Ought to the BBC now stand for Ban, Ban Conspirators?

Bachi Karkaria

Bachi Karkaria’s Erratica and its cheeky sign-off character, Alec Sensible, have had a rising league of followers since 1994 when the column started within the Metropolis on Saturday.
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The documentary raking up the 2002 riots triggered the Hamletian dilemma of ‘To b or to not b.’ Until overtaken by the An element, it offered a brand new bee within the bonnet for the waspish opposition, and created a hornet’s nest for BJP. But, ban and brouhaha have been fairly avoidable, for, no matter all the things, the then-CM and now-PM was exonerated by the Supreme Court docket.

As a substitute of resurrecting the entire caboodle of conspiracies, colonialism, even the Congress occasion’s fave fig-leaf of the ‘overseas hand’, BJP might have given a measured response – not a brief fuse. However the bent-knee jerk comes robotically to political weight-lifters. So, the federal government ill-advisedly handed the opposition a ‘dumb’ell .

The PIL moved by journalist N Ram, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and TMC’s Mahua Moitra was definitely not ‘frivolous’ – as dissed by the jiujitsu kaizen, Kiren Rijiju. But when Parliament hadn’t been rocked by the largest quake on the Wealthy-ter scale, the BBC ban’s obligatory debate needn’t have been necessitated. The Grand Inquisitor aka the tv information hour did sit in imperious judgment, and detonate with whataboutery. Et al, the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom which is but to see the punishments that 2002 did.

Until juicier bait obtained the media hooked, the information was caught up with ban-ner headlines. The sparring between anti-national and anti-ban. The ‘Dodg’em sport between cops/ institutional authorities and the ‘satyagraha’ teams screening the Docu within the Dock. The parallel gray market on the blacked-out BBC as not all emailed hyperlinks disappeared into the ether; some cell-phoned ones managed to flee the Internet and commandeered excessive eye-balls. Add to this the studies on the protests of the patriotic Diaspora, which indignantly condemned the Beeb’s colonialism whereas making hay the place the Empire as soon as shone.

We should be taught to cope with all conun-drumming with Gita-esque detachment. The once-ruling-now-rue-ing occasion was equally responsible of equally disposing explosive materials. The BBC challenge was merely yet one more leap on the ban-wagon.

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Alec Sensible mentioned: “Natu-Notu, everybody’s dancing the Khan-Can.”

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