The aggressive support some fellow travellers have extended to former Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal after he was accused of the heinous crime of rape, on grounds of his supposedly fearless journalism, raises pertinent questions about the nature of India’s dissent industry. Nationalists have long suspected the bona fides of vociferous Left-Liberal activists (mostly rabidly anti-Hindu) who hyperventilate on various issues, monopolise public space, and are patronised by Government and western agencies whose causes they espouse. It is a closed circle which dominates critical sectors like academia, media, the entertainment and NGO industry, and has successfully muffled non-communist voices.
The rape charge against Tejpal, which fellow activists have, in contravention of law, angrily tried to quash by lauding him for having the guts to admit he had done wrong (read Javed Akhtar), or by insisting that the victim alone must choose whether to file a report and pursue the case legally (read Vrinda Grover), has badly scarred this class of professional public ‘intellectual’ activists.
At a time when the nation is facing crucial Assembly elections in five States and the countdown for the 2014 general election has begun, and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is giving sleepless nights to actors across the political spectrum, the destruction of the credibility of a high profile media personality in whom much was invested for more than a decade has come at a particularly inopportune moment. It has torn the ethical mask off the anti-Hindu pied pipers and sent them running for cover.
Tremours from the Goa earthquake have travelled west, with New York Times (November 22, 2013) penning a suggestively titled, “Editor in India, Known for Investigations Into Corruption, Is Accused of Rape”. The headline insinuates an innocent is being framed; the opening paragraph makes him sound like a victim, “The police in the coastal state of Goa filed charges of rape and sexual assault on Friday against Tarun Tejpal, the editor of a liberal-minded magazine that has influenced a generation of young Indian journalists with its exposés of corruption and abuse of power”.
In the style typical of Western journalism, the story injected unwarranted venom and political bias into the narrative, “The matter swiftly took on political significance because of Tehelka’s institutional stature… An investigation in Gujarat implicated state officials, including the chief minister, Narendra Modi, in sectarian riots that took place there in 2002”.
Now, why would New York Times inform its readers that a man accused of rape was editor of a “liberal-minded magazine” (a synonym for anti-Hindu) with an impressive record of “exposés of corruption and abuse of power”, unless it endorsed at least some of the exposés? The most dubious of these was the 2001 sting operation that attempted to implicate the then Defence Minister George Fernandes in kickbacks in defence deals; the most famous was the January 01, 2005 story alleging that Zahira Sheikh took Rs 18 lakh to give testimony that led to the exoneration of the accused in the Best Bakery case.
This desperation to salvage the public image and work of Tejpal and Tehelka leads one to wonder if it is driven by fear of future disclosures about either or both. Journalist Binoo K John, an old colleague of Tarun Tejpal from their India Today days, has come forward to articulate some dissent on his Facebook page, picked up by IBNLive Specials on November 23. He recalls that he and another colleague greatly admired Tejpal and that he “still cannot reveal all details about this particular case and some earlier ones” (emphasis added).
He does however state, “The decline of Tarun as a human being coincided with the decline of Tehelka into a slightly shady venture … The start of the Think festival was the beginning of Tarun’s personal decline and that of his magazine”. John continues, “He and his sister stopped at nothing to get money out of corporates. Tehelka plummeted the depths just as it had climbed the heights of glory and made us all proud. For that itself it has to close down. The biggest story that Tehelka had was killed and ‘monetised’. That corporate is the main sponsor of Think fest. Tarun had lost all sense of propriety, character”.
According to reliable sources, this likely refers to illegal mining in Goa since 2000. In October 2012, the Supreme Court ordered closure of all 90 mines pending an enquiry after an NGO, Goa Foundation, pleaded that all mining leases in the State suffer from multiple illegalities, including lack of mandatory permission from the National Board of Wildlife though many lie within the eco-sensitive zone notified by the Board.
Binoo John laments that Tejpal’s “descent into criminality after climbing the Everest of glory is an astounding, shocking story” which deeply wounded his old friends. In a telling comment, he adds, “For the many women colleagues and friends I know who he tried his tricks with, it will be justice”. Tejpal, he says, had mastered the art of “confounding his victims leaving them broken, shattered and often jobless”.
Among other voices that have since surfaced, as reported by Nida Najar in a blog carried by New York Times on November 21, is that of Neha Dixit, a freelance journalist whose complaint of sexual harassment while working at Tehelka in 2008 went unaddressed. Dixit has not named her tormentor, but says, “she did not pursue a criminal complaint because she felt she lacked the resources or the family support to do so”. This is evidence that the rot always ran deep at Tehelka. It is clearly does not warrant the New York Times’ concern for its “institutional stature”.
Najar quotes Vrinda Grover, human rights lawyer and advocate for women’s issues, “In the Tehelka matter it appears to be a serious incident of sexual assault. I would leave that decision provided the institution gives absolute and unconditional support to the woman concerned. If she wished to go to police, we should support her. If she doesn’t, let that be her decision.”
Yet Grover should know that the law, as amended after the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang-rape, puts the onus of going to the police on the employer to whom the complaint was made (in this case Shoma Choudhary). And since the police are empowered to take cognizance of cases that came to their notice, the matter is now being duly investigated. So the genie cannot be put back into the bottle.
A few points deserve mention. The ‘family member’ who reportedly tried to intimidate the widowed mother of the victim is known to be a formidable person. It would have taken immense courage for the young girl – who may anyway lose her job if continuing resignations and loss of patronage force the magazine’s closure – to issue a public statement revealing the visit and requesting that her family be left alone.
It was public outrage – as in the Jessica Lal, Priyadarshini Mattoo and other cases – that prodded the police into action, and hopefully now the law will now take its course. This has rendered the in-house committee to be headed by Urvashi Butalia, a women’s rights activist and known friend of Tarun Tejpal, a non-starter. But its needs be said that Butalia owed it to those who looked up to her all these years to immediately dissociate from the committee, the way judges do with complainants known to them socially. That she maintained silence all these days does not speak well of her and the Left-Liberal crowd.
The social media has pulled out photographs of Tarun Tejpal receiving the IMC Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar Award in Journalism from Ms Zakia Jafri, widow of late Ahsan Jafri, former MP, who is famous for her tirades against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. So this is a tightly knit back-scratching club.
What Indian journalism now needs is a true whistleblowers’ account of how Tarun Tejpal was mentored and funded and directed towards the stories he did and away from the ones he monetised or dropped. It seems laughable that The Guardian in 2007 loftily designated him as “India’s new elite” while Newsweek ranked Shoma Chaudhury among the “150 women who shake the world”. This Western endorsement of individuals who do not represent any meaningful section of Indian society merits a closer look, particularly if this is what ‘fixed’ the invitations to Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef and the CIA’s then top operative in Afghanistan, Richard Grenier, to the THINK festival where it all began to fall apart.
Niticentral.com, 25 November 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/11/25/where-tarun-tejpals-power-comes-from-161311.html