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COVER STORY: INDO-PAK SUMMIT
GOTCHA!
That was the attitude of Pakistan's media managers
who won the misinformation war against India
By S. Prasannarajan in Agra
As the emperor
who built the Taj Mahal lay dying in the Muthumman Burj of the Agra Fort,
the domed mausoleum in marble across the Yamuna was his only afterlife-affirming
solace. He died gazing at his own romance. Three hundred and thirty-five
years later, the death of a summit in the backdrop of Shahjahan's monumental
love story didn't have any such luxury. It was a slow and steady disintegration,
protected from the curiosity of notepads and the sadism of cameras by
the imposing red sandstone walls of Jaypee Palace Hotel. The summit died
gazing at a void.
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| MONUMENTAL MESSAGE: General and Begum
Musharraf at the Taj Mahal |
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Agra: the chronicle of a death never told. The
posthumous multinarration of the Day Before is a kind of Roshomon, one
murder and more than one version, without the genius of a Kurosawa. Though
the subjectivity of truth as it was played out in Agra was as mindboggling
as it was in the movie. For two days that didn't shake hotel Mughal Sheraton,
whose lobby and bar and convention hall were a homage to McLuhan's updated
village of cell phones, laptops and camcorders, the only trembling sensation
was truth, or the subjectivity of it.
Well, truth may not be the same as information.
And the absence of which was the biggest presence in Agra. In Mughal Sheraton,
home to the national and international media people brought together by
the "historic" pull of the summit, information was competing
with imagination, truth was multiplying on cell phones, instantly transferred
to the restless notepads, and, by the evening, in the lobby bar wisdom
flowed out of whisky glasses. In the Age of Information, Agra was a monumental
case of misinformation as one-dimensional intimidation. It was a kind
of Kargil by invisible Pakistani media marksmen, the General's Goebbels,
whose ever cooperative agents were there to feed the information-hungry
journalists from India and elsewhere.
And hunger was the defining motif of Day One,
Sunday. The action was elsewhere, the anxiety was here and now. How's
the one-on-one? Oh, still going on, much beyond the scheduled time. Really,
the chemistry is working ... the expectation is soaring ... breakthrough
is possible ... history is in the making ... the Wagah Wall is the next
to fall after the Berlin Wall. The commencement of a process, the beginning
of a journey-the pulp poetry of India's Foreign Ministry started migrating
to the hotel lobby. It would have migrated to next day's headlines too,
but for the timely onscreen intervention of Information & Broadcasting
Minister Sushma Swaraj.
The lady was there already in the morning, marching
with motherly gravitas through Diwan-e-Khas, the hotel's convention hall
that was turned into the media centre, throwing "everything okay?"
at bored hacks. By the evening she was the saboteur: she had "purposefully"
omitted Kashmir from one of her revealing TV appearances. The Indian misinformation,
deliberate, and that too from the minister of information. The retaliation
came at midnight, as photocopied truth, the nationality of which was,
as usual, Pakistani: "The Government of Pakistan reiterates that
Kashmir had been the focus of discussion in the 90-minute one-on-one meeting
between the heads of the two states." The journey from the Great
Expectation to the Great Fiasco had begun.
Monday, Day Two, began with the most notoriously
talked about breakfast in subcontinental history. The invitation from
the Pakistani high commissioner read: "I have the pleasure to invite
you to an informal meeting over breakfast with the President of Pakistan,
General Pervez Musharraf, on 16th July at 9.00 am at Hotel Amar Vilas,
Agra. Your attendance will be much appreciated." Informal, not for
public consumption, that was what you thought. That was what the attendees,
50-odd editors from the print and visual media, too thought. Then you
saw it at the lobby bar of the hotel, camera-friendly cannibalism unfolding
on five screens, but the same channel. The General, as suave as Dr Hannibal
Lecter, feasting on humble lambs from the fourth estate.
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