They’re trying to control information in the age of information. And succeeding for a large part. But, something must give, a slip-up here, and the tide can change, for information is like desert sand – the tighter you clasp it, trying to contain it, the more it slips out of your hand.
I find my mind coming up with such artfully pretentious epiphanies when I listen in on the 9 pm Prime Time news that my father tunes in to every day. The anchor on TV has made a career out of villainising India’s minorities, functioning as a mole in the media for the many splinter cell WhatsApp groups of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that polarise the country’s electorate along religious lines.
Still, the aforesaid information isn’t enough to identify this anchor. There are so many of them, all toeing the same line that’s been chalked out by someone high-up in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). They’re also eerily similar – middle-aged, upper-caste, fluent right-wing intellectuals; self-styled custodians of India’s interests, India-first, India Ahead, India TV, ETV Bharat, Republic Bharat, Times Navbharat, you get the drift.
There are days when they walk out in military fatigues demanding vengeance for our neighbour Pakistan’s transgressions. The thirst for military retribution fizzles away when their ‘debonair’ Prime Minister, in a televised address to the nation, says Chinese soldiers never infiltrated Indian territory in the immediate aftermath of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doing just that and killing 20 Indian soldiers.