The trouble with being a journalist is that if you want to retain some credibility, you must put your personal views aside while reporting on political issues.
And as any journalist will tell you, that is quite difficult, even if you belong to that rare breed, the truly apolitical creature.
Notice that I used the word ‘reporting’ on political issues.
Because reporting involves facts. “Party A said this and Party B did this. And Party C walked out.” At the most, you may analyse the reasons for these acts and speculate on likely repercussions. But you cannot defend or damn any of these actions without being accused of political bias.
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Opinion articles (like this one) however, are a totally different matter.
Here, if anything, you are expected to promote your favorite brand of ism, and sneer at the others. Who knows, someday your party of choice might even make you an MP for keeping and promoting the faith.
Things become difficult however, when you really don’t want to sit in Parliament or become a media adviser to either your party or your friendly neighbourhood nuisance —sorry--neta..
When I was young, I was naïve enough to believe that I was truly apolitical.
That regardless of which party came to power and how, it was all the same, and that there was precious little I could do about it. So why bother? Apolitical? Make that apathetic. Who cared? Certainly not me.
But politics has a strange way of intruding into your life when you least expect it.
On a rainy afternoon in Calcutta, as it was still known in 1987, I was walking towards my office along a wet pavement, when a bus slowed down on the road next to me. A lungi-clad gent standing on the doorstep, about to get off, cleared his throat loudly before spitting straight on the front of my shirt.
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The bus stopped, and I caught up with the unperturbed lout. When challenged, he spat on me again, and dared me to do my worst. I smashed my folding umbrella across his nose, and he sat down on the ground, bleeding and swearing.
His loud invocations to his God drew the attention of some of his friends who manned a nearby barber shop. And I suddenly found myself facing four burly young men waving open razors, threatening to slice me up into a million pieces.
I did what any self-respecting young man would do under the circumstances. After throwing a couple of coconut shells that I found on the footpath at them, I ran.
I zipped across the road, weaving through the traffic, right into the arms of a huge man, who promptly grabbed my head under his armpit and started dragging me down the road at a fast trot. The lungis gave chase. But the man who had grabbed me literally threw me into the safety of a nearby police station before the razor-wielding men could catch up.
Shocked, embarrassed and scared, I took it out on the officer on duty.
Why, I screamed, had this man humiliated me in public like that, by dragging me down the road by the neck? And how come nobody was doing something about the sons-of bachelors who had chased me, and were even now screaming for my blood outside the station?
The young officer heard me out before calmly pointing out that his man had actually saved my skin, and that I should be thanking, not abusing him.
But it was the second part of his answer that shook me out of my political apathy.
“Those people outside will eventually leave. But I can’t do much about them, because I have strict orders not to do anything to antagonize them, because it could easily spiral into a communal issue…”
Orders? “Yes, orders. From Alimuddin Street. (where the ruling CPI-M had–and still has-- its headquarters.).”
So a bunch of murderous goons could happily chase people in broad daylight on a public street, knowing the police dare not touch them just because they were from a particular community? Just because the political party in power needed their votes?
A few years later, I was visiting my brother’s farm in North Bengal along the Bangladesh border.
One morning, while walking along the river which formed the border, I saw a small boat cross the river from the Bangladesh side, and berth at an improvised jetty on this side, where a young man was waiting. He promptly issued papers (which I later discovered were ration cards) to the seven people including two women and two children, who got out of the boat. By the time I reached them, he was telling them that half an acre around that lightning struck tree in the distance was theirs. ‘Don’t forget to vote for the CPM,’ he called after them, as they trudged towards their new home.
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“Crippled ingrates,” he muttered over a cup of tea at a nearby stall. “We give them ration cards, and instead of staying and voting for us, they disappear within weeks, forcing me to get more people. Each election, it’s the same!”
Disappear? “Well, they are Indians now, so they can go wherever they want, nah? Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay….”
But what about the local population? “Do you really think the landlord we seized that land from will ever vote for us?” came the response.
All this for a local zilla parishad election.
I may have been apolitical till then.
But suddenly, I strongly and vehemently sympathised with those who declared that it was better to be dead than Red.
The author is the Chief Editor of Sify.com
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