WE ARE ALL BLIND LIKE DHRITRASHTRA*

 

WE ARE ALL BLIND LIKE DHRITRASHTRA^*

 I got up in the morning and made a cup of tea, like an automaton, lifted the remote laying on the coffee table near my hot cup and switched on the television. The beaming face of Donald Trump came on the screen. This was the morning after the day of voting in the USA. For the last couple of weeks, the American Presidential Election has hogged the television screens and radio news channels in the western world and most of the other countries as well.

          We have been seeing the ups and downs of the presidential candidates’ ratings in different states and different communities. Media all over the world kept on saying the fight was neck and neck, we mostly believed them. On the morning after, the results were quite the opposite. Trump won by an overwhelming majority. According to his supporters he is the best thing that ever happened in America, for the opposing Democrats, just replace the “best” by “worst”! How can we have such diverse extreme opinions about the same person?

Same thing is happening at the Ukraine-Russian war. A section of world population believes Russia is the aggressor and is invading a sovereign country whereas the Russian population and many others believe that it is Ukraine’s fault, and it does not deserve any support. Majority of people are in one or the other camp. No middle ground.

In Gaza and Israel conflict we were and are being shown an incredibly detailed imagery, depicting initially the heinous terrorist attack on Israelis by Hamas and then the colossal infrastructure destruction and death and misery in Gaza. In this case also the global population is deeply divided and no resolution in site.

 On the news channels, the correspondents and the experts are giving varying accounts and interpretations. I know the scenes are heavily censored either based on human decency or on the religious, moral and or political views of the reporters and the experts. Added to this are pressures and threats by the ruling regimes in the places from where the reporters are broadcasting and where the news is being shown.

In past for most people the news came quite late after a lot of manipulation on the way but now, thanks to phenomenal progress in communication tools, it is almost instant. But with the help of the ubiquitous social media the manipulation of masses has increased dividing the global opinion in polar extremes, reducing the chances of reasonable peaceful negotiations to zero.

The life like photos and videos seem so real that we do feel like being there. But we as individuals are not able to see, hear and analyse these events ourselves, it is not possible. We also choose to believe, the reporters and the commentators whose views agrees to our individual biases. The algorithms of social media platforms ponder to our biases and excludes the views of the other side thus deepening the chasm.

Our world view thus is shaped by what the media in our countries and our societies chose to show us.

          The great Hindu epic Geeta begins in the early morning when the two great armies stand facing each other. From there on it describes what is happening at the battleground. The king Dhritarashtra is blind and for his benefit Sanjay, who has the power of clearly seeing and noticing the events which happen at a distance, describes to him the events as they are enfolding.

We are all blind like King Dhritarashtra but is our media an honest broker like Sanjay?

*.     Dhritarashtra was the blind king of Hastinapur as described in the great Hindu epic Mahabharata.