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Sunday Sentiments

  • Made for television

    Posted On April 5, 1999

    By Karan Thapar

    War as entertainment? It might sound odd but increasingly it’s true. I’m not referring to the surfeit of Oscar-winning films such as Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line. They, after all, are part of a Hollywood package that even when it seeks to shock still captivates and mesmerises. No, I’m talking about war as a television event. What started with the Gulf War in 1990 has reached its apogee in Kosovo and Serbia this year.

    “And now we go live to Belgrade, which last night experienced the heaviest NATO bombing of the present campaign, to talk to Yugoslavia’s Deputy Prime Minister”, Peter Dobie announces on BBC World. Something similar happens everyday and not just on the Beeb. CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Sky News stage similar spectacles.

    “What’s the mood after last night’s bombing and how are the people facing up to it?” Dobie asks.

    “It’s bad” replies Vuk Draskovic, Yugoslavia’s Deputy PM. “There have been many, many casualties. It’s a crime against the Serbian people.”

    Nothing suggests that Dobie is from the country dropping the bombs or Draskovic an intended victim. It’s all reasonableness, sweetness and light. The BBC wants to be the first, the most comprehensive, the most reliable channel covering the war. Draskovic wants to be seen as the acceptable, likeable face of the Serbian government. We, the audience, are the front row at this theatre of the absurd.

    “We have credible reason to believe that the Serbian government is plotting a coup against the Montenegran authorities. They’ve already replaced the Army Chief. The Montenegran President is the next target.” Thus claims General Sir Charles Guthrie speaking live from the British Ministry of Defence.

    “It’s not true” responds the Serbian people’s representative, Misha Gavrilovic, speaking from the BBC’s London studio. “This is rubbish. It’s part of NATO’s vilification campaign.”

    If it’s not bombs then its speculation about coups and conspiracies that keeps you riveted. It’s not just what’s happening but what may develop that whets the appetite. And then there is the endless stream of refugees, the long line of men, women and children, the elderly, the sick, the infirm and the hungry, walking away from their homes but going who knows where. Their tragedy is the most hypnotising.

    The BBC shows a map which is updated everyday as the number of refugees increases. Last sunday there were 130,000 in Macedonia, 20,000 more than the day before. A further 60,000 were waiting in no-man’s land. Thick red arrows fly across the screen delineating the movement of people. The thicker the base the greater the exodus.You stare in spellbound disbelief.

    “NATO forces are now working out the number of REMs needed”, says anchorman Nik Gowing. “That’s the number of military ready-to-eat meals.”

    “There are refugees everywhere in this city”, says an anguished reporter in Kukes, Northern Albania. “They continue far beyond the point the camera lens can reach. They have just the clothes they stand in. There is no water, no food, no shelter. Some of them are elderly and have been carried across the border by their relatives. With the first wave of infection they could start dying. This is a tragedy waiting to become a catastrophe.”

    ‘Oh dear’ you mutter and for a moment you feel genuinely upset. ‘What madness’ you say and the people around you agree. And then, as the television eye moves to the next image, you forget. Something new has caught your attention. The refugees no longer matter.

    In the last few days war on television, the tragedy of the Kosovo people, the bombing of Belgrade, the live studio discussions and the carefully-planned press briefings from Brussels, London and The Pentagon have evolved into the most gripping, the most irresistible entertainment on television. In the morning you switch on to discover what happened the night before, in the afternoon you listen

    To the analysis and the predictions, in the evening its time for animated discussion about the next day’s bombing. The action never stops. Like showbiz it goes on and on.

    Yet I can’t help feel that we’ve paid a terrible price for the access television has given us. It’s made war ordinary, it’s made us unfeeling, it’s made disaster look like entertainment. And all the time we sit there eagerly taking it in and waiting for more.

    Alongside the people of Serbia and Kosovo who are actually suffering the audience watching all over the world has lost something too. It’s sense of perspective and something of its humanity.

    The right to choose

    Does the government have the right to curb our liberty supposedly for our own good? Is the government best able to determine what is in our interest, what is right or wrong, beneficial or harmful, for us? Or is that an inalienable right we must keep for ourselves? A prerogative we give away only at the cost of our own self-esteem and perhaps even our individuality?

    These are not idle questions nor are they rhetorical enquiries. Increasingly they are the cutting edge of the battle between the people and those who try to decide for them. They arise out of the core of our liberties and individuality.

    The union cabinet has decided to ban all lotteries. The Rajasthan government has decided to close down beer bars. In Gujarat you cannot drink at all. Why? Because someone somewhere believes it’s not good for us. Not just that but we cannot be allowed to choose for ourselves and therefore big brother, the all-knowing omnipotent mai-baap sarkar, must decide and lay down the law.

    But who gave them the right to decide for us? MPs, MLAs, mofussil politicians or whoever are elected to provide governance and governance is essentially the creating of conditions for human beings to realise their full potential. The right to choose is essential for this. Take it away and the very potential of a human being, the essence of his or her individuality, is crushed.

    Let me explain – although the point is so straightforward, if not also simple, that explanation should be unnecessary.

    It’s our ability to make moral choices that ultimately distinguishes human beings from animals. The concept of right and wrong, good or bad, moral versus immoral, is unique to us. Animals simply know what nature or nurture has taught them. The morality of the choices they face is unknown to them – it’s also unnecessary. And inherent in making a moral choice is the freedom to make what others may consider the wrong choice. If you cannot in theory be immoral, bad or wrong, then it’s meaningless to claim your actions or choices are right, good or moral. The two exist together. Take away the ability to choose one and you damage the other.

    Now, if a government decides that Indians cannot choose for themselves whether to drink or gamble what, in effect, is it really saying? That we lack the capacity to do so, that we are not fully human beings, that like animals who are told or taught what to do so must we be. The government is diminishing us, eroding our individuality, undermining our self-esteem. And when it’s claimed that this is done for our own good that’s truly the final, crushing blow.

    The point at issue is clear. Moral issues, which affect only the individual and no one else, must be decided by each person. Of course a government can advise and increasingly we even accept that through taxation it can attempt to discourage (as with smoking) but never, never should it prohibit or disallow.

    The argument that gambling or drinking affects the whole family may be true but it’s not relevant. There are thousands of actions that I perform that have an impact on others. Where and what work I do, who I choose as my friends, what books I read and their effect on my thinking or even the food I eat come into this category. Drinking and gambling is no different. My social pretensions, the subversive literature I buy or my disinclination to work can affect the family as badly if not worse. Yet no one ever thinks of stopping these.

    Nor must they use this facetious argument to stop gambling or drinking. The impact on others is secondary and it’s not deep or damaging enough to deny the individuality, to curb the freedom, of any single person leave aside the whole of society.

    Today, fifty years after independence but, more importantly, 5000 years after Indian civilisation came into being, I am surprised, no I’m shocked, that we still have governments that have the temerity to claim they know what’s best for us. What arrogance and what ignorance ! Good governments should help their people stand up on their feet, to realise themselves. Bad governments keep their people in thrall, unable to decide, dependent and helpless.

    I suppose you can guess what sort of governments I think we have.

    A lesson from the past

    The legendary Sheel Vohra tried to teach me cricket at The Doon School. I was one of his rare if spectacular failures. But the aphorisms and epithets he so easily coined I will never forget. At school they sounded simply witty. Watching the behaviour of the spectators at last sunday’s Indo-Pakistan cricket match I realised how profound they in fact are. Here is an example :

    ‘Those who don’t know how to lose deserve to lose and they will continue to lose until they accept the error of their ways’.


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