state like
Tamil Nadu where media and domestic politics are
enmeshed.
It could
be argued that the present outpouring of outrage and grief over the plight of
the thousands that perished in the culmination of the civil war in Sri Lanka in
2009 is to be expected given that pan-Tamil rhetoric has been the staple of both
the regional media and politicians in Tamil Nadu. The ‘Tamil Nadu factor’
clearly at variance with the ‘national nodal point’ was apparent in earlier
instances too concerning the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka: in the protests that
followed the rejection of petition for clemency of the accused in the Rajiv
Gandhi assassination case in 2011 and the adoption of the resolution in UN
seeking a probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka in May 2012. The current protests
in the State are however, markedly different from those in the past, in that
they are not only being led by students and have spread across
the State, but also in that the protestors seem independent of
political party affiliations, the first ever in the case of a political issue.
More significantly, the events stand out for their efforts to influence India’s
foreign policy, which has seldom been contested so in the
past.
The
sentiments of the people in Tamil Nadu became apparent following two stories in
the news media, Callum Macrae’s Opinion carried in op-ed of The
Hindu on February 19 and ‘No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka,’
aired on the channel Pudhiya
Thalaimurai, with commentary in Tamil. While
the contents of both are disturbing, the accounts enjoy more credibility owing
to the media houses that published them. The Hindu’s stand on the LTTE,
its assessment of its supremo V Prabhakaran and the means employed by him are
too widely known to be repeated here. Post-war, it was one of the first media
organisations to report directly from Sri Lanka with the then
editor N Ram visiting the IDP camps facilitated by the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry. The July 2009
report, while castigating the LTTE for using its own people as human shields
against the Sri Lankan forces, had credited the latter with eliminating a
terrorist organisation in a ‘low-intensity military conflict’ and rescuing
300,000 Tamil civilians, in what was described as a ‘poignant human drama’.
Today the picture of the son of the LTTE supremo, the 12-year-old Balachandran
munching a snack, that first accompanied Macrae’s piece in The Hindu has
become the ‘face’ in the protests with hundreds and hundreds of students donning
the mask. However, it must also be noted here that The
Hindu’s warnings on pursuing the demand for a
separate state of Eelam has had few takers. Meanwhile, the documentary on
Pudhiya Thalaimurai, a channel devoid of political leanings and seen as
the most credible of the Tamil satellite television news
channels in the State, has been more effective in
driving home the plight of the Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka during the war than
any other account going by the discussions in social networking
sites.
Television
viewers are only too familiar with 24x7 TV
news channels attempts to influence external
affairs. But media nationalism has seldom had an impact on foreign policies. The
regional factor played an important role in the issue of the UNHRC vote not only
because media and politics are inextricably intertwined in Tamil Nadu adding to
redoubled pressure, but also to the evolution of coalition politics at the
Centre with the Dravidian parties playing decisive roles. It is a moot question
if and how the withdrawal of the DMK would affect the UPA now, but with
coalition governments at the Centre coming to stay, their potential to impact
upon not merely national policies, but international as well, cannot be ignored.
On one level, such processes could amount to a strengthening of the democratic
process, but on the other, they could also lead to further complexities eventuating in the
re-imagination of a nation-state already compounded by enormous
diversities.
Media is yet to become ‘the central and source point of influence’
but it seems to be exerting far more influence than ever before in the age of
evolving media platforms when information has become the most easily available
and in some cases least expensive, commodity. This adds yet another dimension to
the current debate onmedia’s responsibility and its
ability to comprehend and convey matters as
complex as international diplomacy.
*Robin Jeffrey, India’s
newspaper revolution: capitalism and politics of the Indian language
press,1977-99 (UK, C Hurst and Co., 2000); Arvind
Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of
the Public in India (UK, Cambridge University Press, 2001); Ursula
Rao, News as Culture: Journalistic Practices and the Remaking of Indian
Leadership Traditions (New York, Berghahn Books, 2010) and Ashok Malik and Rory Medcalfe, India’s New World: Civil Society in
the Making of Foreign Policy, (Internet resource,http://lowyinstitute.cachefly.net/files/pubfiles/Malik_and_Medcalf,_India%27s_new_world_web.pdf, accessed on Jan 21,
2013).
Students of various colleges shout slogans during a protest against Sri Lanka’s for alleged war crimes in Chennai. TOI Photo)
The new location could be Trivandrum in neighbouring Kerala, the Sunday Times said.
Threats and intimidation of Sri Lankan nationals and Sri Lankan property have been noted in Chennai.
The paper claimed that even the Sri Lankan defence attache based in Chennai had come under harassment.
Last week, two Buddhist monks came under attack triggering noisy protests here near the Indian High Commission premises and Sri Lanka's national carrier also suspended flights to Chennai. Top Indian officials here met with senior Buddhist monks to try to allay fears.
The protests came as India voted against Sri Lanka alongside the US in a key UN human rightsresolution, last week, that called for an independent and credible investigation into allegations ofhuman rights violations towards the end of the island's three-decade civil war against Tamil separatists in 2009.
