On September 24th, the occasion of the 125th anniversary of The Tribune, - a Chandigarh based English daily I grew up reading as a schoolboy, Congratulations Tribune! - the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh raised some critical issues relevant for all newspapers and the media in general. He stated “They (newspapers) must serve a larger purpose. Above all they must contribute to a nation’s intellectual vibrancy.” He stressed that media has a crucial role to play in shaping public opinion, attitudes and reinforcing values.
While these issues reflect yearnings of universal intent, its applicability does get influenced by the perceived and existential realities unique for each particular situation. Perhaps these essential values do get submerged when the ‘wants’ shape the perceived realities, leading to indulgence, and inevitably the parameters on how a newspaper defines the positions and purposes of its existence.
In my short involvement in the endeavors of a newspaper, it has exposed me to new perspectives and provided a different lens of Naga society. It’s in times such as this that I am reminded of my friend Chamba who revealed, “The war conditioned us not to tell the truth, it conditioned us to worry about things that have nothing to do with living.” While the statement in itself is true, it’s the latter part which I find terribly worrying. Indeed, how often do we find ourselves worrying about things that have nothing to do with living?
Situated in this diabolique situation of contradictions, we witness the extremeness of ‘feeling’ consume the idea of reason. Feelings are an important and essential form of human communication and cannot be ignored or suppressed. Nevertheless, feelings when internalized and arising out of fear and insecurity fails to recognize all other aspects of human emotions and is reduced to clinging on to self-preservation, where truth becomes the first casualty. Dr. Ravi Zacharias cautions “We seem to have come upon a time where truth does not matter anymore; our feelings is all that count. We need to get to the truth of the issue that surrounds us and uncover the truth before we get to address our feelings. Truth has to be prior to our feelings.” However, ‘reason’ on its own is reduced to mathematical derivation. Life, however is much richer and if we are to find purpose in our existence we are compelled to seek an interdependent relation between ‘feeling’ and ‘reason.’ The result of this interdependence may possibly be called ‘consciousness.’
Imbalance between ‘feeling’ and ‘reason’ leads to a vacuum filled by self-absorption and self-importance. Unfortunately, it is the feeling of self-importance and self-absorption that is fuelling the culture of press-releases and finally the machines of media in Nagaland. Tragically, the Naga media as a generalized entity continues to struggle; and the burdens of self-preservation is weighing on its calling to facilitate and empower ‘consciousness.’ Ironically, unless the media is able to withstand the culture of press-releases, party and power politics, the very vacuum caused by the imbalance of ‘feeling’ and ‘reason’ will push the relevance of media as a medium of transformation to oblivion.
The Naga media therefore must lead the way in transforming ‘feeling’ and ‘reason’ as interdependent entities into a living ‘consciousness,’ which guides and shapes public opinion by reflecting the power of truth as an embodiment of self-determining dignity!
