Who's Biased?


07 July 2007 @ 05 : 52 pm
I've been following the issue of the arrest of 12 Indians on the Dutch plane for alleged suspicious behaviour. Indian media's extensive coverage of the issue has confused me. I can't decide who's more biased, the Whites or our politicians or our media?

For the uninitiated, this is what happened and caused a huge furore :

12 Indian Muslims were arrested by the Dutch police after the crew onboard American airliner, NorthWest Airlines, reported that the 12 indulged in suspicious behaviour. A day later the Dutch police released them after ascertaining that they were innocent. In the meanwhile, questions were being asked in the Indian media about the racial profiling in the West and the deliberate targeting of a particular community citing security as the reason.

The alleged suspicious behaviour included
  1. Having a large number of mobile phones and laptops
  2. Exchanging the above items frequently
  3. Not wearing seatbelts even after being requested to by the crew
  4. Exchanging seats constantly
  5. Walking up and down the aisle even during take off.
What apparently added to the suspicion was that they were Asians, Muslims, bearded and wore Salwar Kameezs

There seem to be 3 sides to the issue.
  1. The Dutch and American crew were racist and picked on Asians, particularly, Asian Muslims.
  2. The passengers were actually behaving in a suspicious manner
  3. The Indian Media's and Govt's handling of the matter
  1. Racism angle

    It is definitely a fact that many of the Westerners are racist and they tend to target Asian Muslims, especially in light of the recent heightened security. So it is very much possible that they simply "picked on" the Indians.


  2. The passengers' behaviour

    Let's for a moment imagine the state of paranoia that the West is in. In these circumstances, wouldn't it be natural of a passenger or flight crew to be alarmed at some odd behaviour?

    What if the passengers indeed had turned out to be terrorists? Would the world have still called the Dutch police racist then? Isn't it better to be safe than sorry?

    Now having said that, it did turn out that the 12 people were innocent and the Dutch police apologised for their behaviour. The matter should have been left at that as a case where a few people were behaving oddly, were arrested, then found to be innocent and released with an apology. But it was not to be.....


  3. Media Coverage

    The most interesting side of the story is the way the media handled the issue. TimesNow, for example, termed it an insult to the nation. Scores of relatives and Muslim leaders were interviewed and the treatment was termed as a deliberate targetting of Indians.

    The Govt., not wanting to be left behind, termed the incident as unfortunate and asked for an immediate apology from the Dutch. Leaders from the Samajwadi party and RJD were quick to term it as a deliberate insult, not to India, but to Muslim community as a whole.

    The Pakistan govt. too joined the "It was an attack on Islam" bandwagon.

    TimesNow, again, held a talk show with guests such as Yashwanth Sinha, former External Affairs Minister, Javed Akhtar, Lyricist, Farooq Abdullah, former J&K CM and a few others.

    Yashwanth Sinha raised a valid point saying that in the current situation, the Dutch were right in doing what they did as the passengers did not listen to the airline crew. He asked, "What if they were not innocent? Would you still call it racism?"

    Javed Akhtar said that it was brave of the Dutch Police to accept their mistake within a matter of hours and release the 12 men.

    Farooq Abdullah said, "Kill the Dutch. Stop Dutch Airlines from coming into India. Send the Dutch people away from India"!!!!!!!

    And at the end of the show, it was concluded by the comperer that the majority of the guests were of the view that the Dutch needed to be punished for treating the Indians "like dogs" (sic). In reality no body other than Farooq was even protesting about the way the Dutch handled the issue.

At the end of all this, I really couldn't understand the media's stance. What did they think of achieving by making it a "West vs Innocent Muslims" issue ? They seemed to be intent only on creating a mountain out of a tiny molehill. Interviewing of some Imams, declaring it as an assault on Islam was really the limit.... A clear case of trying to make a communal issue out of it.

The MPs and MLAs too seemed to be interested in garnering some cheap publicity and votes by putting on display their "love for their Muslim brethren", in their own words. For heaven's sake, weren't they released with an apology?

Finally, I still can't decide who was being more biased.



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