The cold blooded murder of UP’s social media journalist, orchestrated by UP’s Diary Development Minister, Ram Murti Singh Verma, according to the scribe’s video recorded dying statement, and executed by the local police, is beyond horrific. It is a brutal reminder to all of who hold truth to power that the State, far from being a protector can actually be a killer. And Shahjahanpur in West Uttar Pradesh is not a blip on the map. It is in the heart of India and the brazenness of how Jagendra Singh was burnt after kerosene was poured, tells us this, those who write fearlessly, are very much on their own.
Jagendra Singh didn’t just die. He was one of a dying breed of journalists who hold that pen knowing that it will be a sword that can be broken by ruthless forces, who realise that till the pen moves, their corrupt careers will not. Brave hearts like Jagendra Singh, wielded that pen till he was set ablaze. “Ram Murti Singh Verma can have me killed,” Mr. Singh wrote in a post on May 22. “At this time, politicians, thugs, and police, all are after me. Writing the truth is weighing heavily on my life,” he added. And he paid with his life less than a month later.
In his death we also realise that of all the instruments of force and power, the humble pen is still feared by the corrupt, the unjust and the powerful. It’s a weapon which has surprisingly not been silenced in India’s smaller towns, where contrary to the propaganda, more brave and honest journalism is witnessed. Not many here have heard of the paper Prabhat Khabar of Ranchi brought out by veteran journalist Harivansh. Stories of rural reportage and investigations on corruption have made Prabhat Khabar a towering lighthouse for journalists, an anchor for those who want to pursue the journalism of truth.
Across India, especially remote India, the pen still fights even if it falls. The New York Times, in a report on Jagendra Singh’s murder mentioned, “According to the Press Council of India, a statutory press watchdog group, 79 journalists were murdered in the past two and a half years in India, with very few convictions. The International News Safety Institute, based in Britain, put the number slightly lower — 69 journalists killed from 2004 to 2014. That made India the fifth most dangerous country for journalists, after Iraq, the Philippines, Pakistan and Mexico.
Many of these killings pass us by, many of them are in conflict situations where deaths happen in cross fires. But when journalists are killed by politicians and the police, we know we are living, working and fighting in a state rotten to the core.
And if there is any comfort working in Goa which is supposedly peaceful, let us emerge from our cocoon of comfort and face a grim reality that Goa is not really a lovely coastal peaceful paradise. And for newspapers like Herald which take on forces like Ram Murti Singh day in and day out and expose politicians, policemen and criminals who are a deadly trio, bloody truths like the killing of Jagendra Singh, hit home with greater force. This is because those affected by reportage such as ours are not just those in Goa or are Goans. Interests that lie outside the State but interests protected by the State have much to lose when an honest pen is wielded.
In the India of Delhi and Mumbai, the pen has been lost in a sea of multitudes where big corporate daddies have crushed the pen and the nib through which ink flows like blood. In metropolitan India, revolution and the fight for truth has been consumed by riches and power. Not so in small town India. And we proudly say, not so in Herald, the Voice of Goa.
