Slipping in slippers
Ajoy Bose
September 07, 2011
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has every reason to get mad at
the sweeping allegations made about her by recent WikiLeaks
revelations quoting secret cables sent out by the US embassy in New
Delhi to Washington. Amidst the palpable delight among the chattering
classes at this new stick to
beat their favourite whipping girl, what is being conveniently
overlooked is that the source material used for the salacious
'Portrait of a Lady' penned by a junior US embassy official in
October, 2008 appears to be entirely based on casual conversations
with unnamed Lucknow journalists.
The colourful accounts of Mayawati sending a jet plane to Mumbai to
fetch her favourite sandals, making an errant minister do sit-ups and
employing eight cooks and two tasters in her kitchen have virtually no
authenticity, particularly since none of the concerned hacks printed
the information they shared with the American embassy in their own
publications.
The BSP supremo is well known for her personal eccentricities,
splurges and imperious ways. But it is also true that Mayawati has,
for more than two decades, had an openly hostile relationship with the
media, particularly those based in Lucknow. In fact, BSP workers in
the city attacked the offices of a prominent Hindi daily in the winter
of 1995 after it published a particularly scurrilous story about the
unmarried Dalit leader having an illegitimate daughter. Although local
journalists have become more discreet after Mayawati's decisive
victory in the 2007 assembly polls, they can hardly be regarded as
unbiased or objective sources of information.
Interestingly, barely two months before the US embassy cable on her,
two Delhi-based correspondents of The New York Times and The
Washington Post went to Lucknow to do special profiles of the lady.
They were, surprisingly, granted a rare interview with Mayawati and
also met a large cross section of people in Lucknow and nearby rural
areas, including Dalits. Both the articles were appreciative of the
political distance travelled by the Dalit woman leader while
simultaneously reflecting allegations of corruption and authoritarian
behaviour by her detractors. However, what the two correspondents,
professional journalists as they were, did not do was print Lucknow
media-inspired gossip that they had no way of cross-checking.
It is possible the absence of the same professional discrimination by
the US embassy had something to do with Washington's annoyance at that
time with Mayawati for almost scuppering the India-US nuclear deal.
Moreover, the fact that such secret cables were never supposed to
never see the light of day gave their authors a certain licence that
the journalists did not have. Unfortunately, however sensational and
uncorroborated, the information wearing the garb of WikiLeaks
revelations allows the print and electronic media to go to town
against select targets without fear of defamation.
Indeed, this is turning out to be a major drawback of WikiLeaks which
spews out classified US embassy material, some providing useful
insights but a lot more unreliable stuff based on hearsay. Sometimes,
the documents seem downright dubious as in the case of a cable dated
May 29, 2007 claiming that Mayawati's close aide Satish Mishra had
declared her corrupt and authoritarian. It is quite unbelievable that
a few weeks after Mayawati's historic election victory, of which
Mishra was a major architect through his Dalit-Brahmin alliance, he
would choose to rubbish his leader to an American diplomat.
Ajoy Bose is the author of Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati.
The views expressed by the author are personal.
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