Media as collaborators
The dubious role of the fourth estate
The Kannada daily, Vijaya Karnataka, through
its editor, Vishweshwar Bhat, has repeatedly published extremely
inflammatory editorials and articles targeting the Christian community.
The newspaper was rewarded by the Karnataka government with promotional
advertisements worth over Rs 100 crore between 2008 and 2010. During
that time the government’s financial position was so precarious that
government employees, particularly in the rural areas, had not received
their salaries for months together and many of them were driven to
suicide. Yet the government appears to have had enough money to publish
full-page colour advertisements of the chief minister and his colleagues
every day.
In December 2008 Vijaya Karnataka published a
particularly offensive article that resulted in countrywide protests by
right-thinking citizens belonging to all communities. Referring to this
article in an open letter addressed to the Karnataka chief minister, BS
Yeddyurappa, in March 2010, Justice Saldanha says:
“I have seen the article which is one of the most
vicious, offensive and venomous pieces of writing directed against the
Christian community and is sufficient to invoke the maximum jail
sentence against the writer, (SL) Bhyrappa, the editor, Vishweshwar Bhat,
the printer and the publishers. This was published at a point of time
when the police all over the state and particularly in the Karavali area
were indiscriminately registering false cases against members of the
minority community and against any secular publication that disapproved
of religious and human rights atrocities. This misuse of power has
invoked strictures from the high court and orders for exemplary
damages.
“In sharp contrast, when the head of the People’s
Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) filed FIR No. 0343 at the Mangalore
South police station on December 27, 2008, the police refused to take
cognisance on the grounds that they required to get clearance from your
most trusted colleague, Dr VS Acharya, the home minister of the state…
“Similarly, in respect of this very article and this
very newspaper, another FIR No. 0002 was filed at the Bangalore North
police station by an aggrieved member of the community on January 2,
2009 and again, under the home minister’s directions, no action has been
taken. At the same time, this very home minister directed the police to
register nine false FIRs against the editor of Karavali Ale in
different police stations spread over Mangalore and Udupi on absolutely
false, imaginary and unsustainable allegations that he is inciting
communal disharmony merely because that publication disapproved of the
government-inspired violence against members of the Christian
community.”
Incidentally, Communalism Combat’s cover
story, ‘Bloody Harvest’, in September 2006, on the growing
communalisation in Karnataka, included an article entitled ‘Hindutva’s
vital organs’ by Gauri Lankesh who detailed the criminal and
inflammatory role played by the same publication, Vijaya Karnataka,
around that time.
— TS