Posts Tagged ‘Jarnail Singh’
Laatho ke Bhooth!
Congress has finally bowed down before Jarnail’s Shoe. Tytler and Sajjan Kumar have announced their exit. Jarnail was looking visibly tired in yesterday’s Television show. He was repeating again and again. “I don’t want to make a political comment.” His shoe has already made a huge political statement and the repercussions we saw in Punjab and Delhi filled today’s front pages. I think Tamilnadu has some lessons to draw from these incidents.
Various sections of Tamilnadu, Lawyers, Students, Traders, Fishermen and Political Parties of various hues, are conducting various forms of protests for the past four months against the Genocide at Srilanka. The Genocide that’s taking place with the Indian State actively helping the Sinhalese Army in arms, ammunition and strategy. But Manmohan Singh Govt didn’t showed even a sign of irritation to the commotion in Tamilnadu.
It reminds a crude joke in a Tamil film in which a comedian plays the role of a politician. He announces his master plan for the development of Tamilnadu showing an Indian map and says,
Since Tamilnadu is very far away from Delhi, We are not heard better. So we should lift Tamilnadu from here and place it there, near to Delhi.
May be that’s not a Joke but a fact. You need to protest in and around Delhi so that your protest can be noticed. The volume of the protest is not the factor but the timing. May be i sound like yet another secessionist voice from Tamilnadu like that of Vaiko who is getting bashed by the English Media. Yesterday Vaiko burst out at a public meeting.
Tamil Nadu would witness a bloodbath even if the slightest harm befell Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam leader V. Prabakaran.
This crap is not only insane but an example of the understanding of the entire struggle of Eelam Tamils. So According to vaiko, Tamilnadu will or should face a bloodbath only when Prabakaran gets hurt and not for the thousands of ordinary hapless men and women who are crying desperately for help in the living hell for the past five months. This kind of hero worship that was propagated for years has ditched the Tamilians in a pit where people don’t sense the role they have to play but wait for the magic of Prabakaran, which seems remote.
May be the crux of the issue also lies here. ‘The Hindu’ comes up with a news item on DMK’s rally on the issue and adds a double quote to the word “Genocide”, as if it’s an exaggerated claim in the print edition. Muralidhar Reddy speaks and writes as the defence spokesperson of Srilankan Government. Siddarth Varadarajan is ready to open his mouth on every international issue from palestine to Iran to Egypt, but not on Srilanka. He posts the self-written obituary of Lasantha Wickramatunge that exposes the Fascism of Rajapakse in his blog, but not ready to reply a comment on the totally different stand of his newspaper. P.Sainath writes immediately on Jarnail Singh and the 1984 Genoide but maintains a strange silence on Srilanka. Arundhathi Roy limits herself with a single statement. As a whole, every one buys the argument of Rajapakse and Pranab Mukherjee, in one or another way, that it’s a war to crush the LTTE. No progressive element from the North goes for an analogy that this argument is the exact replica of how Israel defends it’s onslaught on Palestinians. They don’t sense the gravity and the duty of solidarity to the Eelam Tamils which they find with Palestine.
Vaiko and his likes are responsible for this state of affairs by their opportunist stances and appeasing of Indian State for the past two decades by which they have precipitated the Srilankan issue to a single point agenda of whether supporting or not supporting Tigers. The artificial boasting of the umbilical cord relationship has diminished the cry of a just nationality struggle in to a linguistic sentiment in the world view. The excessive word jugglery has not yielded anything except isolation from the rest of india and now we witness the last moments of the most disastrous yet least sensitised Genocide since Second world war.
Jarnail probably shows the way. Like the Hindi Proverb, “Laatho ke bhooth, baato se nahin maante!” (Ghosts of kicks don’t understand the language of words). The conspicuous silence of Indian State needs such a kick at this crucial hour. It may not necessarily repeat the same but an effective and organised election boycott by the whole Tamilnadu. It will be a kick on the entire framework.
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When Justice fails, Shoes are bound to hurl!
It’s just Three months since Zaidi, and we see another shoe hurled at a High Profile politician except the difference in the place and the issue. Yesterday I was watching the umpteen times repeated telecast of the day’s Breaking News. Jarnail Singh turned out the otherwise dull, official Afternoon press meet to a burning sensation. He hurled the shoe muttering “In Protest” towards the dais of the Minister. Note. It could have been very easy for him to hurl it at the face of Chidambaram if he had intended to. But the Forty year old Jarnail Singh, who has been a respected journalist for the past 15 years, probably decided to understate. So he was merely throwing it towards the dais but clearly away from the Minister. He was protesting the home Minister’s justification of the CBI giving clean chit to Jagdish Tytler, so as to enable Tytler to get a party ticket in the forthcoming elections .
But you should have watched the excitement of Barkha Dutt even after Jarnail Singh expressing his regret on air and the ‘gentle soul’ who faced the shoe decided to forgive him. Who did the ‘crime?’ Which one is the Crime, Action or Reaction? Who can forgive whom and for what? Nobody questions But Just preach that one should not go beyond the limits and certainly not a Journalist. Even Chidambaram says Jarnail did it in a fit of emotion. Every one question the Sardar’s Anger. May be he cannot get as angry as Congressmen.
Some riots took place in the country following the murder of Indiraji. We know the people were very angry and for a few days it seemed that India had been shaken. But, when a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it does shake a little.
The quizzical thing was, even Balbir Punj of BJP was part of the discussion giving lectures on how Journalists should behave. Ashwini Kumar of Congress was maintaining ‘restraint’ like his minister, as we all know the time is such. It’s better to control the damage than to make it worse by saying something, that too, at this crucial election hour. Every one was engaged in a hollow discussion on the role of Journalist in Democracy, How-a- Journalist-should-not-become- an-activist and how crossing the limits of the roles is dangerous etc., etc.,
When the patience of the prolonged wait breaks you cannot expect or contain the reaction within the set and safe limits. The only true voice was of Harinder Baweja, Tehelka’s Editor, who put it succinctly.
Jarnail Singh certainly didn’t act like a Journalist but he did what every sikh wants to do except that others don’t have access to high profile leaders. He is a symbol of the anguish and pain suffered by the sikh society which is waiting for justice for the past 25 years. I may not wonder if some day someone else hurls a shoe at Narendra Modi.
“Please take him away, gently, gently, gently, doesn’t matter, please settle down, please settle down,” were the words of Chidambaram following the commotion at the press conference. Sounds metaphoric, right? Exactly like the strategy of Congress on the 1984 genocide… taking away the memory of the genocide gently,gently,gently and settling down the dust, step by step for the past 25 years.
I whole-heartedly support what Jarnail did, but not the half-heartedness with which he did and regretted of what he did in the aftermath, while maintaining the issue remains. The Shoe should have hit the face which could have conveyed better what he wanted to say as a whole.
P.S: Reuters says, Throwing a shoe at someone is considered an insult in India. I remember reading the same thing when happened in Iraq too. Want to know in which part of the world throwing a shoe at someone is not an insult?
Thanks to Countercurrents for republishing.
