Varun Gandhi: The unanswered questions

B D Narayankar

India: It is painful to see that the whole political establishment of India, the whole Indian press, and even a majority of the Internet world have pronounced their verdict on Varun Gandhi.

He was branded as a villain, based on a video-CD that may well be doctored. All the leading Indian TV channels, instead of reporting the news impartially from both sides, have condemned his so-called “hate speech”.

The election commission gave its decision on the complaint made against him in the form of a CD, but was saying that the onus of proving the CD as doctored was on Varun. Is a person not assumed to be innocent until “proven guilty” in legal systems of modern nations? Doesn’t the onus of proving the allegation fall on the accuser?

On Varun’s part, he was saying some of portions of the CD did not have his voice. He was the voice in the CD was heavy, whereas he has a soft voice. Why was nobody investigating that? Instead of running the same tapes over and over again, day and night, why were the news channels not doing some investigative journalism and coming out with some findings about the genuineness of the footage?

Why had no channel said, “it was our video, our correspondent was there, so Varun Gandhi’s denials were meaningless”? Why were all the channels rewinding and replaying footage from a single source, whose identity nobody was revealing?

Why did the news networks not send someone who was at the original speech to confront him and interview him? The controversial speech was supposed to have taken place on March 5. Why was it not reported on the evening of March 5 or on March 6? Why was there no sign of a forensic analysis of the video, more than one month after the alleged speech? Who is sleeping over it?

Why have the news channels not interviewed even one eyewitness from Pilibhit who would say he/she was there when Varun Gandhi made those statements?

It's surprising to see the likes of Javed Akhtar and others who on one issue are always visibly vocal in support of ‘freedom of expression’ but on another incident are strangely advocating to curb the freedom of speech.

For them, Varun Gandhi’s utterances qualify for being a hate speech, but not M F Hussain's hate-paintings. How can his paintings be considered ‘expressions of respect’ or ‘depiction of truth’ and not hate. Throwing shoes on George Bush creates hero out of a man but spitting on a Kashmiri separatist leader qualifies for being an unacceptable and thoroughly condemnable behaviour.

Sadhvi Pragya qualifies for being hanged without interrogation, but Afzal needs to be freed even after conviction.

Is this not justifying the blame that a hate expression against majority is justified, whereas a hate expression against minority is unacceptable?