Saving Tejpal

The World Cup tournament is about to start and one of your best players is seriously injured. It can do two things. One: deflate the morale of your team and two: instill greater confidence in your opponents. When it’s a grand player like Tarun Tejpal, with his Tehelka, you can imagine how much it would have dented the morale of Congress and our MSM. It’s a big blow not to have him and Tehelka as players in the run-up to LS elections. In this post we will just list a series of articles and shows without drawing any conclusions about “victim Tejpal”.

Slowly but surely there is an organised and co-ordinated effort in the Scotch-circuit of Delhi media to use a Dominique Strauss-Kahn like campaign to turn Tejpal into a victim. DSK is the former IMF chief who could have been a future president of France but had sexual-assault allegations against him. Turns out his alleged victim herself had a chequered past and the cases were dropped. In between, the accuser’s past was used to hound her and other cases brought against DSK were also dropped. There were even reports that DSK’s accuser may have been HIVinfected owing to her living in an apartment for “HIV only”. Last heard, France was to prosecute him for pimping charges. DSK admitted some lapses and misdeeds but claimed there was no rape and he was innocent. Sounds familiar? Inspirational? Not fully yet, because our media still hasn’t quiet managed to tar Tejpal’s victim but some are indeed trying very hard. It’s not just Indian media but also some foreign ones chipping in (all are edited excerpts in blue). Among the first was this one from Newslaundry (Feb 14):  

To begin with, I would like to establish quite clearly that I do not see you as a victim, unless it is of bubblegum feminism… Neither is my heart bleeding for Tarun Tejpal. After all, he in all his wisdom chose to hire you – and chose to travel with you in that lift… Yet, in all fairness, in the one-way fury that had been unleashed on him in response to this incident he has become the victim, not you… The space for this discussion has instead been completely hijacked by those defending the rights of “bubblegum” feminists. The kind that some articulate young women have come to represent in India – the self-indulgent, frivolous,  feverishly BBM-ing kind –who do what they want, how they want, when they want, and then righteously demand to be excused for any of its repercussions, because hey, after all they are just women… And when she finally got her head around it, she would respond with fury – want revenge from him for breaking the rules of the silly games she was used to playing… I hope you realise that in this “noble” race you have been actively complicit in the event of a man being thrown into jail – without a trial – purely on the basis of the accusation of assault. You have allowed the most ludicrous comparisons to be made between him and violent rapists.

That little burst against the “bubblegum feminist” (Self-indulgent, frivolous, BBM-ing kind) is from a lady called Nirupama Sekhri. What can I say! But it helps to know what Tejpal’s victim could have done instead of being a lowly employee, going by Nirupama’s profile that NL carries:

Cool, isn’t it? Mother of two, travelling with an Indian truck driver for 3 months around the country in trucks (which is safer than working at Tehelka), as any high school lady teacher does. Sure, many schools insist teachers to have trucking experience. She is also a teacher at a Jiddu school in Kodaikannal. These schools are very different from your regular schools. You know, more philosophy types. Bubblegum philosophy? LEARN, all you self-indulgent, frivolous, BBM-ing girls! Why can’t you go around trucks in India with a truck driver instead of seeking to be a journalist in employment with Tehelka. You should have known better. Then there’s the NYT (Feb 18) which has its own take in a report:

In a six-paragraph letter, the first official communication he has released since he was arrested in late November, Mr. Tejpal, 50, wrote that he has “viewed the relevant footage of both days whilst being ‘held’ in police custody and the footage clearly validates me.”… “The fact is, most of the officers in the crime branch know there is no case, and have said as much to me,” the letter says. His daughter, Tiya Tejpal, said in a telephone interview that she has examined stills of the footage, and that they “clearly show the intent of him and her”. “I mean, if you have a look at it, you’ll get an idea whether it was consensual,” she said… In the letter, Mr. Tejpal – put the case into the context of coming elections, calling it “an early sign of the inherent fascism of the right wing that will target its detractors in the most sinister and underhand ways, using all the government machinery at its disposal.”… “It’s a crying shame that a major party that is bidding to rule the great pluralism that is India is imbued with no tolerance of dissenters and critics, of whom I certainly am one”

Early sign of inherent fascism; sounds a lot like Sonia Gandhi, doesn’t it? So far Tejpal and his lawyers were claiming that the CCTV footage will prove he is innocent and that the “encounter” was “consensual”. This, of course, is different from the confessions Tejpal made in earlier emails and SMSes to the lady in question. So we have to be enlightened on such “Empty parlor games” by some arty-farty type called Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi; again in NYT (Feb 24):

This was to be a Sunday brunch, for an artist from Delhi. Around 30 guests appeared, a miscellany of writers, socialites, artists, publishers, venture capitalists and tag-along out-of-towners. As the afternoon wore on, though, I felt a creeping sense of unease. I overheard a middle-aged photographer offer a young model a pro bono “portfolio shoot,” and she rolled vixen eyes. A moment later, she accepted his offer, the trade of pictures for sex implicit.

So these are normal things in these circles. “She accepted his offer… for sex implicit”. Tejpal, in his drunken banter, had something similar to say to his employee about furthering her career for such small exchanges. Nice! But if all these intelligent people had their own assessment can the C5M resist doing a half-hour show on Tejpal dearest being a “victim”? So Sagarika Ghose got together a bunch of people for a stupid debate on whether Tejpal has the right to play victim (I’m sure if Congress comes to power again RahulG will also get you the “Right to Victimhood” Act passed). Defending Tejpal strongly, as he has done in the past, was Sanjoy Roy. Now this Roy is the Litterfest specialist who organises events like Jaipur Litterfest where the Tejpals, Dalrymples, Nandys gather to compare notes on… Well, make a wild guess! Here are some pics from Sagarika’s show that should explain:

 

In the first pic above, I have added a pic of the scroll that CNN-IBN ran during the show and the bright question is “Are right wing forces targeting Tejpal because of his Tehelka work”? Seems highly probable doesn’t it? After all, the Hyatt hotel being built in Goa, those lifts, the CCTVs, the woman employee were all planned and executed by right wing forces. Err… read that as “Hindus”. And then claims of “vendetta” and that the Goa police had fabricated the case which will collapse the moment the CCTV footage is revealed. Ironically, on the same day as Sagarika’s show the CCTV footage was handed over to Tejpal’s lawyers and since then there has been no further statements or claims by them so far.

In the incestuous club of Delhi media nothing is an accident. The series of articles and shows coming up on “Tejpal the poor victim” does seem to have a background. Sitting in his sea-facing temporary home, Tejpal seems to have been busy dialling up all his saviours. Here’s what Firstpost reports:

Tip-offs from "good" journalists in the national capital led to the surprise raid of Tehelka editor-in-chief's prison cell, according to Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. Speaking at a public function, Parrikar alleged that Tarun Tejpal, from whom a mobile phone was allegedly recovered during a raid on 23 February, was speaking to Delhi-based journalists every morning…  "There are journalists in Delhi who reported to us that he was speaking to reporters from Delhi every morning," Parrikar said… Nine mobile phones were allegedly found in the Sada prison complex housing Tejpal during a sudden raid a few days ago. Prison officials claim that a SIM card was also found in the editor's shirt collar.

It is inevitable that as the days go by and the trial gets closer the “victimhood” for Tejpal will grow shriller. Sagarika and all her panellists agreed that the court not giving him bail was “inhuman”. The interim bail and subsequent pleas were declined by the court after extensive hearings. Surprisingly, these same poodles don’t find it inhuman when Sadhvi Pragya or Asaram or others don’t get bail. Well, Tejpal is one of their Hammamis and an important one at that. The malicious campaign against his victim has already started. We have to wait and watch and see if they can save Tejpal.