My daughter's school bus was attacked in Gurgaon: Why I blame media for Karni Sena violence
A day before Padmaavat’s release, Lokendra Singh Kalvi’s Rajput Karni Sena attacked a school bus my daughter travels in (fortunately, my daughter did not go to school on that day). As I watched the video footage in horror and disbelief, I surfed through the news channels to know how safe the roads were.
I stopped switching channels at Republic TV, where Arnab Goswami, in his signature aggression, was interviewing Kalvi. Pointed questions like, "Are you not ashamed Lokendra Kalvi? Your Karni Sena stooped so low that it attacked a school bus?”, and several other queries that parents of young children wanted to ask Kalvi on that day were shot at the man by Arnab as the nation watched him with rapt attention.
As a parent, I too waited and watched the drama unfolding on my TV screen.
While Arnab put forth the questions that we wanted to ask the man who perpetrated the horror on little children, as usual, we couldn't hear what Kalvi had to say in response. All we could hear was Arnab and more Arnab. Kalvi was seen peacefully smiling at the camera, as if in his mind he knew his objective had materialised. All he had to do after a well-attended press conference in the day was to smile on TV camera, grabbing lengthy air time.
Free publicity is all Kalvi and his gang wanted, and the Indian media, hungry for TRPs, ensured they gave them that. After all it was a brilliant barter – "We give you air time, you give us TRPs". Yes, that is exactly how this nexus functions. Imagine, the first time Karni Sena had sent a press release to media houses saying they will oppose the release of Padmavati (initial name) with all their might. Had the media not given so much importance to it, Kalvi and gang would not have become a topic of prime-time discussion and they would have been pushed into the same obscurity they have been living in since 1987.
Who knew what was Karni Sena until TV news channels flashed their threats in bold letters? Who knew Lokendra Singh Kalvi before we were forced to consume his mindless ranting on prime time? Who cared what they thought about an upcoming film until self-styled custodians of national interest invited these goons to their studios to perform an autopsy of mythology in the name of history, culture and what not?
All other news channels did the same. They continued to offer prime-time publicity to Karni Sena in the garb of honest reportage, and Karni Sena achieved what it wanted to. After all, no one had heard of them for over three decades. Eventually, Padmavati became what Roop Kanwar turned out for Karni Sena in 1987 - a golden goose, an opportunity to resurrect itself and drive political mileage out of it.
Karni Sena was last heard of in 1987 when an 18-year-old young bride somewhere in remote Rajasthan was forced to jump into (sati) the funeral pyre of her husband. The country was shaken by the news of this gross act of crime committed by a bunch of Rajputs from Roop Kanwar’s village. The international media took note of this incident and covered it extensively. The time when all this had happened, the government of India (headed by Rajiv Gandhi) was projecting the "hungry for growth" approach to the world community. Thoroughly embarrassed by this act of horror, it had ordered action against the community members who perpetrated the crime. The then political stalwart from the Rajput community and former Rajasthan CM, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, too stood against the condemnable medieval ritual. That’s when Lokendra Kalvi’s father Kalyan Singh Kalvi stepped in and became the voice of the Rajput community and spoke aggressively in favour of Rajput culture, traditions and the age-old rituals, arguing against the right of the state to overwrite them. And how that stand taken by him shaped the political career of Kalvi senior is history.
No matter how mindless and irrational it may sound to us, the Karni Sena and its leadership has always tried to reap benefit from controversy. And Indian media has offered them an easy platform to grab limelight.
Instead of continuously airing their point of view and strengthening their threat, media should immediately stop covering what Karni Sena has to say. We don’t want to see a group of sword-wielding Rajput women in Chittorgarh threatening to perform jauhar. We don’t want to know what Kalvi and his gang has to say about Padmavati or Padmaavat. We refuse to consume any of their threats relayed to us by Indian media that makes each of their press conference a success.
We would rather want the Indian media to shift the noise from Karni Sena to the political leadership of this country that has gone mute over such blatant breach of law and order. We want the media to question the CMs of all those states who are singing to the tunes of this rogue sena and have banned the movie in their states. Why cannot the media ask these politicians what message have they passed on to the people of this country by ignoring the verdict of the highest court of this country by banning the film from being released? We’d want Arnab Goswami and all his colleagues to make the following a headline instead – “Why is the prime minister silent over a school bus being attacked by Karni Sena?”
I have not watched Padmaavat nor do I care to. What I care about is that we are living in a society that has turned into a circus and we are all have turned into a captive audience.
Also read: Has Modi government proven its incompetence by being unable to rein in Rajput Karni Sena?