 "Rahul Gandhi, Mount Carmel College")
“ ‘Do you think Swachh Bharat is working?’
‘YES/NO’
‘Really?’
‘NO/YES!’
‘Ok. I don’t think it’s working’
And
‘Do you think Make in India is working?’
‘YES/NO’
‘Then do you think more jobs are being created?’
‘NO (Majority)’
That’s what an adult conversation looks like, media folks and other not-so-well-wishers. You may want to sit up and take note! There are two or more sides, and opposing ideas make for healthy banter. To deliberately cut these circulating videos is to cut off our voices. I felt an iota of what Mr. Gandhi must be feeling on a regular basis, thanks to misrepresentation by the media.”
That’s an excerpt from an open letter written by Elixir Nahar, a student at Mount Carmel College that tells a very different story from what played out in the media following Rahul Gandhi’s talk before young women at the Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru on Wednesday, November 25.
As Nahar recounts, “Young women left the campus that afternoon with starry eyes and a cheerful air. I too walked to the car, in a headspace of recollection and appreciation for the man of the hour, when my phone exploded with news updates from the very event I was at.”
The “man of the hour” Nahar refers to in her open letter soon became the laughing stock on social media. e-lynching is the favourite pastime of the Indian masses, after cricket, and the media plays a large role as it is often the instigator.
This is what headlines from leading publications had to say about him:
‘’#RahulStumped: RaGa off key in Bengaluru’s Mount Carmel College’
‘Rahul discomfited as girls give Swachh Bharat, Make in India, a thumbs-up’
‘Rahul Gandhi stumped by Mount Carmel students’
‘Rahul Gandhi questions crowd; backfires’
Disillusioned by the reports Nahar was seeing, the student/model/marketing associate wrote her heart out in the letter. What made a student write an open letter to media houses? Perhaps the fact that the media and mob that weren’t present at the “exclusive session” (as she put it in a tweet) were misconstruing facts.
When reports of Rahul Gandhi’s apparent goof-up were followed by a video which portrayed the Congress leader in bad light, the MCC student was quick to fend off harsh critiques on Twitter, saying she was present at the event and had seen how things had been wrongly presented by the media.
“I was appalled, more so because not once have I questioned the authenticity of the top-tier news app(s) on my phone, where I get my news on-the-go. Clearly their reputation precedes them if they were publishing something that they could not even vouch for at that very stage,” Nahar wrote in her Facebook post.
More than calling out the media’s selective spin, her letter is a cry from the heart to the public to warn them against being easily swayed. This very week, Aamir Khan’s recounting of his wife’s disquiet and suggestion of leaving the country was blown out of proportion by the media. Telling one of the most loved stars in Indian cinema to move to Pakistan for a statement that was taken out of context was quite ridiculous.
Social media is a very useful source of information and a kind of bellwether of public opinion, but it can also be a cesspool of hate as we’ve seen several times in India.
Nahar writes: “As journalists - isn’t it a basic rule not to believe what’s on the surface? Aren’t we taught to always dig deeper and find out more. The Indian media fed off a measly leaked clip from ANI and *BOOM*, cue #RahulStumped posts, memes and more.”
There was seemingly no political motivation to the letter which focused on the humanness of the Congress leader. ‘Starting a conversation’ is what he proposed, rather than a one-sided lecture followed by a Q&A which is the norm.
“?#Misconstrued and ?#Exaggerated” as Nahar’s post reads should remain an indictment of the media and everyone else that partook in the electronic lynching of Rahul Gandhi.
