India ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: L'Inde

The official version of events raises scores of doubts. The team wanted simple clarifications from the Commissioner of Police, Nagpur and approached him continuously for five days. That the Commossioner persistently declined to meet the team and answer these simple queries, reveal his unwillingness and/or his inability to answer these questions.

It also suggests that he chose to hide certain facts. And this leads the team to question the veracity of the Commissioner of Police's narration of the encounter. The Cock and bull story of the encounter thus compels the team to infer that the encounter appears to be fake and requires, in the interest of the nation, a fair probing.

Constituent member organizations:

People's Union for Civil Liberties,

Nagpur Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights,

Mumbai Dharma Nirapeksh Nagarik Manch, Nagpur

Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee,

Hyderabad Indian Association of People's Lawyers Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti

List of Members

Head of the Team, Justice B G Kolse Patil, Rtd Judge of Mumbai High Court, Convenor, Dr Suresh Khairnar,
Members Dr Anand Teltumde, CPDR, Mumbai; Adv. P Suresh Kumar, Andra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, Hyderabad; Mr Ahmed Latif Khan, Civil Liberty Monitoring Committee, Hyderabad; Dr D John Chelladurai, India Peace Centre, Nagpur; Mr Nagesh Choudhury, Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti, Nagpur; Mr Arvind Ghosh, PUCL, Nagpur; Adv. Anil Kale, Indian Assn of People's Lawyers; Adv. Surendra Gadling, Indian Assn of People's Lawyers; Mr Gaffar Shakir, Dharma Nirapeksha Nagarik Manch, Nagpur; Mr Ashish K Ghosh, PUCL, Nagpur; Mr Arvind Deshmukh, Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti, Nagpur; Mr T V Kathane, Nagpur, Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti,Nagpur; Adv. Anand Gajbhiye, IAPL, Nagpur

Introduction

The nation awoke on June 01, 2006 hearing the shocking news of an attempted attack on the RSS headquarters building. It was a respite that the news of police foiling the attempt too came along.

The news of attempted attack on the Head Quarters of the RSS reportedly by fidayeens of a Pak based terrorist group, sent a spine chilling fear in the minds of millions of peace loving people in the country. We all know very well, the potential of such a happening to ignite a trail of tragic clashes among the communities. The peace loving masses heaved a sigh of relief as the leaders of every community promptly condemned the heinous act and appealed to the masses to maintain peace, and peace did prevail. In the next twenty four hours quite a lot of information, almost all the information pertaining to the attackers had been published obviously supplied by the police department to the media.

The narrative of the whole encounter as reported on June 02, 2006, instead of clearing the mystery of the attackers, unfortunately confounded the citizens all the more. The reports were conflicting and left innumerable questions on ground zero situation unanswered.

The foiled attempt and the appreciable tranquility maintained by the masses were a great relief. However the deadly weapon and ammunition with which the 'fidayeens' (as told by the Commissioner of Police) appeared, and the ease with which the police claimed to have liquidated them, suggested that the Police team had a 'cake walk' over the deadly terrorists. The very next day a section of the media aired their doubt over the whole happening (as reported by the Police Commissioner), most of them quoting wide sections of the national community, including senior leaders.

The peace loving social activists and campaigners for communal harmony based in Nagpur were at first relieved by the success of the police over the terrorists. However the confounding report that appeared in the media and the doubts aired by masses and leaders prompted them to read between the lines. Particularly, the 'Islamic' terrorist attempting to attack RSS Head Quarters has a larger implication. It has the potential to push the nation into a communal strife. Scuh a thing should not be allowed to happen in any manner, orchestrated by any group. The confounding report of the 'encounter' therefore requires an honest study.

The above stated social organizations, hence constituted a fact finding team comprised of the above mentioned activists. The team is headed by Mr B G Kolse Patil, retired Judge of Mumbai High Court, and Convened by Dr Suresh Khairnar, a renowned social thinker and activist. The team visited the site of the encounter, spoke to the people residing in the vicinity. The team also visited the RSS Head Quarters and met Mr Shirish Wate, the HQ incharge.

The team went to Government Medical College to meet the doctors who carried out the postmortem. Dr Dhavane, who was present gave elementary information but declined to give details. The team spoke to Dr Vibhawari Dani, Dean, Govt Medical Hospital and College on telephone. The Dean also declined to reveal the postmortem report. It was a classified document, she said.

The team repeatedly sought an appointment with the Commissioner of Police. The CP too declined to meet the team. On the contrary the CP asked the respectable members their credentials; who funded the team, what international connections does the team have and similar questions with apparent intention to intimidate the team from their earnest effort to help the society to know the truth.

The Incident as reported by Mr S P S Yadav, the Commissioner of Police, Nagpur
The Special squad of the City police who were on high alert following specific input from intelligence agency spotted a white Ambassador car moving in a suspicious manner in Lakdi Pul in Mahal area and started tailing it. Two cars, a Tata Sumo and a Qualis were used in the operation. The tailing cars were unmarked and all police personal in it were wearing plain clothes.

When the ambassador car with red beacon atop moved towards RSS Head Quarters, one for the constables in the Tata Sumo casually asked the young occupants about their intentions. Rattled by the enquiry the militants opened fire on the police vehicle even as they tried to get away. In the process they dashed into the barricade near the eastern side of the RSS HQ. The alert cops led by PSI Rajendra Tiwari, PSI Arvind Saraf and PSI JA More replied to the Gunfire. It was their bulletproof jackets that saved police personnel. The terrorists also threw a hand grenade on the police party. But it failed to explode. They threw the grenade without pulling out the pin.

The gun battle lasted about 20 minutes in which the militants fired 76 rounds while the cops retaliated with 63 rounds. The terrorists had three AK-M automatic weapons, 12 hand grenades and 5.6 Kgs of highly explosive materials with them. They also had three spare magazines for their fire arms each carrying 30 rounds. They had hundred and twenty rounds each, said Mr S P S Yadav. Mr Yadav also reported to have said, looking at their preparation and determination to storm RSS HQ at any cost despite heavy police deployment, indicates that it was a 'fidayeen' attack.

Refusing to divulge the exact identity of the three militants, who were in the age group of 20-22 years, Mr Yadav described them as 'Islamic militants.' At this point of time, he added, it is too premature to associate them with any outfit.

Media reports

As per the details received from the police a white Ambassador car MH 20-8979 with a red beacon and three persons on board dressed as police sub-inspectors, was first spotted by the patrolling police party at the central avenue some time before the incident. The car was heading towards Badkas Chowk. As it emerged form Chitaroli, two police vehicles, a Tata Sumo carrying two PSI and five constables and a Toyoto Qualis with 5 PSI got suspicious about the car. The police vehicles hastened the chase of the suspicious ambassador car. At Badkas chowk the ambassador car took a left turn towards Junta chowk and again turned right towards the Sangh building from the Lakdipul side.

Presuming the car might have gone towards Ayachit mandir the police stopped the chase for a while. However when the police jeep came back to the same place during their routine patrol, they noticed the same car in a small alley between Lakdipul and Gajanan Mandir towards the eastern gate of the RSS Head Quarters. The Police vans then closed in on the ambassador car. However, without paying heed to the police patrol the car tried to force its way through the temporary barricade erected 50 meters before the main entrance of the RSS HQ. At this juncture the PSI Tiwari intercepted the ambassador car and enquired as to where it was heading. Instantly thereafter the two ultras who were seated on the rear seats came out of the car with a grenade in their left hand and AK56 rifle in the right hand. One of them lobbed the grenade at the police, but since the pin was not fully removed it failed to explode. Seeing this the ultras opened indiscriminate fire at the police party. In the melee PSI Saraf who just alighted from the police vehicle got hit at his abdomen. However, since he was wearing a bullet proof vest the bullet did not pierce his body. Soon after this police force and the ultras started exchanging fire in which two of the three militants were killed on the spot. The driver of the car then tried to flee towards the Bhauji Daftari School. However he could not escape the bullets from the police and he too was killed on the spot. The entire shoot out went on for just around 15 minutes between 4.00 and 4.15 AM.

The police then informed the control room and the commissioner of Police about the shoot out. The senior police officers immediately reached the spot and shifted at the three ultras to the government medical college where they were declared brought dead. The members of Dautkhani family along with other neighbours woke up at the sound of the firing and one of his family members opened the door of their house to peep outside.

However alert cops told the family members to shut the door and remain inside the house only. It was to prevent the terrorists from taking shelter in the Dautkani house and taking them as hostages. The operation was carried out by the city police successfully without any loss of life other than that of the militants. The press reported on the 2nd June that, all the three terrorists are said to be Pak nationals. Two of them hailed from Lahore and the third from Gujranwala. The police had seized from the place a dairy which contained email addresses in Urdu, a few phone numbers of Lohare and Gujranwala. Rs 45,000 and maps of the city were recovered from the terrorists.

The names of three terrorists are said to be Afsal Ahmed Bhat, Bilal Ahmed Bhat and Mohammed Usman Habib. Loksatta, (Indian Express Group) Nagpur Marathi edition, dated June 03 2006 carried an article containing the following detail. 'Normally the attacks by the terrorists are preplanned meticulously and they seldom fail in their attempt. This being the public opinion, the recent futile attempt by the terrorists on RSS building and the success gained by the police in thwarting the attempt creates suspicion in public mind as well as among RSS people and their rivals.

Though normally terrorists claim the responsibility of the attack, no terrorist group has claimed any responsibility to this attempt. Therefore the question arises, whether they were hardcore Islamic terrorists or just any other newcomers. According to police statement, threat of attack on RSS head quarters loomed large for the last one year and there was security cordon around the building. Yet the attackers seemed to have no idea of any of them, neither did they seem to know the roads leading to RSS building. And no map of the building and its surrounding could be found with them.

During the whole encounter with the police the terrorists got only one chance to lob a grenade and that too did not explode. That not a single policeman was injured by the bullets of the attackers, puts a question mark on the ability of the terrorists. The attackers could bring a car load of guns and bullets, hand grenades, powerful explosives like RDX from places thousands of kilometers away without being detected or checked by any police or civic authorities, is a matter of surprise even in the RSS circles.

The RSS which usually take such attack on them seriously and go for nationwide protest, unusually kept extraordinary silence and the morning shaka at the headquarters went on with more people attending it. It was a surprise even among the cadres of RSS. This also has created among their functionaries doubt over the bona fide of the attackers. However, they speak in a low voice.

' Mahanayak, a Marathi news paper from Mumbai, published a title page news from its special correspondent from Nagpur, with the caption: "Mahanayak's Special Story on the Attack on RSS Head Quarters." The news goes like this: There is a talk among the Nagpur police that, of the 11 police who conducted the encounter, 6 police did not even know how to handle a carbine. Some of them were under demotion on account of departmental disciplinary action, and they were given this 'chance' to prove their 'worthiness.' Sources close to the police circle say, none of the eleven cops had special commando training. The authorities punished two of them, for they extorted from a 'gutka' merchant a huge amount (Rs 3.5 lakhs) five months ago, in the Panchpoli police station area. At the orders of the CP they were shifted to another 'punishment' section. Police inner circle is surprised at the composition of the squad for most of them do not know to handle guns properly.

The reporter gives details of many indisciplines of the eleven police personals and wonders how and on what basis they were selected for Special Squad to handle such an important assignment in the RSS HQ.

Observations of the fact team

1. When the police had prior information about possible attack on RSS Head Quarters and the police were prepared, as stated by the Commissioner of Police (CP), to handle possible attack, why did they allow the attackers to go close to the RSS HQ? Why did the Police not stop them at first sight?

2. We hear from the residents, that the police had a kind of rehearsal to the 'encounter' few days back on the same spot. Police even fired in the air on the occasion, they claim. And when the actual encounter took place, these residents said, they first thought that it was yet another demonstration. Why did the police take a demo a few days ago?

3. The CP has said, "when the ambassador car with red beacon atop moved towards RSS HQ, one of the constables in the Tata Sumo casually asked the young occupants about their intentions. Rattled by the inquiry the militants opened fire on the police vehicle even as they tried to get away." For the constable to ask casually, either he must have brought his car (the police vehicle) side by side to the terrorist vehicle or he (the constable) must have come by foot close to terrorist vehicle (and asked them). In either case the constable must have been exposed to the terrorist attack at close quarter. How did the constable escape unhurt? The narration of the incident doesn't have any detail to clarify this.

4. There is no eyewitness to the whole happening. The encounter took place according to the police at 4.15 AM. The bodies of the assailants were removed even before the press reporters (who were the first people other than the Police) reached the spot, close to 5.00 AM. Why this hurry?

5. Day one media report says, Deputy Commissioner Mr Prabhat Kumar was in the patrolling team and he smelled foul and started tailing it in their unmarked blue Tata Sumo. Why did the CP not bring him (Mr P Kumar) in his (CP) narration of the encounter? Why did CP hide the DCP?

6. Another report says that the patrolling police that tailed the ambassador at one point "presumed the car might have gone towards Ayachit mandir the police stopped the chase for a while. However when the police jeep came back to the same place during their routine patrol, they noticed the same car in a small alley between Lakdipul and Gajanand Mandir towards the eastern gate of the RSS Head Quarters. As the point where the police missed the ambassador car and the place where they saw them again are the same small alley, do the police mean to say that the attackers were waiting over there until then?

7. It is said that the attackers' car tried to force its way through the barricade. The said barricade was installed a couple of weeks before June 01 2006, in the aftermath of weapon seizure from antisocial elements in the State. When the attackers came where were the sentries posted at the barricade? They must have been the first one to stop the terrorists or get attacked by the terrorists. Where were they?

8. The exchange of fire took place for twenty minutes, it was reported. Can anyone explain how the police disabled the terrorists from using the dozen hand grenades and the 360 rounds of bullets?

9. That the terrorists had 12 hand grenade, 360 rounds of bullets, 5.6 Kgs of highly explosive material which was later stated to be RDX, and they battled for twenty minutes 'hopelessly' not using any of them, is a narration that fails to convince common sense.

10. It was reported that the police recovered from the terrorists' vehicle a sealed case containing 12 hand grenades. The terrorists coming on a deadly mission carrying their munitions in sealed cases does not comply the logic of terrorist attack. They did not even open them when they were fighting for 20 minutes in a losing battle makes the narration all the more unconvincing.

11. That the terrorists, reported to be 'fidayeen' who chose to travel on white ambassador car with red beacon atop, not knowing what is the official protocol but chose to wear PSI dress, does not comply with the statement of the CP that the terrorists were a trained fidayeens.

12. The reported information that the police recovered wet underwear and soaked bathing soap from the white ambassador car suggests that they could not have been 'terrorists' on a mission involving their very life.

13. The police declared them as 'Islamic' terrorist and Pak based 'fidayeens'. The stated seizure of a diary containing all their names and their own telephone numbers sounds farce. Usually we do not write our own telephone numbers in our dairy. Terrorists of deadly mission carrying a dairy with their own identities when they were on an attack, do not appeal common sense.

14. Even if the police had found a dairy belonging to the attackers, how did they decipher the code names and codified messages in so short a time that in less than 10 hours the CP could reveal their identity as 'Islamic' terrorist and 'fidayeens'? (the history of terrorist attack tells clearly that the terrorists do not carry written documents. If they have to write anything they choose to write in codes and false names.)

15. What authentication did the police possess to finally declare them as Muslims and bury them according to Islamic rituals? What was the hurry to bury the dead bodies of the terrorists without establishing their identity?

16. Few holes on the walls (opposite to Bharat Mahila Vidyalay) are, said by the CID official present at the site, as bullet marks. Two of the six marks found to be marks of bullets fired from right across, at 90 degrees. One bullet mark, as marked by the police on the Bharat Mahila Vidyalay wall too clearly indicates that the bullet was fired at 90 degrees. Were the police and their vehicle come side by side the terrorists? It was amusing, that the police officer present at the time of the team's visit to the spot, told that bullets fired by the policemen down the lane from behind the terrorist vehicle possibly took an aerial curve and hit the wall at 90 degree.

17. There is hardly any mark of terrorist bullets on the other side, except on the Police vehicle.

18. The blue Tata Sumo vehicle that was tailing behind the terrorist vehicle had six bullet marks. Two of them were at least apparently pistol bullet marks. The police report did not mention terrorists having used pistols. How did pistol bullet marks appear on the police vehicle?

19. The terrorists were reported to have fired from AK-M automatic guns. The bullet marks on the blue Tata Sumo of the police bear bullet marks that are all single shot marks. There is no series of bullet marks (which is expected if the opponents were using automatic guns) that raises the doubt over nature of the exchange of fire.

20. One bullet hole was found (in the police blue Tata Sumo vehicle) on the right side front door from inside. The point of hit was almost at the hip of the driver. Had the driver been on his seat he should have been hit. There was no such report. It is clear that the driver was not in the seat at the time of firing. We found bullet marks on the same police vehicle hit from three angles on the left side of the vehicle. Three bullets were 45 degrees from behind, two bullets 90 degrees on the left and one bullet 130 degree further that hit just below the front windshield. The question is, if the vehicle is not on the move during the attack, (as the bullet did not hit the driver), then how did the bullet mark appear from three angles? This question assumes significance as it was not possible for the terrorists to move to such wide range and fire from all three angles, for they were caught in their vehicle that was trapped in a narrow alley and they were immobilized.

21. Mr S P S Yadav, Commissioner of Police is reported to have said, "Looking at their preparation and determination to storm RSS HQ at any cost despite heavy police deployment, indicates that it was a 'fidayeen' attack." This conclusion of the CP amounts to be hasty in his decision; or the terrorists were in his hands prior to the encounter, for him to know about them in detail.

22. On the site of the encounter was parked a white Maruti Omni car at the premises of Mr Jopat, the compound wall being fenced by barbed wire. As the house is the first one in the lane (in front of which raised the barricade) and the attackers were inside the lane, if the police wanted to target the attackers, they should have gone some where behind this Maruti Omni car. When there was over 140 rounds of fire, there is not a single bullet mark on the vehicle.

This creates strong doubts over the nature of reported encounter.

Recommendations

The official version of events raises scores of doubts. The team wanted simple clarifications from the Commissioner of Police, Nagpur and approached him continuously for five days. That the CP persistently declined to meet the team and answer these simple queries, reveal his unwillingness / inability to face these fair queries.

It also suggests that he chose to hide certain facts. And this lead the team to question the veracity of the Commissioner of Police's narration of the encounter. The Cock and Bull story of the encounter thus compels the team to infer that the encounter appears to be fake and requires, in the interest of the nation, a fair probing.

The team therefore, calls upon the Central government to appoint a judicial enquiry committee headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court and probe the whole episode.

http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Religion-communalism/2006/nagp...

By Praful Bidwai, June 8, 2006, Nav Hind Times

The Chhattisgarh government is about to launch a massive military operation against the Naxalites with more than a dozen Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) battalions under the command of the so-called ‘supercop’ and former Punjab director-general of police, Mr K P S Gill. The operation has been called the ‘ultimate’ blow or ‘knockout’ punch against ‘the Red Menace’ and will reportedly involve the use of helicopters. The CRPF will be assisted by special commandos from Mizoram, who have been trained in counter-insurgency operations by United States troops at Vairangte for more than a decade.

Mr Gill’s strategy, whose blueprint is with the Union home ministry, involves gathering reliable intelligence on the Maoists’ hideouts and movements, and hitting them hard, “In a sudden and well-coordinated attack”. According to a leak to the media, “The thrust of the Gill [strategy] is to launch a swift offensive, giving little time to [the] Maoist guerrillas to regroup and retaliate”. The plan also involves evacuation of a large number of people from the forests of southern Bastar and clearing them of mature trees.

It’s a safe bet that this operation will further brutalise the civilian population without being particularly effective against the Naxalites. The Union and state governments should call off the operation at once.

The operation is a sequel to a ‘people’s campaign’ called Salwa Judum (peace hunt or movement) launched a year ago by the state government, which has all but triggered a civil war in parts of Chhattisgarh. Salwa Judum (SJ) targets the Naxalites for violent attacks. Its members generally comprise the local elite, including wealthy Adivasis, traders and contractors. Formally, SJ is the creation of Congress legislature party chief, Mr Mahendra Karma, politically known as ‘the 60th member of BJP CM, Mr Raman Singh’s cabinet’. In truth, the SJ idea was conceived by the former Bharatiya Janata Party home minister, Mr Brij Mohan Aggarwal.

A group called Independent Citizens’ Initiative (ICI), recently released a fact-finding report on SJ which makes disturbing reading. It shows that SJ is not the ‘people’s spontaneous resistance or uprising’ against the Naxalites as claimed but a government-sponsored and funded organisation which has an armed wing consisting of 3,200 Special Police Officers (SPO).

In essence, says ICI, the Chhattisgarh government has ‘outsourced’ its law-and-order functions to an ‘unaccountable, undisciplined and amorphous group’ not trained to use firearms properly. SJ has been forcing tribals to take up arms against the Naxalites-on pain of being beaten up, illegally fined, or have their homes burnt down. SPOs are meant to work under the authority of the state police, but in Chhattisgarh’s Naxalite-affected districts, the regular police has ceded all power to them.

SJ’s violent operations have turned the tribal belt of Bastar into a virtual war-zone, in which Adivasis are pitted against Adivasis and forced to fight the Maoists to whose retaliation they become vulnerable. Scores of villages have been evacuated. The Adivasis’ social life has been destroyed. Officially, as many as 46,000 people have been compelled to move into so-called relief camps near highways. According to interviews conducted by ICI with local people, officials, journalists and foresters, the number of displaced people is as high as 70,000.

ICI found “evidence of killings, the burning of homes, and attacks on women, including gang-rape.” There are arbitrary arrests and “several people seem to be missing. The press is tightly controlled and intimidated...”

SJ is guilty of recruiting even minors as SPOs-a breach of the Geneva Convention and of several covenants on child rights to which the government is a signatory. Equally disturbingly, an attempt is under way to break up tribal communities into the equivalent of “Strategic Hamlets” which the United States (US) created in the 1960s in Vietnam in its brutal. Just last fortnight, two officials of the US embassy met the Chhattisgarh chief secretary (home), Mr B K S Ray to offer the state assistance in fighting the threat. Although the government has not accepted the offer, it’s clearly following the same militaristic approach that the US favours to deal with insurgents and guerrillas.

Ostensibly, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government advocates a “two-pronged” strategy: deal sternly with Naxalite violence; but simultaneously address the socio-economic sources of discontent underlying it through development programmes. In March, Union Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil tabled a status paper on the issue in which he spelt out a 14-point policy based on such a dual approach. In reality, the government has concentrated much of its effort on ‘modernisation’ of state police forces, long-term deployment of paramilitary troops, and use of modern lethal weaponry.

The bulk of the financial assistance of Rs 2,475 crore committed to the 55 worst Naxalite-affected districts is earmarked for police-paramilitary operations.

The government has concentrated only one thing: force. This approach springs from a ‘thanedar mentality’ or that coercion is the most effective way of dealing with social discontent. This approach fails to understand that Naxalite activity has spread to some 160 of India’s 600 districts because of rising agrarian distress, destruction of forests by the timber mafia, uprooting of Adivasis due to predatory mining, irrigation and metallurgical projects, and rapidly growing income and regional disparities. It’s not a coincidence that more than two-thirds of the 55 most severely Naxalite-affected districts lie in the tribal belt. In state after tribal state, the Adivasi economy has been squeezed and marginalised to a point where millions of Adivasis have ceased being an agricultural people.

More generally, Naxalite activity has grown-year after every single year-because of India’s jobless and destructive growth which benefits only a tenth or so of the population. It’s hard to defend the violent justice that many Naxalite groups readily hand out to their enemies. Some have even developed a stake in extortion.

However, the problem this poses cannot be resolved, even mitigated, by coercion, especially the lawless use of force without accountability. That’s precisely what SJ has practised. This cannot but further alienate Chhattisgarh’s Adivasis and throw even the more neutral of them into the Naxalites arms. Social discontent typically takes a violent turn when all peaceful avenues are closed.

Mr Gill is a dogmatic votary of the coercive approach. One of the greatest myths created about him is that he effectively, yet lawfully, crushed the Punjab insurgency. The National Human Rights Commission has just authenticated the judicial finding that almost 2,000 people were cremated without identification in a single year in Punjab. It has ordered compensation to the victims’ relatives. The Centre must radically revise its Naxalite strategy and open a dialogue with Maoist groups.If the Manmohan Singh government can hold round after round of talks with separatists from Jammu and Kashmir and with the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, there is no reason why it cannot talk to non-secessionist groups which voice the grievances of the people.

by Siddharth Varadarajan


03 June 2006


If television and newspaper coverage of the anti-reservation agitation was indulgent and one-sided, the lack of diversity in the newsroom is surely a major culprit.

MY FIRST brush with caste prejudice in higher education came in 1999, when a group of Dalit students from the University College of Medical Sciences (UCMS) came to see me at my office in another English newspaper where I worked at the time as an editorial writer.

The students were residents of the hostel and had silently borne the brunt of casteist abuse and discrimination for some time. Whether by happenstance or design, the Scheduled Caste students were confined to two floors and not assigned rooms elsewhere in the building. In the dining hall, they were forced by the forward caste majority to sit together at one end. If a Dalit student sat somewhere else, he would be abused. "Bloody shaddu," one of them was told when he sat amidst others by mistake, "you cannot eat with us."

The Dalits put up with this harassment and humiliation because, as one of their parents told them, "you have to become a doctor at any cost." But the abuse eventually turned to violence and when one of the students was badly beaten and another had his room ransacked, they decided to go on a dharna. This is also when they ended up in my office.

After hearing them out, I requested the head of the Metro section to send someone to UCMS to cover the story. I was promised a reporter would be sent soon. Several days went by but nothing appeared. It turned out no reporter was assigned. I tried again, this time going one notch higher in the editorial chain-of-command. Again there was no response. Eventually, I decided to do the story myself. I spent half-a-day at the college, interviewed the college authorities, the students on dharna as well as the general category students. One of them admitted reluctantly to using the slur `shaddu' for the Scheduled Caste students but only as a `pet name'.

I filed the story but it did not appear the next day or the day after. Nobody ever said the story was not interesting or not up to scratch but for some reason space could never be found. The story finally appeared, in a cut and mutilated form, a full month after the Dalit students began their dharna. Needless to say, the travails of the Dalit students at UCMS were not considered newsworthy enough by other newspapers or by any of the news channels.

I narrate this story because of how it contrasts with the extraordinary indulgence the national media showed the nearly month-long anti-reservation agitation of doctors and medical students at AIIMS and other colleges. Despite the 24x7 presence of TV cameras, the daily protests in favour of reservation by AIIMS doctors and staff under the banner of `Medicos Forum for Equal Opportunities' were virtually blacked out. One channel showed the counter-protest last Sunday only when a `citizen journalist' presented it with footage he had shot. Often, it was impossible to separate the breathless TV reporters from the anti-reservation doctors they were reporting about. The insensitive and casteist forms of protest some of them adopted — the `symbolic' sweeping of streets, the shining of shoes, the singing of songs warning OBCs and others to `remember their place' (`apni aukat mein rahio') — were put on air without comment by the channels. Nobody asked what kind of doctors these `meritorious' students were likely to become if they had such contempt towards more than half the population of India. And in a media discourse which routinely reports the protests of the underprivileged only as "traffic jams" and other disruptions to the "normal" life of the city, the suffering of poor patients as a result of the AIIMS strike figured largely as a footnote to the "heroic" struggle the medical students and junior doctors were waging.

Amidst the hysteria induced by the media coverage, no one cared to point out how indulgent the AIIMS authorities themselves were being towards the anti-reservation strike. Earlier this year, when a section of doctors concerned about higher user fees being imposed on poor patients sought to protest, they were warned of dire consequences. Under the terms of a High Court order, no protest or demonstration is permitted within the AIIMS campus. Yet nobody demurred when the anti-reservation students occupied the lawns, put up shamianas and coolers and received the "solidarity" of traders, event managers, and IT employees (whose employers usually ban their own staff from ever striking work.)

While there were honourable exceptions — Outlook, The Hindu , and Frontline among them, as well as individual reporters in some newspapers and channels — would the media's coverage have been more balanced had there been a greater degree of caste diversity in the newsroom and editorial boards of our newspapers and channels? Put another way, in egging the forward caste students on to oppose any extension of reservation, were forward caste editors and reporters reflecting their own personal impatience with the idea of affirmative action? Was the media coverage, then, a display of trade unionism by the privileged?

There are no official or industry statistics but every journalist is aware of the extent to which forward castes dominate the media. When B.N. Uniyal surveyed the scene in 1996, he found not a single Dalit accredited journalist in Delhi. Today, the position is unlikely to be much better. At a recent meeting of Journalists for Democracy, it was reported that an informal survey had found that the number of accredited North Indian OBC journalists in Delhi was under 10. I myself have counted the number of Muslims with accreditation to the Press Information Bureau and they barely cross the three per cent mark. In Chhattisgarh, a recent attempt to send Tribal journalists on a training programme had to be dropped because there was none.

One is not saying the absence of Dalit or OBC journalists is the product of conscious discrimination though that factor cannot be ruled out. But the reality of their absence is something the media must have the courage to acknowledge.

In an ideal world where professionalism is paramount, the caste or religious affiliation of a journalist should not matter. But journalism that has little or no space for the majority of citizens is bound to end up missing out on the complexity of the society it seeks to cover. Story ideas will not be taken up, or if taken up then covered only from a particular perspective. To be sure, many of the negative trends so evident in Indian journalism — the shrinkage of space, the lack of coverage of rural India or of the problems of poor Indians, the episodic, frenetic nature of news, the cult of the Sensex, the preoccupation with trivia and sensationalism — will not be cured by newspapers and TV channels hiring more Dalit, OBC, and Muslim journalists. But greater workplace diversity will certainly infuse a greater degree of vitality in the newsroom as wider varieties of lived experience intrude upon and clash with the largely urban, rich, forward caste Hindu certitudes of the overwhelming majority of journalists.

Far from seeing affirmative action as a threat, India's media houses should look upon the entry of Dalit, Tribal, OBC, and Muslim journalists as an opportunity to broadbase their journalism and make it more professional and authentic. Last year, Ankur and Sarai-CSDS provided teenagers in the now-demolished slum cluster of Nangla Machi with computers. The daily diaries and fly-sheets they produced even as their homes were being brought down by bulldozers is journalism of as high a quality as anyone can find in India today (Interested readers should visit http://www.sarai.net/nm.htm). Certainly their writings tell us more about the reality of "slum clearance" than any of our TV channels, and in prose that is better than what one normally gets to read in our newspapers.

As the OBC and SC-ST youths who want to become doctors and engineers are saying, merit is not simply a score that can be bought by parents who have the money to invest in the most expensive education for their children. It is also about the talent that all children have within them regardless of their caste or socio-economic background. A society — or an industry like the media — which does not find a way to tap that talent will only end up impoverishing itself. Specifically, media houses must seriously think about starting internships and training programmes for Dalit, Tribal, Muslim, and OBC students interested in becoming journalists.

Reservation, affirmative action, targeted expenditure, and investment are all means of society helping people unlock their inherent talent. As pro-reservation scholars such as Yogendra Yadav, Satish Deshpande, Purshottam Aggarwal, and others have argued, the United Progressive Alliance Government's current approach is not necessarily the best one. But by conducting a shrill campaign and encouraging forward caste students to launch an ill-conceived agitation, the media themselves foreclosed the possibility of a rational debate on what the best way of building an inclusive education system really is. When the dust settles, the media should introspect and ask what they can do to make society as a whole more inclusive. Encouraging conversation and not hectoring is one way. But another is surely to diversify the newsroom by consciously bringing in those sections of society who have hitherto been excluded. There are a million stories out there waiting to be told. If only we allow the storytellers to do the telling.

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