Pulwama Attack – A horrific reminder of what the Indian soldiers face in Kashmir
- In Current Affairs
- 02:35 AM, Feb 15, 2019
- Yogini Deshpande
Close your eyes and think of the Kathua rape case. There is a strong probability that you would recollect pictures of an innocent girl in a purple coloured dress smiling at the camera and another one of her fallen on her stomach and in a dishevelled condition. The truth of the case is still being decided but in everybody’s mind the villagers and some non-descript temple goers were termed as culprits.
Cloe your eyes and think of Godhra (2002). There is a strong possibility you remember the picture of a bearded young man with folded hands. Oddly most don’t recollect the burning train nor the charred bodies of children at Godhra station.
Close your eyes and think of the Syrian war crises. Immediately your brain in all likelihood will recollect the picture of washed up body of three year old Alan Kurdi. For most Indians the Syrian war is a quagmire of geo-politics and have little knowledge of why Alan’s family was trying to migrate from Turkey to Canada. Yet, every time anybody sees that picture it evokes a guilty feeling.
For me personally the most moving pictures in the recent past have been of children being buried at Sinjar Mountain by Yazidi families.
Yesterday’s horrific attack on CRPF soldiers by Jaish-e-Mohammad killing more than 40 soldiers has been the worst in the recent past. It numbed everybody’s mind. On social media people expressed their anger and started showing pictures of the dead soldiers. It was a gruesome death and the pictures definitely create a deep uneasiness within anybody. Within a few minutes of the pictures of Pulwama attack going viral many popular handles and media personnel started talking about keeping restrain in sharing the gruesome pictures. The reasoning being given was respect to the soldiers and their family. The picture shared did not show any soldiers face. Heck, many of some of those pictures showed the heads been blown off the body. Identification of any particular soldier was difficult through these pictures.
Who decides what is too gruesome to the eyes and the heart? Who decides what the reader can see and what they should not? Why do they think they have the superiority to decide which picture can be the face of a tragedy? Why do they think they can decide which tragedy deserves a picture?
Do you remember Nidhi Chaphekar? The name may not immediately ring a bell but most of us have actually seen her photograph. She was the wounded Indian air-hostess at the Brussels Airport blast. As you continue reading the article I am sure your mind is immediately recollecting her picture with torn clothes, exposed bra and body. Her picture has become the face of the terror attack on Brussels. Why didn’t any of the Indian journalists and elite opinion writers’ comment about usage of her picture?
Journalists, movie makers, painters and cartoonist all know the power of the picture. A picture speaks a thousand words. It relays the context and the sub-text to any story. Pictures stimulate the brain and the heart. The more realistic they are the more it speaks to the heart. This is the reason why some pictures like the image of the Ethiopian child malnutritioned & hungry due to famine with a vulture in background waiting for it to die became famous. The picture brought worldwide attention to the on-going tragedy and help poured from everywhere.
If pictures can create so much awareness why should we not share pictures of brutality to tell the story? The Kashmir problem has been brewing for decades. With growing awareness and quick transmission of news it is now easier to bring the world’s attention to our security problem. Why should it be denied? The same media who is out to caution against sharing pictures would gladly do the same to a victim of dowry death or any other incident where their intended narrative can easily spread.
Experiments conducted on meat eaters where they were shown visuals of how the meat was produced has made many meat eaters become vegetarians. The omnivore’s dilemma kicks in on watching the reality and the meat eater is psychologically dissuaded from eating meat.
Something very similar happens when we are reluctant to share the reality in visual format. Our minds get conditioned to violence since we only know them as numbers and not the blood it spilled. The visceral violence is forgotten in the numbers. Our consciousness is not exposed to the gruesome reality of the violence and the conditions faced by people in such situations. We are made immune to it till someday when it may strike at our own door step in the literal sense.
The tone of the media has been consistently to either deny terrorism or when forced to accept its brutality tone it down by self-censorship. While media is free to decide which pictures they want to use for circulation the journalists have no business asking regular readers and users of social media to show restrain from using pictures. People want to keep the memory of the dead soldiers alive. They want others to know the extent of the violence perpetrated by the Pakistani government. By denying the agency to share pictures we are essentially denying the role of religion and involvement of neighbours in the disruption of our security.
Keeping pictures away will not change the reality. Instead let’s be brave and make our hearts strong to face the reality and beat the enemy.
Image Credits- ANI News
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