Reader Niketan wanted my views on this entry on Manjunath’s murder. He says:

These cases are getting a high profile because it involved grads from the prestigious institutes. Daily there are thousands of Indians who are fighting/ and finally resigning themselves to their fate in the corrupt environment.
There is a difference in this case and the Satyendra Dubey case. As far as i recollect, the Satyendra Dubey case was one of a robbery gone wrong (Correct me if I am wrong about this). The entire media used this as a weapon to beat the govt. The media made the case that the entire Golden quadrilateral was riddled with corruption. In this case, almost nobody has nailed the govt even though newspaper reports indicate that there is a problem with the IOC Now is the media asking Mani Shankar Aiyer to step down? Keen to hear your observation on this.

First, a correction. Dubey was killed because some very powerful people got hold of his correspondence to the PM.

On the media observation, I second your opinion. Starting from the Tehelka (defence) scam to Ram Naik to Modi, the media put in a concerted effort to blacken the then government. On display was an unprecedented show of Trial by Media. The Tehelka “expose” is especially notable for its role as Pioneer of Sting Operations as the Quick Route to Fame, and Big Bucks. Of course, governments being what they are, they made Tehelka pay for it.

Tehelka would have retained my respect for it if it maintained what it wrote about itself after it suffered governmental acts of vengeance. Sadly, it goofed up with the Zaheera vs Teesta episode. If for no reason than taking sides. A self-proclaimed “free,” “independent,” “courageous” and “unbiased” paper blatantly showed “whose side it was on” when it conducted another overnight sting operation on a Gujarat BJP MLA. However, things bordered dangerously on exposing the authenticity of Tehelka itself. And so it mysteriously, and suddenly abandoned further “exposes” on the matter.

I’m not singling out Tehelka but took it as the most representative illustration of the nature of the English media: duplicitous.

In its game of secularism, liberalism, and several other isms, it sometimes overlooks, hides, obfuscates, misrepresents, and selectively reports. All this to serve the cause of its brand of secularism. Any political party/person that professes this same brand is left untouched while the NDA throughout its tenure had to endure criticism the sort of which the media had never dared to voice during the 40+ years of dynastic rule. Nehru’s mass murder of Maharashtra’s Chitpavan Brahmins was never reported and the media’s behaviour during the Emergency was…. well.

Thus, the death of honest people like Dubey and Manjunath becomes not an issue that outrages the conscience of a nation. Rather it is seen as an issue to be “interpreted” in terms of the “correct” answer to the following question: did this happen during the rule of a secular or a communal government? Consider these: Media pressure forces George Fernandes to resign while there’s only a vacuous silence about Aiyar apart of course, from the Indian Express, the Telegraph and of late, Outlook. In the first case, Fernandes’ association with the BJP makes him a fascist (label is irrelevant here) who should resign while in the second, Aiyar’s long history as a Communist and a self-confessed Secular Fundamentalist alone is sufficient to absolve him of responsibility. An unexpected bonus is also the fact that he is also the Poet Laurete of the Dynasty’s Court. The petrol pump scam is pursued with a vengeance while the Mitrokhin papers are given a quiet burial.

The Dubey and Manjunath case follows the same script: the issue is not important, what is important is the regime in which it happened. The English media whose credibility has all but eroded is increasingly donning the role of a self-appointed Judge. Each of its articles, “exposes,” etc, can be likened to mini-courts where the government of the day is sentenced guilty or acquitted. Modi, Fernandes, Jaya, Advani: convicted till Eternity while Sonia is a renunciating Saint, Aiyar a secularist par excellence, Jayalalithaa convicted till she didn’t withdraw the ESMA, acquitted when she arrested the Kanchi seer, Zaheera was the celebrated victim of Hindu Barbarism as long as she stood by Teesta’s side, and became an opportunist overnight (of course, the BJP MLA’s Hidden Hand was present all the time!)… now, where does that leave the real courts of law?

I neither condone the BJP/NDA’s venal acts whatever they might have been nor do I blindly blame the Congress/Commies but merely the media’s hypocritical reporting and ideological slant.

However, I agree only up to an extent with Niketan when he says:

These cases are getting a high profile because it involved grads from the prestigious institutes. Daily there are thousands of Indians who are fighting/ and finally resigning themselves to their fate in the corrupt environment.

Which makes it all the more alarming. Think about it: if a person from a prestigious institute can be murdered with such impunity, what about those you call “thousands of Indians?” Which is why I feel it is right to give this case the exposure it deserves and follow it up with some determination.