Yogi’s Uttar Pradesh: Media is celebrating death

In its enthusiasm to promote Yogi, the media has substantiated the allegation that the Yogi government played an important role in the death of Ansari. Though there is hardly any way of knowing the truth in prevailing circumstances, the media coverage shows a vested interest in his death. How could the government deny that it failed to provide safe living conditions to the deceased?

Has the Indian media lost its reason? People can understand yielding to pressures from the ruling establishment, as is common in the current political scenario, but not an unconditional surrender. However, it does not endorse vulgarity. The way the media is celebrating the custodial death of former Uttar Pradesh MLA Mukhtar Ansari is appalling. The media is unhesitatingly violating the basic human norm of being respectful to the dead. Has the deterioration reached its bottom? It is breaking every journalistic norm.

Ansari died in a questionable circumstance. Several people are not ready to buy the government version of his death, saying that he died of a heart attack. His family members had already complained of slow poisoning. They had also gone to the Supreme Court, and the Uttar Pradesh government had to commit to ensuring Ansari's safety. However, the details that have come out do not support the claim of the State government. He was earlier admitted to the ICU but sent to prison after coming out of it. His deteriorating health meant nothing to the Yogi government. Maybe the government was letting him die. No one can dispute that the government's behavior was one of hostility. The former MLA had an elaborate history of crime. But it did not have anything to do with Yogi’s hostility. The hostility has its origins in the communal politics of the ruling BJP. Ansari had been a strong voice for the Muslim minority in eastern Uttar Pradesh, and his case could be used for Hindu-Muslim polarization. His profile could be used to criminalize the community.

So, the Chief Minister hardly misses any chance of vilifying the minority community. Whenever a criminal from the minority community is chased, the UP chief minister grabs the opportunity to present himself as the savior of the majority community. He has repeated it in Mukhtar Ansari’s case. He used every news item—from his shifting from Punjab to UP jail to his conviction—to reinforce his image as a Hindu savior.

The media has thrown its reputation into the air to support Yogi’s attempt to sustain an image of the savior of the majority community. It not only deteriorated to the level of reporting a socially sensitive issue in a biased manner but also touched a new low by abandoning the basic humanity of being respectful to a dead person. The coverage of Ansari’s death in the vernacular media was obscene. It portrayed the Supur-e-khak (laying to rest) as Ansari’s decimation and used the term “mitti mein mil gaye (sank into dust) to describe his burial. It also tried to portray the mourning crowd as “miscreants.” The media was trying to say that Yogi decimated Ansari and warded off a threat to the majority community. This is not only a reinforcement of his image as a Bulldozer Baba, a baba who bulldozes houses of outlawed people. Everyone knows who he considers outlawed.

This reinforcement of Yogi’s image must be related to Modi's declining brand. Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of seats in the Lok Sabha. Modi needs Yogi to win them. Here comes the role of the Election Commission of India. The ECI has promised to provide a level playing field for all political parties. Can it be fulfilled after these blatant violations of journalistic and humanitarian norms?

In its enthusiasm to promote Yogi, the media has substantiated the allegation that the Yogi government played an important role in the death of Ansari. Though there is hardly any way of knowing the truth in prevailing circumstances, the media coverage shows a vested interest in his death. How could the government deny that it failed to provide safe living conditions to the deceased?

We need to look at the backward journey Indian media has made in all these years. We can recall reports of custodial deaths and inhuman treatment of prisoners in the seventies and eighties. We know how the blinding of 31 prisoners in Bhagalpur Central Jail during the late 1970s made headlines in the national and international press. Now we witness the media applauding the illegal elimination of criminals in Uttar Pradesh. The real motive behind it has invariably been communal. These applauds are meant to promote Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as the savior of Hinduism. The mainstream media never questioned the way Ansari was being treated in jail and the hospital. Was he given adequate medical aid to survive the heart attack?

We have seen the fate of another strongman of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Atiq Ahmad, his brother, and his son at the hands of the UP police. His son was eliminated in an encounter. Atiq and his brother fell to bullets outside a Prayagraj hospital while in police custody. The media celebrated both the encounter and the shootout with the same zeal, even though the encounter and the shootout were both controversial. It made no difference to the victims whether they were in police custody or not. In its judgment on the petition of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, the Supreme Court says, "Article 21 confers a sacred and cherished right under the Constitution that cannot be violated, except according to procedure established by law. Article 21 guarantees personal liberty to every single person in the country, which includes the right to live with human dignity."

Does Yogi Adityanath value the verdict? In the PUCL’s case, the SC also issued guidelines to ensure that no police officer dares to stage a fake encounter. Did the State police ever follow these guidelines?

The media is following a strange path. It is openly celebrating the collapse of law and order in Uttar Pradesh. It is violating the norms of journalism and humanity to promote a Hindutva leader. Is it a surrender to pressures or an affiliation to communal ideology?

(The author is a senior journalist. He has experience of working with leading newspapers and electronic media including Deccan Herald, Sunday Guardian, Navbharat Times and Dainik Bhaskar. He writes on politics, society, environment and economy)