Gurumurthy does that: asks a few hard questions so as not to uncritically swallow everything the media dishes out.

What are the dispute-free aspects of the news reports so far? Ishrat was with three men in the car that was intercepted and two of them were Pakistanis. No dispute. Ishrat disappeared from the house on May 12 and the shooting incident took place at 4.30 in the morning of May 15. Obviously Ishrat was with the terrorists for three days. No dispute. An AK-56 rifle with three full magazines and one magazine, 81 AK-56 live cartridges, two revolvers, a satellite phone, and two mobile phones and Rs 2 lakhs were all recovered from the blue `Indica’ car in which the four, including Irshat, were travelling. No dispute. The car had a Maharashtra number plate. Also, the police recovered 25 kg of explosives and a dozen coconuts which could be used as country grenades. No dispute.

I purposely refrained from blogging on this subject because of… well, cynicism. Yet few observations/doubts persist.

So the `secular’ media cries over what good things others say about her, how she wore salwar kameez! The real issue is not that, but what Ishrat seemed to be doing secretly without anyone knowing.

The salwar kameez act is a classic case of obscuring the real argument or issue on hand. This is a tactic our secularists in the media are well-versed in. Obscure in order to deviate, confound, generate sympathy, and finally, bury the issue. I saw this happen on Aaj tak/NDTV (don’t remember which news channel). The reporter goes on a rampage, interviewing Ishrat’s friends, college mates, and other friends and acquaintances to “prove” how “good” she was; this in fact has nothing to do with the fact that she was a terrorist-accomplice. Can we conclude that Ishrat was not a terrorist-accomplice on these grounds (I have invented most grounds below to give a hint at our secular media’s style of reasoning):

• She ate vegetarian food
• She wore salwar kameez
• She was a good student
• She had no enemies
• …. and so on

Proving a conclusion using totally unrelated premises (is this the Fallacy of Meaning from Association?).
Gurumurthy argues that the secular media indulges in this in order to save secularism: suppress facts, uphold secularism. The shamelessness of the media is incredible: they continue to paint Ishrat as innocent despite Intelligence/Police reports that uphold Ishrat’s complicity.

This reminds me of our Eminent Marxist Historians tactic of painting Aurangzeb as a tolerant ruler and Shivaji as a “fanatic rebel.”

Suppressio veri suggestio falsi.

Tags: Commentary, Pseudo Secularism Hall of Shame