[Assam] Hotel Taj: Icon of whose India?

[Chan Mahanta]

For a change, a thoughtful piece amongst the drumbeat of the tripe.

Thanks for sharing Baruah.











At 6:21 AM -0500 12/3/08, baruah at bard.edu wrote:
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: girish karnawat <girishkarnawat at gmail.com>
>Date: 2 Dec 2008 15:44
>Subject: Hotel Taj: Icon of whose India?
>
>Hotel Taj: Icon of whose India?
>
>Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai.
>
>  Watching at least four English news channels, surfing from one 
>another during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a 
>terror of another kind, the terror of assaulting one's mind and 
>sensitivity with cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All 
>these channels have been trying to manufacture my consent for a big 
>lie called - Hotel Taj the icon of India
>
>  Whose India, Whose Icon?
>
>  It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not 
>bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from 
>terrorists - the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. 
>CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station 
>hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West 
>Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, 
>transforming themselves  into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of 
>today along with the Marathis and Kolis
>
>  But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they recognise 
>the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform of CST. No 
>Barkha Dutt went there to tell us who they were. But she was at Taj 
>to show us the damaged furniture and reception lobby braving the 
>guards. And the TV cameras did not go to the government run JJ 
>hospital to find out who those 26 unidentified bodies were. Instead 
>they were again invading the battered Taj to try in vain for a scoop 
>shot of the dead bodies of the page 3 celebrities.
>
>   In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of 
>workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving 
>by train at CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify them. 
>Even after 60 hours after the CST massacre, no channel has bothered 
>to cover in detail what transpired there.
>
>The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the  Aam Aadmis 
>of India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by  Taj, Oberoi and 
>Trident closing down for a couple of weeks  or months. What mattered 
>to them was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban trains even for 
>one hour. But the channels were not covering that aspect of the 
>terror attack.  Such information at best merited a scroll line, 
>while the cameras have to be dedicated for real time thriller 
>unfolding at Taj or Nariman Bhavan.
>
>  The so called justification for the hype the channels built around 
>heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is 
>that Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the 
>globe congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and 
>politics, not India. It is the icon of the financiers and swindlers 
>of India. The Mumbai and India were built by the Aam Aadmis who 
>passed through CST and Taj was the oasis of peace and privacy for 
>those who wielded power over these mass of labouring classes. 
>Leopold  club and Taj were the haunts of rich spoilt kids who would 
>drive their vehicles over sleeping Aam Aadmis on the  pavement, the 
>Mafiosi of Mumbai forever financing the  glitterati of Bollywood 
>(and also the terrorists) ,  
>Political brokers and industrialists
>
>  It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people 
>that the terrorists chose to strike.
>  The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam 
>Aadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and trains. 
>He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she can even 
>survive.
>
>   Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news 
>channels and their patrons this time.  What resilience, enough is 
>enough, said Pranoy Roy's channel on the left side of the channel 
>spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing 
>the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep 
>be far behind in this game of one-upmanship over TRPs ? They all 
>attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm action from the 
>government in tackling terror
>
>  The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in 
>trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The 
>resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class of 
>Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When 
>it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves 
>and refused to be resilient themselves. They cry for government 
>intervention now to protect their private spas and swimming pools 
>and bars and restaurants, similar to the way in which Citibank, 
>General Motors and the ilk cry for government money when their 
>coffers are emptied by their own ideologies
>
>The terrorists have learnt that the ordinary Indian is unperturbed 
>by terror. For one whose daily existence itself is a terror of 
>government sponsored inflation and market sponsored exclusion, pain 
>is something he has learnt to live with. The rich of Mumbai and 
>India Inc are facing the pain for the first time and learning about 
>it just as the middle classes of India learnt about violation of 
>human rights only during emergency, a cool 28 years after 
>independence.
>
>  And human rights were another favourite issue for the channels to 
>whip at times of terrorism.
>Arnab Goswami in an animated voice wondered where were those 
>champions of human rights now, not to be seen applauding the brave 
>and selfless police officers who gave up their life in fighting 
>terrorism. Well, the counter question would be where were you when 
>such officers were violating the human rights of Aam Aadmis. Has 
>there ever been any 24 hour non stop coverage of violence against 
>dalits and adivasis of this country?
>
>  This definitely was not the time to manufacture consent for the 
>extra legal and third degree methods of interrogation of police and 
>army but Arnabs don't miss a single opportunity to serve their class 
>masters, this time the jingoistic patriotism came in handy to 
>whitewash the entire uniformed services.
>
>  The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went down 
>dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart rending 
>but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but also 
>brain. Israel has a point when it says the operations were 
>misplanned resulting in the death of its nationals here.
>
>Kakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit the 
>mistake of travelling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson in 
>management that the top brass should never travel together in 
>crisis. The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels, would 
>have laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine 
>commandos, an elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in a 
>see-through cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea 
>about the structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to 
>liberate. But the terrorists knew the place thoroughly, he 
>acknowledged.
>
>  Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and discuss 
>operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before entering? 
>This is something even an event manager would first ask for, if he 
>had to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural event in a 
>hotel. Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his ancestral 
>hotel to the commandos within one hour considering the mighty 
>apparatus at his and government's disposal?  Are satellite pictures 
>only available for terrorists and not the government agencies?  In 
>an operation known to consume time, one more hour for preparation 
>would have only improved the efficiency of execution.
>
>  Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances. 
>But the Aam Aadmis always believe that terror-shooters do better 
>planning than terrorists. And the gullible media in a jingoistic 
>mood would not raise any question about any of these issues.  They 
>after all have their favourite whipping boy ? the politician the 
>eternal entertainer for the non-voting rich classes of India.
>
>  Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Manmohan Singh and Advani 
>visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing solidarity even 
>at this hour of national crisis.  What a farce? Why can't these 
>channels pool together all their camera crew and reporters at this 
>time of national calamity and share the sound and visual bites which 
>could mean a wider and deeper coverage of events with such a huge
>  human resource to command?   Why should Arnab and Rajdeep and 
>Barkha keep harping every five minutes that this piece of 
>information was exclusive to their channel, at the time of such a 
>national crisis? Is this the time to promote the channel? If that is 
>valid, the politician promoting his own political constituency is 
>equally valid. And the duty of the politician is to do politics, his 
>politics. It is for the people to evaluate that politics
>
>  And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means. 
>To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the 
>practice of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning and 
>improvement. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps 
>terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin. And 
>the rich and powerful always prefer terrorists and dictators to do 
>business with.
>
>Those caught in this crossfire are always the Aam Aadmis whose 
>deaths are not even mourned - the taxi driver who lost the entire 
>family at CST firing, the numerous waiters and stewards who lost 
>their lives working in Taj for a monthly salary that would be one 
>time bill for their masters.
>
>Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to 
>all the channels, 30 hours through the coverage.  After all they 
>have been constantly asking the viewers to message them for anything 
>and everything. My message read: I send this with lots of pain. All 
>channels, including yours, must apologise for not covering the 
>victims of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam aadmis of 
>India. Your obsession with five star elite is disgusting. Learn from 
>the print media please.  No channel bothered. Only srinivasan Jain 
>replied: you are right. We are trying to redress balance today. 
>Well, nothing happened till the time of writing this 66 hours after 
>the terror attack.
>
>
>
>--
>Girish Dariyav Karnawat
>
>--
>Groupe SCE India Pvt ltd
>Bangalore
>Karnataka
>INDIA
>
>
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>Co-founder and Publisher
>YODA PRESS
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>
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