The Tarun Tejpal
episode has put the cat among the pigeons. Tehelka has for long been considered
to be an ethical resort area. A brave new world inhabited by intrepid
journalists, like Tejpal, who had taken upon themselves the burden of an
extraordinary enterprise of exposing the high and the mighty. But when the
searchlight was flashed inwards, the continent showed up as just another moral
swamp, with the same climate of atrocity and rhythm of destruction that
characterizes the rest of our society. Women are no safer; the minds of those
who seek their emancipation on their behalf are themselves so much more in need
of emancipation. Followed by news of the sexual atrocity come the troubling
disclosures of massive financial wheeling dealing, parking of anonymous funds,
betrayal and criminal breach of trust. How shall we hold faith, then? If the
best of the media is like this how much confidence can the rest inspire?
But the
condemnation of Tehelka is not universal like it has been in the case of some
other notorious rapes. The lynch mobs have not come out in the streets
demanding instant decapitation or hanging. Those who have taken to such
measures have been easily dismissed – with a large measure of truth in it – as
partisan BJP mobs with scores to settle. In fact, spirited defences have been
set up by some media men, politicians and public figures alike. A major
political party has actually slipped in a few words edgeways, by way of support
also.
The responses to
l’affaire Tehelka can be broadly categorized – the first being the one
that rightly condemns the rape because all rapes are condemnable and no
exception needs to be made here. This is the response of common people who are
unaligned and not too political. There are some channels who have gone in to an
overdrive discussing it on primetime, keeping the issue alive, seemingly
seeking justice for the victim. Could the stridency be an unconscious urge to
justify themselves to themselves and in the eyes of the people that they are
different?
Then there are
people who seek to contextualize the incident, narrate the extenuating
circumstances and tirelessly describe Tejpal’s revolutionary past. It has been
dealt with it extensively but I shall permit myself just one observation. Grave
and sudden provocation sometimes do count as mitigating circumstances but this
can be termed as nothing but a premeditated and willful act committed by a man
who was not so much drunk on alcohol as on a sense of his own power, his fame
and the fevered adoration of his acolytes. Heady brew no doubt, but it does not
qualify as an extenuating circumstance in the eyes of criminal law nor of
prevailing morality.
A columnist in bhadas4media.com plays the devil’s
advocate. His contention is that Tejpal is being targeted because his Tehelka
was different and it reminded the others of their own inadequacy. Then he goes
on to tar every one with the same brush: burked instances of sexual
exploitation, conspiracy of silence, pimping for the corporate, suppression of
stories, blackmail and extortion are itemized with malicious glee. But his
logic of moral relativism does not go too far. He is even more grievously wrong
when he insinuates about the misdemeanour of others stopping short of full
disclosures. But now is the time to light up the spooky corners, to unmask the
charlatans. His rhetoric can be described what Umberto Eco calls ‘a private
communication between power groups which leapfrogs the citizen denying him his
viewpoint ‘and leaving women as insecure as ever. To that extent it is both
anti- democratic and contrary to the credo of healthy journalism.
Not that his
disclosures come as a big surprise. The Radia tapes have already shown many
media men in their role as power brokers, as political go-betweens, and
corporate fixers. They are also into the business of money making like everyone
else. Sometime back a blog serialized the libertine lifestyle, the parties and
sleeping around in a TV news channel and some of the leading lights could be
identified. The action on behalf of the channel was both prompt and peremptory.
The authors of the mischief were spotted, promptly sacked and for good measure
it was insured that their future did not look too rosy. But that has not
deterred a section of the media from seceding to a hidden planet with their own
“inverse surrounding values,” a culture of their own where profligacy,
unabashed hedonism and promiscuity are the dominant gestures. No wonder women
are viewed as the ultimate consumption value. In the newly invented idiom of
the place rape becomes “mild sexual banter”, “the easiest way to keep the job.”
So why this outrage?
“This is the
paradox of public space”, says the maverick Slovenian intellectual Slavoj
Zizek, “even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes
everything.” This is what this girl – or the other girl in the matter of the
retired judge – has done. By merely articulating the wrong done to her in a
full throated manner she has asserted not only the claims of women to an equal
share of the workplace but radicalized the whole atmosphere. In her – and the
likes of her, they are not beholden to a name – one can see the emerging image
of the new Indian woman.
But young and
inexperienced as she is, she has to learn many things especially how things
work in the real world, the foremost among them is that Power has only
masculine gender. That is why when Shoma Chawdhary – dubbed as a turn coat of
her sex –connived with the powerful Tejpal for as long as it was feasible,
trying to broker peace and bury the deed, she was only following the logic of
power which is devoid of imagination, a dehumanizing apparatus in its own
right. So it happens that women are as much unsafe in presence of cult figures
and fountainheads of power whether Sant Asaram or Tarun Tejpal, whether in the
tutelage of an incestuous father or in police custody. But things are beginning
to change; things are bound to change and the society should feel indebted to
the courage of such individuals.
