Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 09 July 2018 | Page 22
B I T I N G BUL L ETS
which it throws around the event and needs to be challenged.
which ordinary protest, even by suffering victims, lacks. In
Death as murder cannot be presented as death by execution.
fact, one realises that truth and objectivity get ritually sepa
The obscenity begins there. Making the deaths inevitable
rated. Objectivity is a set of sanitised rituals that groups have
and bureaucratic gives it anonymity, a technocratic inevita
to construct to claim expertise and authenticity; NGOs have
bility. Narrative restores life to each body. Statistics has to be
to work hard to challenge the finality of government diktats. A
redeemed though biography. ‘Ten dead’ creates an obscenity
scream is not enough; it has to be couched in footnotes.
of indifference that only storytelling and writing can redeem.
Truth also becomes a form of musical chairs as different nar
Both power and the narratives of power have a sense of fait
ratives are played out. Truth can be the inadvertent casualty of
accompli. Media as a narrative of power determines the time
the choice of time in a narrative. Does the report begin with the
of an event. Within a day or two, the media forces a sense of
protest as an explosion of civil society on the streets, or does
normalcy on narrative. It wants to speed up time, convey a
one talk of the months of disquiet and waiting, the symptoms of
sense of closure. One senses this after the shootings. It is not
ill health earlier? Does truth become truth only in the structure
pain or memory that the media focuses on, but on whether
of public space? The question then is what is the responsibility
shops are open--a signal of normalcy.
and role of writing in this context? How does one talk of justice
As one walks through Thoothukudi, violence is almost bot
in this environment, realising that Vedanta attracts more pro
anical in its diversity. How do we present the various strands
tests in London than in the margins called Thoothukudi?
The media itself realises that standard narratives cannot go of violence around the protests? People dying of mysterious
ailments. The bureaucracies’ indifference. Vendanta’s cal
beyond conventional traffic signals of what is permissible or
acceptable narratives as a first report. Let us call a FMR (first lousness. The burning of buses and vehicles as a warzone.
media report) to spoof it along first information report (FIR). The police shooting. The violence of narratives. How does
one grade them, locate them? How does one collate or col
One tactic is to produce a bland first report citing all sides,
lage indifference, callousness, erasure, brutality, cold-blood
and then angle the next day’s headlines, as The New Indian
edness, vandalism or even, the slow
Express did. So, Day I reads that the shooting
ruthlessness of environmental violence?
was inevitable. Day II headlines report the SP
The Challenge of Normalcy
and the collector have been shunted. The
The question is what is normalcy when the
word ‘shunted’ virtually hints that the direc
Sterlite battle has been going on for 14
tion of narrative has changed, that Day 1 was
months. Is normalcy merely a right to resume
just a prelude to Day II, as the plot thickened.
operations for Sterlite, or the basic resump
The second, more effective, tactic is to make
tion of law and order, with politicians playing
narrative and visual look discordant. One ins
humanitarian and promising doles to every
erts a picture of an official sniper/shooter in a
family whose member has been shot? The
police car; suddenly, the suspicions of pro
language of normalcy has a quaint quality
testors look more substantial.
when the two government officers a re desig
The most lethal of the tactics of juxtaposi
In Thoothukudi,
nated as ambassadors to visit hospitals and
tion is probably the nostalgia narrative used
violence is almost
interact with the public. There is a sense that
by The Times of India. The paper invited V.A.
botanical. How to
Thoothukudi has been alien or hostile terri
Ravi Kumar, a retired IPS officer, to talk of
present its variety?
tory for a week. They were even styled as ‘lis
crowd control in his time. As he lists out the
teners’. Maybe, it emphasises the fact that
precautionary tactics, one realises the narra
The deaths from
tive is an indictment of the current firing.
illnesses, the apathy, this government needs a hearing aid when it
comes to reacting with the public.
When Ravi Kumar says, “firing is an act of
protests, shooting....
Yet, a return to normalcy is not like putting
cowardice” and maintains “firing should be
back a piece of plumbing. It is a complex rite of
avoided at any cost and should be last resort”,
one realises that these are not just pearls of nostalgic wisdom, passage which demands an unravelling of covert and formal
operations. If protest is a right of citizenship, the people of
but an indirect indictment of police action in Thoothukudi.
Thoothukudi are not quite citizens. Pollution is seen as normal
The newspaper becomes an art form of multiple narratives, a
but protest is seen as polluting the body politic. The govern
set of juxtaposition which slowly lets the reader create his
ment, in fact, is deploying police officers to show that
own flexible interpretation that not all is right with the world
everything followed procedure. Families of deceased are forced
of Thoothukudi. The newspaper reports have to be fragmen
to sign statements. Normalcy almost seems a PRO operation, a
tary, so the reader can build his version of the whole.
quick fix to cover up the lack of governance. The emphasis is
Decoding the lie
not on truth but on law and order. The headlines read ‘On the
Telling truth to power is more complex than it first seems.
road to recovery’. Yet, as one ploughs through the details, the
How do you capture the integrity of the whole, while retain
headline turns ironic. Credibility and trust are deeper than nor
ing justice for one part? One has to capture the singularity of
malcy. In fact, the word ‘normalcy’ in the aftermath of disasters
the event, while retaining a sense of the general. Around
has become obscene and hypocritical, a set of props to convince
Thoothukudi, how does one capture the nature of death?
the world that the regime is in control. O
Death as a demographic fact, as number, reads differently.
Death as execution from a sniper’s bullet sounds inevitable,
(Visvanathan was part of the People’s Watch Team
but death as atrocity may not be necessary. The obscenity
investigating the violence at Thoothukudi, which was led by
might be in the official definition of it, the garb of necessity
Henri Trphagne and Nityanand Jayaram)
22 OUTLOOK 9 July 2018