“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”

I used to hear this often: You’re a teacher, you should watch what you say.

Now, I wonder, did these people ever tell the teachers in JNU or Jadavpur not to encourage students to abuse their professors on TV channels or social media platforms, their peers, or even the prime minister? Or beat their peers on the head with iron rods? I bet the answer is no. Why? Because they might get abused or even manhandled. And I won’t do any of that. I was rebuked by some of my ex-students and even abused by others for tweets against students. Why? According to them, I did not understand the seriousness of what is happening in JNU. Really! Do the ladies and gentlemen sitting in the TV studios around the country who pass judgement on the state of the country have the courage to tell the political class that it is time the college campuses around the country were cleansed of their filthy influence? Why blame some student union leader for engaging in violence or even abusing people? He or she learns from their political masters.

But, what brought about this blog? Two events. The first was the sight of a JNU student abusing Prof. Anand Ranganathan @ARanganathan72 on air. I was appalled at this entitled brat who had done nothing of prominence except feed off his parents and the taxpayer, thinking it was so woke to abuse a professor, scientist and author on air only because their views didn’t match.

A well known news anchor told me, “Manners, I have realised are now considered old fashioned. ‘Stop trying to be a sanskari aunty’ I was told.”

“It was our parents who would have beaten me black and blue if I dared to talk back to my teacher, even when my teacher beat me.”

But now let’s come to some of my former students who have a special place reserved for me in hell, since 2014 or thereabouts! These former students will either get on social media and abuse me or won’t think twice before calling me up and giving me a piece of their mind because they know I won’t retaliate. They know they can get away with it by blaming it on youthful exuberance. So they keep doing it – on Twitter, on Facebook. First, it was a gentle rebuke, then there were argumentative debates and now its abuse such as calling me a ‘motherfucker’ ‘asshole’ ‘bastard’ – none of which I ever was or ever will be. I guess that is how they address their parents or their parents address them.

I guess it also happens when you are a rich entitled brat, brought up in an environment when you see your parents abuse their servants, drivers or even their employees, even though the latter is much older, and think it is okay to do that. If being liberal and woke means abusing teachers and seniors, I am glad I’m not any of those things that today’s generation prides itself in being. I come from a generation which even today stands up when one sees a former teacher approaching, or addresses ex-bosses as ‘sir’. Of course, there are also those students who apologise to me on the behalf of these uncouth halfwits and we laugh over it.

The latest abuse happened on Tuesday last, when I posted a video of policemen in Delhi forcing rioters to sing Jana Gana Mana. It seemed to have irked some ultraliberal ex-students of mine. My point in posting the video was that these were the ones who were thumping their chests and threatening to decimate India. And now look at them quivering in fear even as a policeman poked them with his lathi. In hindsight, maybe I should have not used it. However, since it is open season for abusing teachers online and offline, I was subjected to the vilest personal abuse from some ex-students online. Then, one student, a polite one, called me up and hinted that I could take it down, which I did without an argument or even a protest. And only because I have tremendous respect for this boy. While we have arguments, he has never resorted to abuse. Which I am afraid I can’t say for the rest.

During the height of the Punjab militancy, I saw my seniors asking for the ‘score’. Later I realised they were asking not about a cricket score but the number of people killed by terrorists that day. The figures decided where the story would appear. Just a couple dead meant one paragraph on the inside page. Five deaths meant 4 paragraphs on the inside pages. Ten deaths sent it to Page 1 in 4 paragraphs. Larger the figure, bigger the story and placement on the page. Sure, we also felt for those killed but we didn’t stand up and swear loudly at the militants and threaten to behead them. Today, of course, there is Twitter for that. Then, I was horrified at the casualness of their approach. It was a hard lesson for me – never take any story to heart.

Here is some advice, if as a media student or even a journalist you take everything you see personally – whether a riot, a picture, a video or a political campaign, then you shouldn’t be in the profession. For a media person, it is better to stay detached to events happening around you otherwise the reporting of events becomes subjective rather than objective. And that is how ‘narratives’ are woven.

Incidentally, the video in question is still being shared on Twitter and various WhatsApp groups including one run by senior journalists from one of India’s largest media houses. And now there is another video doing the rounds. This one of the IB officer’s body being fished out of the gutter. I don’t see too many woke liberals asking that the video not be shown. Wonder why.

Strangely, the abuse against me began only after I started supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and my Twitter numbers began to rise after he began following me. Till I didn’t support him, I was a nice guy and a good teacher – well, at least to some. They didn’t seem to have a problem when I supported a man who presided over a pogrom that massacred thousands of Sikhs in the nation’s capital and around the country. Now that I am neither a journalist nor a teacher, having quit both, over six years ago, I have suddenly become a racist bigot, a lousy teacher and not a nice human to know because I say things that disturb their fragile left-liberal ecosystem. The problem is that a lot of people have lost the ability to look logically at everything around them. And all this because they hate one man and by extension those who support him. And what infuriates them more is that he doesn’t care about what they think of him.

My advice to these people – don’t read me and don’t follow me if I offend you that much. I survived the politics of 40 years in corporate life, of which 30 was in journalism, only because of thick skin and a sense of humour. And it’s a bit too late to change now when I’m through 80 per cent of my life. And, in case you didn’t notice, we are still a democracy where I have the right to say what I want within permissible limits. I hope I don’t live to see the day in a democracy where myopic liberals will decide what we need to say or not say because it offends a particular community – like elsewhere in the world. And look where the rest of the world is today. Also, if you feel so strongly about the issues in the country, if you have the guts, tell that to the politician concerned – politely. If you have a problem with Narendra Modi take it out on him. If Modi is making you a stark raving lunatic, a psychotic or neurotic because he doesn’t respond to your abuses, go see a psychiatrist or buy a punching bag. Don’t make me one because you don’t dare to accept your shortcomings.

If you still can’t do that, please get drunk, get stoned, get laid or drop dead. I don’t care. My responsibility ended once I left the classroom. That’s exactly what the director of an institute, where I once taught, told the parents of a student caught for smoking/possessing a banned substance. When the parents complained that it was the director’s duty to take care of the boy inside and outside college since they had left the boy with him, he politely told them it wasn’t because he was neither the parent nor the guardian. His responsibility ended at 6 p.m. Being stoned and lying in a gutter outside the premises is really not the institution’s problem, it’s just an example of bad parenting and issues that they need to take care of.

And one last thing. If you have allowed your personal beliefs and ideologies to override your professionalism, you are the media profession’s biggest failures. Like I said earlier, a lot of you were the dregs of a crappy parental system that institutions are left to deal with and have no interest in playing a mother. Well, maybe, neither does the media world and they’re just too polite to tell you. Pack up and look for another existence. Just stay off my timeline. I have no interest in reading what badly brought up, abusive, uncouth and ill-mannered brats have to say.

P.S.
The headline is a quote from my favourite book The Lord Of The Flies by William Golding.

Freedom of expression, according to some…

I don’t know what it was that the young lady from a Mumbai college did to get herself expelled, but whatever it was, I think the punishment was a bit too harsh. Suspending her for being an administrator of a confessions page could have been the appropriate thing to do, if at all.

From what I’ve read in yesterday’s Hindustan Times, the student was expelled because she was the administrator of a Confessions page started by students of the college. The college authorities believed that neither the institution nor the staff should have been maligned on the page and took objection to it. They decided to teach her a lesson. Again, I am only going by newspaper reports, but I do think it was a bit harsh, and the reaction to it as overly dramatic, as the incident in Palghar some months ago when two girls were arrested for posting something on Facebook during Balasaheb Thackeray’s funeral.

Just a couple of weeks back students of a media college, where I take classes, opened a Confessions page. I love reading what these youngsters have to say about life and a lot else and I have often commented as well. There have been times, when I’ve felt the urge to put my comments down in “their language” with the A, B and C in the right place! I’ve refrained from doing so, purely because I realise that what I say as their teacher could have its repurcussions.

Anyway, I went on this Confessions page and found some really nasty comments about people’s sexual orientations and these kids were named in these updates. I was appalled. Whether it was fact or fiction and whether X was a lesbian, Y a homosexual and Z a transgender was an extremely personal issue and no one had the right to flog it on a social networking site. Worse, there were some factually incorrect statements made by some students, which maligned some members of the faculty, again anonymously.

I registered my protest on the page and from there, others picked it up. Then a post written by an anguished student Sheikh Rehmatullah, questioned the need for such a page and the kind of scurrilous content it was propagating. Another faculty member posted her response to it and suddenly the shit hit the fan.

Rehmatullah asked for my comment and I responded. I agreed with most of what he said. My reply to a faculty member (since she berated me for being diplomatic!) was that students need to let off steam, so I didn’t have a problem with the page per se, as long as there was someone filtering it, which in this case, seemed unlikely. If there was, he or she was either nodding off on the job or was finding the deluge of updates too much to handle.

These are 17/18-year-olds, and they can hardly be expected to behave like 35-year-olds, but some of the updates were downright defamatory. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many students voicing their opinion, some quite vehemently, against the page. And most blasted the rude, crude and extremely insulting anonymous updates. Then one smart kid decided to post an anonymous message from “The Director” and I remember saying “This is what I mean by self censorship” or some such thing. I believe the page was pulled off a few hours later.

Cloaked in the garb of anonymity, you cannot say anything you want and get away with it. And mind you, unlike the girl who was expelled from the college in Mumbai, these kids are media students, who should understand restraint and practice some form of self censorship.

Unfortunately, many of today’s media students (and I stress on ‘media’) believe freedom of expression means NO restrictions. I have no argument with students from any other colleges who wish to vent their spleen against college, professors, government, politician, friend or foe. But I do believe that such liberties are not applicable to media students. They need to understand that in the profession they are in, it is imperative they stop and think of the reactions their actions could provoke. on a larger canvas. If they still think ‘viva la revolution’ is the answer to all ills, they are in the wrong world.

In newspapers during editorial meetings, people raise objections to a point in a story and argue over it. Sometimes one argues that the report is half-baked forcing it to be put in cold storage. In journalism classes I have spoken of checks and double checks on a controversial story to ensure there are no loose ends, which could come back and bite one in the ass! We even consult lawyers on the newspaper’s payroll to confirm whether we can carry a report without inviting a lawsuit. We don’t publish just anything. Sometimes we may err on the side of caution, but then it is better to do that, than be forced to print an apology the next day. I’ve seen national newspapers carrying front page apologies for stories done, where they accept that they hadn’t got their facts right.

We love to talk about the American or the British media, but even they have some form of self censorship, and it is something my young friends in media schools need to learn. It’s not a ‘free’ world as everyone would have us believe. The sooner some media students understand that, the better their future…

Mr Sibal, are you okay?

News just in is that the Prime Minister is planning a new ministry and it is going to be named the Union Ministry for Propaganda, to be headed by Dr. Kapil Sibal with Shashi Tharoor as his Minister of State. The job of this ministry will be to ensure that any online content that criticises the First Family and the Prime Minister will first be sent for screening to the ministry concerned, and heads of these portals will be put in jail for even accepting such stuff. Just kidding, just kidding….

But what is not one bit funny is the UPA government asking google, Facebook, Yahoo and others to censor content, to supposedly protect the ‘fair’ name of the Gandhi-Nehru family and others among their list of favourites, who are constantly being lampooned on the Internet. Even more appalling is Sibal’s very Goebbelsian remark that “They will have to give us this data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it.”

Sibal seemed a nice chap, so what got into him all of a sudden? Is he trying to upstage his good friend Digvijaya Singh, who till now had excelled in shooting his mouth off, or is he trying to ingratiate himself to the First Family or is he trying appease his and the party’s vote-bank? OR is he trying the age old ruse of diverting the attention of the public at large from ticklish issues like FDI in retail, Lokpal Bill, 2G, CWG etc? So he now wants to “define” what we can say and in the same breath says he respects the freedom of expression! Bit of an oxymoron isn’t it?

Does his ranting have anything to do with the videos floating around that question the financial dealings of certain members of the First Family? Frankly, if the people who find themselves in these videos feel they are being defamed or maligned they should ask the website to pull them off and sue, if they think that would serve the purpose. I think that is justified. But to do what Sibal is suggesting websites do, is stretching it a bit much.

Amitabh Bachchan sued a Swedish newspaper that published reports about his and his brother’s links with Bofors, and won. Whether people believed they were involved or not, the Bachchans believed they were not and sued. The paper retracted the stories, apologised and paid the Bachchans for the damage caused to their reputation. Let the people who feel they are being maligned do the same.

Sibal has also outdone himself by his latest harangue on what he claims is ‘objectionable’, ‘blasphemous’ and ‘derogatory’ comments on the Internet. Who decides what is ‘objectionable’ ‘blasphemous’ and ‘derogatory’ and how?

And can he define what is blasphemous? If he is so concerned about it, why doesn’t he also ask social networking sites to pull down all the anti-India – and more specifically anti-Hindu – rhetoric that’s floating around, most of which emanate from a few neighbouring countries. They have been around for ages, how come no one from the government thought of complaining to Facebook about them? Why has his government never attempted to block those sites? Is it because it suits them to drive a deeper wedge between the two communities, and in doing so appease the party’s vote-bank?

I thought this government had learnt its lessons from the Emergency, when the prince and his henchmen tried to subvert democracy and a free press, by having secretaries sitting in newsrooms of newspapers vetting copies or confiscating film reels. Even the great ‘democrat’ Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with his trusted lieutenant Brajesh Mishra was not averse to using strong-arm tactics to rein in the media when they wanted to. But Sibal has taken this quite a few steps higher.

In 1962 during the Chinese invasion the press roasted the prime minister for his decisions and his blind faith in his defence minister. He was advised to muzzle the Press, but he refused saying that a free press was the very essence of democracy and if he were to black out the press he would never know what the people felt about him and his government. That Prime Minister was Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, one of the founders of the Congress party that harps on his name and ideals even today.

To end on a humorous note, a Russian tourist, on his first visit to the USA in the 1960s checked into a hotel and asked his American host what the TV was doing in his room. The American told him,” We have television sets in every hotel room, which beam over 50 channels. And we watch all of them”

The surprised Russian remarked, “Back home in Moscow, we too have a television set in every hotel room. Only IT watches you.”

Time for a statutory warning?

“Facebook India users who indulge in personal and defamatory attacks and post offensive messages could face punishment up to three years under the various sections of the Information Technology Act. “

Will social networking sites, taking a leaf out of tobacco companies’ books, post such a warning on their sites, sometime in the future?

One of my former bosses once gave me some advice which I have never forgotten. He was talking of the importance of the ‘send’ button on a keyboard of the computer. He said whenever you are angry about something or someone (even if it may be your immediate superior or even your boss) and want to fire a mail to someone in authority, go ahead and write it. But don’t send it. Instead, he advised, save it in the Drafts folder and let it lie there till you cool down.

He believed that we often write things in the heat of the moment that we end up regretting it a few minutes later. In the case of an email there is no time for regret. Once you click on the ‘send’ button it’s gone and then you’re left to perspire over the consequences. So why not just wait for things to cool down. If you think you still feel strongly about the issue and want to send the mail, go ahead by all means. So write it, save it but don’t send it, was his advice.

So it does make me wonder how people are so itchy-fingered when it comes to posting offensive messages and emails, without considering the implications. When they are hauled up they fall back on the tried and tested “I’m sorry, it was done in the heat of the moment. It won’t happen again.” If someone feels strongly about something why not go up to the relevant authority and discuss it or in that case send an email requesting an appointment to discuss the issue?

Which bring me to an interesting report in today’s DNA on page 9, that talks about whether a student can be held guilty for posting profane messages against a teacher on social networking sites. No say child rights groups. Yes say lawyers, quoting the IT Act.

The DNA report states that a Chandigarh school suspended 16 students for three months after they had posted offensive messages and pictures of a teacher on Facebook. Child rights groups are, of course, up in arms against this decision. They believe children should be counselled when they do such things, because a lot of things are done without malicious intent and are just an outlet for their frustration. I’m okay with that, because I know a lot of children do things without thinking and social networking sites like Facebook have given kids the kind of freedom to express themselves in so many ways that we never had in our days.

Child rights groups believe a student has the right to air his or her grievances against a teacher, institution and the system, while lawyers quote Section 66 of the IT ACT which can send an offender to jail for three years. This particular IPC section was probably formulated to check transgressions by company employees and not minors, but the fact that it’s there should by act as a deterrent. But it doesn’t. Numerous companies have today blocked access to personal emails and social networking sites at the workplace. Companies like Infosys are monitoring comments on social networking sites, and employees who rant about their managers can face disciplinary action.

Today Facebook or Orkut has become an extension of a friend and confidante, with a really big mouth! Apart from the sometimes downright rude updates, I also read stuff like “In a relationship” or “In a confused/complicated relationship” etc. Does the world need to know? Updates on social networking sites have all kinds of stuff – from rude messages to poetry to short stories to nasty cracks against the administration. The strange thing is that most of these comments are from people aged 18-25. And some of them are quite funny.

To an extent, I’m fine with this too. There are times when one needs to unwind. We also need to keep pace with technology and as parents and teachers we also need to understand where our children are headed! So far so good! But school children are those under the age of 18. What does one do when those above the voting age indulge in such indiscreet behaviour?