Monday, May 24, 2010
Letter to the Editor:
Was a Muslim journalist deliberately gagged when Door Darshan (DD) telecast resorted to go off the air at Indian Prime Minister's Press Conference?
Was a deliberate gag manufactured to silence Masoom Moradabai of Urdu newspaper Akhbar e Jadid, when he asked the most crucial question engaging the 200 million Indian Muslims as to how Prime Minister will act on the recommendations of Sachar Commission and Justice Ranganathan Misra Commission reports.
The Urdu journalist was the fifth journalist in the line to be given the chance to address the questions to the Prime Minister. However when he posed the sensitive question about Muslim plight, all of a sudden the DD telecast went dead. Can one imagine a national TV Channel to be so inefficient and callous about breakdown in its telecast of Prime Minister’s Press Conference, without some sanction from the authorities? Was the breakdown of the telecast was designed specially to shield the Prime Minister from replying to embarrassing questions about the abject failure of his government?
One can see the last flashes of Prime Minister's instant distress while the Muslim journalist reeled out the question on behalf of his Urdu newspaper, when the telecast went off the air. Later, TIMES NOW's Arnab cited one more gag by technical breakdown in the same Press Conference telecast when TIMES NOW representative posed a very uncomfortable question that Prime Minister probably would have found difficult to reply to.
These sequences will point to a possibility towards a deliberate policy by Indian Government that had arranged a rare public relations event of the current Prime Minister’s Press Conference, was to run away from public scrutiny on major issues by blanking out the very live telecast, when Prime Minister was supposed to reply. That is most reprehensive and Prime Minister should clear the air, by appearing to press again and respond to these two blocked out questions that Government is bound to reply in able to take the press and general public in confidence.
As it is Muslims are most worried that Indian National Congress under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is merely playing with the community and has no intention of giving an inch to Muslim’s rightful demands. The recent meeting of Muslim community leaders, including from Jamiat ul Ulama, Jamat e Islami, Majlis e Mushawarat and others with both, the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi is reported to be a dodging game that Congress is old past master of. Both leaders have been arrogant as if they would be doing a favour to the Muslim leaders by even giving them the time to press their demands and that should be the end of it.
India is a democracy, but the way the Prime Minister replied about a job given to him which is not yet complete and unless that is complete, he is not going to retire or resign. The TV channels were agog as to who was the ‘real’ authority that had given him the ‘job’ and apparently he was categorical about Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi not being in the picture, as far as his stay as PM is concerned. It will be a big gaffe, if a perception is formed by press and public that he was referring to an outside power that could have given him the ‘job’ and India’s democracy is just a sham.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
