The parallel accounts put out by both the sides of what transpired at the meeting between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan and the media spin on it in respective countries has once again underscored a fundamental query: How corrosive is the role of the prevailing narrative in adding to the bitterness and vitriol between India and Pakistan? A gentleman who works on South Asia at a think tank was curious to know. Some people who watch the World Wrestling Entertainment histrionics that pass off as prime-time debate on Indian television are regularly subjected to a set of eminences from either country — some seem positively inebriated hurling high decibel invectives at each other. As an aside, it is widely rumoured that some of these Pakistani prima donna’s are handsomely remunerated for the theatrics they perform on Indian news channels.
Some years back, while surfing surfing to find my favourite cartoon channel, I happened to pause on a “views” channel that masquerades as “news and current affairs” channel. One Pakistani panelist was screaming: “In 1971, we bombarded Dwarka.” An Indian panelist retorted: “We gave it back to you in Karachi by shelling your harbour.” Till this point, the hysterics were droll but then it got ugly. The Pakistani yelled that was 1971 and that his country has nukes and they will take out New Delhi. Another Indian shrieked that India has a second-strike capability and would wipe out Lahore and Rawalpindi. The nuclear armageddon on TV was perturbing. I called up one of my colleagues and requested her to advise all the “views” channels that there would be statutory implications that they would need to factor in for orchestrating this dramaturgy of the absurd.
The advice worked but only for a few days. Soon, they were back at it. The question that kept niggling was: Does this poisonous dialogue for the sake of television rating points, tap into the very fertile soil of hate and odium that is a part of our unhappy legacy? Conversely, does it exacerbate the climate of distrust and animosity that then becomes an insurmountable obstacle in the search for even a sliver of common ground between the two countries? On balance, is it a bit of both? India-Pakistan relations are a complex, nuanced and a layered cookie. At the very base is the warmth and camaraderie of Indians and Pakistanis when they encounter each other. There are stories galore from Lucknow to Lahore of “the human connect playing itself out in myriad drawing rooms and bazaars of both the nations”.
On top of it is the institutional hostility that establishments in both countries have towards each other. Then there is the cricketing rivalry where every match is a metaphoric war between the two countries. Supplementing all this are the myriad diplomacy tracks where policy wonks, retired officials and civil society bleeding hearts attempt to find solutions. Finally there is the pacifist impulse in the political establishment on both sides that manifests itself periodically, perhaps prodded by international powers who are petrified that these crazy South Asians may just blow themselves up.
Here also there is a split between the print media that is broadly sober even in its criticism in either country — except for certain vernaculars, especially in Pakistan (pardon the Indian bias). Television is generally hyper and social media is downright vicious in both the countries. Can a change in the prevailing narrative to a conversation focusing on the positives help in changing the ambience? If so, how? Or is it that the structural fault lines between the two countries run so deep that even an improvement in the atmospherics would not resolve or put on the backburner the contentiousness between the two countries.
Irrespective of the outcome, this is an endeavour worth pursuing. It would only get off the ground if media barons on either side see an economic opportunity in terms of a market for their respective media products across the border. The real meat, of course, lies on entertainment where there is a ready appetite to consume each other’s music, films, theatre, animation and even television. Regular concerts by artists from each side notwithstanding, the loony fringe in both the countries are a market that has been tapped into in the past as well, but never exploited to it’s full potential. A lot of this is already happening but via other countries and needs to be institutionalised.
Even in the news and current affairs genre, allowing the respective public broadcaster’s to uninterruptedly downlink their content onto distribution platforms in either nation, albeit governed by a mutually-negotiated programme and advertising code could be a first step and an appropriate confidence building measure.
Hypothetically speaking, if private newspapers of both countries are allowed to distribute — whereby they start earning revenue on both subscription and over the medium term even on advertising — would that moderate the vitriol? The answer is “yes”. In any case, they are freely available on the Internet but the reason why the content in some of them remains vitriolic is simply because there is no revenue imperative for moderation. Similarly, if news channels realise that there is subscription and advertising revenue that they can earn in either country despite the tyranny of carriage fee in India and the corresponding ogre in Pakistan, it would defiantly tamper down on the staple violent sensationalism on either side.
For the media, at the end of the day, is a business. It is about the money, honey; and if media czars start seeing that there is even a sliver of silver to be made, they would start looking at the India-Pakistan equation through a totally different prism. It would make eminent sense to put together a quiet retreat for the big media owners from either side to kickstart the process. Improved acoustics would definitely help in creating a better ecosystem that could have a spillover effect in other spaces too.
