Hindustan Times
Aman ki Asha: marketing peace with Pakistan
Individuals and institutions aren’t easily given to rethinking their approach. Not at least while riding a bandwagon driven by popular sentiments. What’s popular is saleable— even if it amounts to peddling hatred. Influential sections of the Indian media did exactly that post-26/11 in the belief that hardcore nationalism and Pakistan-bashing was what their audience desired as a staple diet.
An instant casualty of this blinkered approach was a balanced public debate on how to go about dealing with Pakistan. Some of the leading TV news channels and newspapers engaged in competitive belligerence: Why should we talk to them? They are a country of murderers, Hindu-haters and terror-traders; let them meet the fate they deserve.
From the marketing angle, it was presumed that most urban-bred Indians were prone to seeing blood and couldn’t stomach the idea of a dialogue with the western neighbour.
The widely propagated no-truck-with-Pakistan theory turned peacemaking into a perilous task with protagonists’ such as yours truly reduced to a minuscule minority. Getting bombarded by hate mail became a daily affair.
It showed as much on TV chat shows as in blogs and newspaper columns. To my horror one night, I found the anchor of a relatively lesser-known news channel deriding on my face my arguments for a reasonable approach that’s at once holistic and not centered around the persona of LeT’s Hafiz Sayeed who masterminded the Mumbai carnage.
The anchor, a thorough gentleman whom I’ve known for nearly three decades, got swayed by his predilections, forgetting that his task was to moderate the discussion, on the other end of which was a former Intelligence Bureau chief rated highly for his soft presentation of a hard-line agenda.
I walked out of the TV show during the break but wasn’t the least surprised by the anti-Pakistan sentiment that had me at the receiving end of the anchor’s disdain. Such lonely moments haven’t been rare all these months. They have become for me a way of life.
Amid such despondency has come aman ki asha— a hope for peace project the Times of India launched on January 1 with Pakistan’s Jang Group.
To be honest, the ToI hasn’t been my first choice for news on or about Pakistan since their 2004 campaign against the Indo-Pak friendship cricket series the Vajpayee regime promoted as a major people-to-people confidence building measure. After the Mumbai attack, the newspaper, like most of its contemporaries, became even more intemperate to remain in step with the popular sense of hurt and betrayal.
I couldn’t therefore imagine in my wildest dreams that the ToI would ever have the courage to share with its readers the hope for the day when “words like Pakistan, India and love will not seem impossible in the same sentence.”
It’s a risk the media partners from either side of the border have taken. Public opinion isn’t always easy to navigate. But the test of a leader is in attempting it.
I’d be happy even if aman ki asha is another marketing gimmick. The only way forward for India and Pakistan is to make peace-making a good business. Then alone will others follow their example.
Trade, as they say, is the worst enemy of war.
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vinod sharma Reply:
January 5th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Dear Rajiv,
First of all, please come down from the high pedestal you always tend to occupy without evident merit or wisdom. The “I” in your first sentence makes it appear that this blog is a rejoinder to your comments. Pl disabuse yourself of this notion.
My brief point is about creating a vested interest in peace on both sides of the border. Nothing else nothing more. I want unidimensional thinking on the issue to end so that we come up with a well-thought long-term strategy that addresses the points you have underscored in your comment above.
Does that satisfy you? If not, you’d have to make do with it for the time being.
Vinod
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