SUNJAY DUTT OBSESSION

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/aug/02flip.htm

T V R Shenoy  August 02, 2007  Oil has hit 78 dollars a barrel in the global market. .... So, what does the Indian media choose to honour with headlines?

Sanjay Dutt of course! Does the beleaguered actor deserve the outpouring of sympathy? Is Judge P D Kode's decision to hand down a sentence of six years of rigorous imprisonment too harsh? Is Union Information and Broadcasting Minister P R Dasmunsi right in saying that he feels that Dutt has 'suffered enough?' My answer to all three questions is the same: No!

Sanjay Dutt was born in 1959. That means he was well into his thirty-fourth year when he was arrested in 1993. A man that hasn't gained a modicum of common sense by that age is certainly not a man that can be trusted with any kind of firearms, leave alone an AK-56.

...I would like to point out that the actor has already got a huge break by being charged under the Arms Act rather than under TADA's draconian provisions. (Not that the Arms Act, in any case, permits a private citizen to own an assault rifle such as the AK-56!)

...Small wonder then that Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam confesses that the sentencing felt like freedom for him since he could finally lay down the burden of the case with a clear conscience. Incidentally, did you hear anybody express any sympathy for Nikam, who has been receiving threats for the better part of the past  decade? ...

Finally, what does the media brouhaha say about us reporters? Did we really have to tell the world that Sanjay Dutt slept in his own clothes during his first night in jail, or that he had a banana and a cup of tea for breakfast the next morning?

T V R Shenoy

If you ask me what is the news today, my straight answer is the completion of the sixtieth year of Indian Independence, the story of India’s economic prosperity, the growing gap between the rich growing richer and the poor becoming poorer.

There is a headline in a newspaper Time brings out special cover on booming India

Time magazine has come out with a special cover to mark the 60th anniversary of India’s independence, noting that the world’s largest democracy is “living up to the dreams of 1947” when it got freedom. I opened turn by turn many television channels noted the following:

1) One was showing the “court of ghosts”, another how a dangerous monkey has been caught, a third giving daily predictions for nine crore Indians each on the basis of their Moon sign, the fourth Sanjay Dutt, the fifth the rape of an innocent girl.

2) Only one channel was showing the sensational story of huge corruption involving Congress politicians which can shake up the Delhi government unless protected by the central governent which is what happens in India. No politician shows any social responsibility. He believes in plundering so long as he is in power and in the coalition era no single party can be singled out and asked to stop. If they do that the coalition government will collapse. In the sixtieth year, we call ourselves world’s largest democracy, which we are, and among the most corrupt nations of the world.

3) Then from 11 pm they all concentrate on crime.

4) One channel thinks that a sting operation about wife swapping should be the biggest news of the day. These illiterate television anchors do not know that before the western imperialists stepped on the Indian soil, India produced 22 percent wealth of the world compared to one percent of Engand and many times more than any European nation. And India is getting back into that position and will reach a higher percentage. That is an unromantic story of cold statistics which does not interest television channels.

These television ignoramuses do not know that democracy is of Indian origin and it existed in India during the times of Lichchavi kingdom.

But Sanjay Dutt will return tomorrow, dominate television news and not glorious achievements of India in these six decades of Indian independence. The ignorant television channels do not know the astrological story of Indian Independence which I have written about and taught to my students many times.That is jyotisha of Indian legacy. More about it later.

Do you know the astrological story of Indian Independence ?

( Written 3 August 2007)