via Mohan Rao "The chilling familiarity of #Muzaffarnagar" In #communal politics, facts matter less than fiction. The spin and narrative are what make “riots” unique — violence sought to be justified, even warranted, then forgotten. “Riots” are always about the blame-game that follows; the action-reaction theory; the rationalisation for what is indefensible — the taking of human life, the rendering homeless of innocents, and the inevitable polarisation benefiting political parties. With social media, mobile apps, and image morphing software a flick of a button away, the ammunition of spin is handy. But though technology is new, the narrative is frighteningly familiar. Women as commodities (of a piece with land and cattle), and women’s bodies as repositories of patriarchal honour are once again at the epicentre of this narrative. ... The comparisons between the “narratives” of Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar are telling. In Muzaffarnagar, an alleged attack by the “other community” on the izzat of two brothers (by harassing their sister) turns out to be fake (NDTV, September 14). But it still leads to a mahapanchayat called to protect “the honour of women.” This then spurs the violence (with inflammatory speeches, incendiary video, death and displacement, police inaction, omnibus FIRs, and truckloads of scared people fleeing their homes). We saw a similar narrative structure in Gujarat 2002, and it was written about in two reports by women’s rights activists — Survivors Speak and Threatened Existence. In addition to the train burning at Godhra, there was a false news report on February 28 in Sandesh (a leading Gujarati daily), saying that Hindu women were dragged from a railway compartment by a fanatic mob. A fake follow-up on March 1, said some women’s bodies were found with breasts cut off. A retraction, published much later by Sandesh, lay buried in a corner of the paper, while the fake news spread like wildfire, and became the justificatory rallying cry for what followed (Survivors Speak, pp 10-11). ... thehindu/opinion/op-ed/the-chilling-familiarity-of-muzaffarnagar/article5138832.ece
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:39:17 +0000
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