Wednesday 24 June 2020

Rifat Jawaid showing himself a shite journalist

Some years ago, Rifat Jawaid, who worked for the BBC in London for 12 years, wrote in 'Janata ke Reporter' 

While India marks 40th anniversary of the emergency, one debate that has always raged on was whether the communists tacitly supported the curtailing of civil liberties by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
Here’s what the late chief minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu had once told me.
“There cannot be a bigger lie than this. This is absolutely rubbish. Those who level such charges should know that the Communists were the biggest victims of the Emergency. Don’t they know that our member of Parliament, Jyotirmoy Basu, was arrested along with thousands of workers? Such were the brutalities meted out to him that he died in police lock-up. If we were supporters of the Emergency, as alleged by our adversaries, we would not have extended support to Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement. The problem with journalists your age is that you were too young to be witnesses to the Emergency. Therefore, our political rivals easily succeed in misinforming you.
Jyoti Basu died ten years ago. Did he really tell a BBC reporter that Jyotirmoy Basu died in police lock-up? The truth is Jyotirmoy survived imprisonment and was twice re-elected to Parliament. He died in 1982. Why did this 'reporter' not know this? Is it coz working for the Beeb rots your brain? 
He says-
This conversation with the late Marxist leader had taken place at the then CM’s Kolkata’s Sal Lake residence in June 2000 on the eve of 25th anniversary of Emergency.
This suggests that Rifat would have taped the conversation or taken notes. But what is the import of his article? It is that Basu was either a liar or senile or a senile liar and that he himself was as ignorant as shit. Rifat's aim was to malign the BJP. All he ended up doing was showing that he was a shite journalist. 

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