Scripting politics

Karan Thapar is running out of ideas. The latest on his Devil’s Advocate show is Arundhati Roy on Tasleema Nasrin’s travails. It may not come as surprise to many that I developed a hearty dislike for KT after watching his aborted show with Narendra Modi. Not surprisingly, people are going hammer and sickle after AR for what they think is her charge that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee engineered the Kolkata riots on Nov 21 to divert public attention from Nandigram. Actually, KT tried to get her to say it, but both of them are smart and sophisticated English speakers. So what was actually said was something very different. Oh, I can identify alright with AR’s answer to KT

AR: I wouldn’t use the word conspiracy because that sounds like an intelligence operation and I don’t think that something like this needs to go as far as a conspiracy but I would certainly say that you need to examine the timing of this because that’s all we are ever left in India. No one ever gets to the bottom of anything. It is always like, who benefits, why did this happen now. I would like to know, why it happened now.

She says it with a tinge of bitterness that I stopped feeling a long time ago. She says that from the story, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya emerges as the main script writer. Dayum, how do writers survive with such cryptic turns of phrase ? Can she complain now that people are piling on saying that she is accusing Buddhadeb Bhattacharya of engineering riots. Almost nine months ago, I remember writing an email to a friend asking him to tell me when and how communal riots will break out in Kolkata because that was the only way for BB to walk out of this situation with some dignity. I also remember saying that obviously it had to be a highly controlled affair. Now we know.

And last week, when I read Seema Mustafa’s Conspiracy of Violence which says Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is an arrogant and incompetent chief minister, but we should fight forces that will take advantage of this fact to weaken the Left in India, I placed a bet with myself that Buddhadeb Bhattacharya will make an appearance in Delhi within one week. I won it. I wonder who scripted that one. Whoever it is, is working overtime papering over the chinks that have appeared in the last 11 months. It is pointless disuading them because if they havent learnt in 11 months, they are not about to learn now. New chinks and cracks will appear even before the old one’s are covered up. A prayer that someone somewhere in the A.K. Gopalan Bhavan away from the TV glare is penny foolish — that is the best that an outsider can offer in solidarity.

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