SUNDAY, October 17, a little before noon. I’m in my study, packing up books ahead of an impending shift in residence. My wife is in the bedroom, going through a stack of DVDs, sorting them into “keep” and “discard” piles. Keeping her company is her iPad, tuned to some news channel.

Random words and phrases reach me across the distance, and I realise that her choice of white noise is a “debate” on “Veer” Savarkar.

On October 12, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh claimed it was Mahatma Gandhi who had asked the then incarcerated Savarkar to write a mercy petition addressed to the British government. Politicians of various stripes, historians of various degrees of repute, civil society stars, all laid lance in rest and went full-tilt at the promising new windmill.

We got fact checks. Prime time debates followed. As did editorials, opeds and unclassified rants — all of which was dutifully regurgitated on social media, each fresh bait triggering back-and-forth between proponents and opponents.

The “issue”, such as it was, seemed to be dying of discussion-fatigue when Home Minister Amit Shah stepped in with some fuel to throw on the dying embers. And we were off to the races again. Five days after Singh’s original statement, there is more time and words being expended on Savarkar than on a half dozen issues of critical import.

Rajnath Singh has moved on (here, check his Twitter account) to writing opeds and celebrating Modi “launching” defence projects that are merely existing ones clubbed into new configurations under a new name. The day before Singh sallied forth to Savarkar’s defence, the nth round of talks between the two sides had failed and China continued to hold on to Indian territory it has annexed. The Defence Minister of the realm is still to say a single word on a subject vital to the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

In Kashmir, nine Indian men in uniform and at least half a dozen civilians have been killed in the last seven days. Kashmir, since the abrogation of Article 370, is directly under the Home Minister’s watch — and Amit Shah is busy rabble-rousing and campaigning in different parts of the country, with time off in-between to stoke the dying fires of the Savarkar furore.

The tactic is transparent — the question is, why is the media so willing to fall into the trap? Because (a) for the compromised section of the media, it is not a trap but an opportunity; taking the bait and running out the reel pleases their paymasters and (b) for the relatively independent sections of the media, the temptation to jibe and jab at the “ignorance” of the powers-that-be, and to “take on” the right-leaning media and show them where they get off, is irresistible. Each fresh outpouring of angst-ridden prose provides a sense of something attempted, something done — and off they go to their night’s repose without realising they’ve been made fools of.

Try a thought experiment. Rajnath Singh says Savarkar is the greatest thing, upto and including sliced bread. You ignore him. What would happen, other than the issue would die stillborn? Better still, you ask him to stop faffing and respond to hard questions on what is happening on our borders with Pakistan and China, and keep up a drumbeat of questioning. Which strikes you as the more logical option?

Singh and Shah have done their bit — dangled a shiny object in front of the media and of all of us. And we continue to dance to that tune, batting this new toy back and forth without pausing for a moment to ask ourselves: Why this? Why now? What are they trying to distract us from?

This is a page from the standard right-wing playbook. Remember how media across the United States took the bait Donald Trump dangled before them on an almost daily basis, gave it oxygen, then searched its collective soul and condemned itself for giving Trump’s rants undeserved airtime, then went right back to debating the latest asininity originating from his Twitter handle?

Entire books have been written to deconstruct this playbook — Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is one such essential read for our times. The classic of its kind, though, is American historian Daniel Boorstin’s The Image — a book that is mandatory reading for everyone working in the media, for every “influencer” on social media and indeed, for every sentient human being trying to make sense of the media bubble that surrounds us.

Way back in 2017, I’d written a post on this book, and how the media is increasingly distracted — or more accurately, distracts itself — from pressing events and goes chasing after every red herring dragged across its path.

Read it now — and ask yourself, why Savarkar? Why now? And what are we not talking about, because we’ve been deliberately distracted by a non-issue that doesn’t make a litre of petrol’s worth of difference to our lives?

Remember Randall Terry? Remember “Fool me once…”?

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