Media Gaga Over Myanmar Operation: When Will The Hangover Be Over?

Beginning from Tuesday’s triumphant overtly covert operation by the Indian Army whereby it killed some 60 (or 80 or 100 or more) dangerous and menacing northeast militants inside the territory of Myanmar (or perhaps not), our amour propre and nationalistic sentiments have reached exorbitant levels. This is, however, no surprise. Whenever the Army successfully (or not) carries out any operation against anybody, chauvinism is, but, evident amongst the aam-admi (the Army, of course is unquestionable and always justified if it is of one's own country).

But what has compelled me to write this piece is the utter blindness with which the usually probing and investigative media (pretending to be so) has been a part of the jubilance and ecstasy. There is certainly some sect of nationalist and jingoist news (read entertainment) channels prevailing whose anchors are so patriotic that I sometimes wonder at least one of them who comes immediately to mind, should be made the Chief of Army but thankfully, the thought soon fades away.

But to my astonishment the entire journalist fraternity, this time, has fallen prey to the pro-government, pro-Army plague. Newspapers, news channels, news websites- all alike, are celebrating the ‘revenge’ with such pride and euphoria that it is actually sad and scary. Such response from the 56 inch chest thumping supporters was only expected, nor am I much perturbed about the celebratory reactions by the superlatively nationalist (chauvinist) party members and volunteers. But the manner in which the media is making the whole incident appear as an incredible achievement definitely rings the bell of danger.

There are so many questions which have and should arise from this “secret” operation,which ironically, have been completely ignored by most of our journalists and editors. One could be the denial by the Myanmarese government albeit Myanmar repudiating that the operation took place on its soil is but natural, for , in the process of celebration and sending out strong message to other nations, the government ignored the unsaid cardinal rule of secret operations.But there are other questions too. How many people were killed? How did the Army ensure that those killed were militants and not civilians? How did the Army differentiate between the insurgents and the civilians in that area? Were the so-called militants armed? Was there cross-firing? Even if one is to believe that all were militants, was there enough evidence to prove that they were only from NSCN-K or KYKL or some anti-talk insurgent group? And these are just the basic questions.

The larger question the media should be contemplating and debating about is what will be the repercussions of this ‘operation’? Many observers fear there might be an atypical coming together of different insurgent groups of the north-east, which might prove to be extremely dangerous. The years and years spent on building trust and ‘peace pacts’ might just flush down the drains.Is the Army and the nationalist governmnet prepared for this kind of a backlash? Do they have a strategy to tackle the rebel organisations now? But these obvious questions and concerns don’t seem to be of much importance to the media.

Nevertheless, by the virtue of being not too cynical (yet), I would still like to believe that perhaps the press too was just being a part of the jamboree till now and as soon as the hangover is over, will return to their job of raising questions which must be.

(This article is an opinion piece that appears on the Young Citizen page).