Six Blind Men of Indostan

by Sachi Sri Kantha

[Originally appeared in the Tamil Nation website in 21 July 2000]

Front Note

With the second round talks between the LTTE and the Government of Sri Lanka scheduled to begin shortly, there will appear commentaries, editorials, expert analyses and prophesies about the outcome of the talks. Some of them will be expressed with genuine sentiments; some of them will have axes to grind; and some of them will be nothing but hot air, to pocket a paycheck or two. Based on the past 15 years of studying the available material, I will not be wrong to predict that the editorials, commentaries and prophesies which will appear in the Hindu group of print media will be noticeably lacking for their genuine interest in the welfare of Eelam Tamils. Thus, I present this column of mine, which appeared in the now closed Tamil Nation website 27 months ago. 

John Godfrey Saxe’s famous poem

By contemporary literary yardstick, the American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) is not a major figure. There are no entries about him in the standard reference sources such as the Encyclopedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Americana. However, Saxe is remembered by poetry lovers for one of his exemplary poems entitled, ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’, which describes humorously about an Indian fable we learnt in our childhood days; i.e., how a handful of blind men ventured to portray the elephant they believed they had ‘seen’.

The manner in which the Eelam Tamil nationalism is now portrayed by the international mass media (especially that of the Madras Hindu group) is akin to John Saxe’s description of six blind men. First let me present the lines of John Saxe in entirety. Then, I will identify the six blind men who have been covering the Eelam scene regularly for the Indian news media.

It was six men of Indostan to learning much inclined
Who went to see the elephant though all of them were blind,
That each by observation might satisfy his mind. 

The First approached the elephant, and happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side, at once began to bawl;
‘God bless me! But the elephant is very like a wall!’ 

The Second, feeling of the tusk, cried, ‘Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp? To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an elephant is very like a spear!’ 

The Third approached the animal, and happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake:
‘I see’, quoth he, ‘the Elephant is very like a snake!’ 

The Fourth reached out an eager hand, and felt about the knee
‘What most this wondrous beast is like is mighty plain’ quoth he;
‘ ‘Tis clear enough the Elephant is very like a tree!’ 

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: ‘E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most; deny the fact who can
This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan!’ 

The Sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope,
‘I see’, quoth he, ‘the Elephant is very like a rope!’ 

And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong! 

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars, the disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant; not one of them has seen! 

The ‘six blind men’ of the Hindu Group

One can identify the ‘six blind men’ who report regularly on the LTTE and Pirabhakaran for the Hindu group of newsmedia. They are, (in alphabetical order) Rohan Gunaratna, D.B.S.Jeyaraj, N.Ram, V.S.Sambandan, T.S.Subramanian and V.Suryanarayan. Among these, one ‘blind man’ (Rohan Gunaratna) openly associates himself with the Sri Lankan Intelligence Services. Another ‘blind man’ (N.Ram) suffers from delusions of grandeur that he is the contemporary Chanakya of Indian foreign policy so much so that the initial ‘N’ (for Narasimhan) in his name should stand for ‘Narcissus’ Ram. Knowledgeable sources have alerted that a couple among the remaining four blind men have functioned as ‘front men’ for the Indian Intelligence Services.

For the past decade, all six blind men have been predicting intermittently the fall of Pirabhakaran. In the national media of Sri Lanka, their pontifications are given prominence, since their analyses are touted to be full of insight on the mind-set of Pirabhakaran. But, as John Saxe wrote poignantly,

‘Each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong,
though each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!’

Granted that, the lilting cadence and poignant choice of simple words by John Saxe for his exemplary poem on the blind men of Indostan is difficult to match; however, when I have time at my disposal, I wish to challenge myself by composing a current version of John Saxe’s delightful poem – only replacing the symbolic ‘elephant’ with that of a tiger. 

Postscript in 2002:

Since I wrote this column in July 2000, quite a few events happened in India. Especially of interest to the theme of this column was the ‘honey-pot’ sting operation carried out by the Tehelka internet journalists on the Indian defence industry procurement personnel. Over this scandal, George Fernandes, the Defence Minister of India resigned on March 16, 2001. Six months later, in October 2001, he was re-inducted to the Union Cabinet, again resuming as the Defence Minister. In this sting operation by the Tehelka folks (I would hardly label them as journalists, since they more or less worked as pimps), all parties – politicians, the Indian defence personnel and the journalist tribe in India, including N.Ram, had eggs on their faces. It is also worth noting that LTTE and Pirabhakaran were bad mouthed in the past, for practicing monkish discipline and intransigence, by many folks belonging to these same parties in India.

I was not surprised to read N.Ram extolling his obscene code of Indian journalism, in an interview with Sudha G.Tilak. Believe me, these are Ram’s own words, delivered on April 5, 2001: “We don’t have to meet the standards of the Evidence Act in India. We don’t have to produce evidence that will stand up in a court of law, because we use information that is valid in journalistic terms all the time. I don’t have to worry whether it will stand up as evidence. Except academics, who publish their version of the truth. If I document it or substantiate it according to my journalistic standards, that’s enough – that is what has been pointed out in a Tribunal. As [Ghafoor] Noorani [in the Hindustan Times] points out, in India, ‘there is no legal obligation’ to disclose sources or any privileged information before a court of inquiry. But here, there is no source (laughs). The source is the camera.” [source: www.tehelka.com website, dated April 5, 2001] With this type of arrogant attitude, it is no wonder that the journalism practised by N.Ram and his cohorts stinks like rotting garbage.