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The flung shoe goes far, exposes
media too
Gian Inder Singh
 NEW DELHI: It is
surprising what the Indian media can afford not to tell. Jarnail
Singh, the world's gentlest shoe thrower, tossed his Reebok tennis
sneaker at India's Home Minister P Chidambaram. It did not hit the
minister but jolted the government, catalysed the protests and
ensured that Congress withdraws Lok Sabha tickets of Jagdish Tytler
and Sajjan Kumar. But could the Indian media have forgotten to find
out if Jarnail Singh's hurt had some personal element?
Obviously not. But had it brought it out, it would have
further justified that shoe he winged across. Only some would have
then been angry with Jarnail Singh for not adding force to his
throw.
Twenty-five years ago, Jarnail Singh was almost as tall as a
cricket bat. He was finding it difficult to handle it in the park
outside when a blood-thirsty mob charged into Lajpat Nagar to
slaughter Sikhs. His mother hid him in a small room. His
polio-stricken brother was attacked. The neighbourhood gurdwara was
burnt down. Those images were still fresh in his mind when he heard
Chidambaram saying he was happy that his Congress colleagues have
been exonerated by the CBI.
A rattled Congress withdrew Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar
from the electoral fray on Thursday as the ghost of the 1984
anti-Sikh riots returned to haunt the party. The BJP which is
directly responsible for Gujarat riots and killings of Muslims and
which had thrown out Ram Jethmalani from the party for daring to
defend an accused in the Indira Gandhi assassination case tried to
take political benefit, hoping that the Sikhs' memory will be short.
Neither the BJP nor the Akali Dal demanded that the Congress
has to do more than withdraw the tickets. What the hell are such
people doing in the party? But had the Akalis asked that question,
surely the Congress would have jumped, asking, "What was Narendra
Modi doing in the BJP? That too as CM? And on top of that as the
person consistently seen next to L K Advani in the campaign?"
It is a comment on Indian human rights debate that Tytler was
seen as a strong candidate in North East Delhi and so was Sajjan
Kumar in the
South Delhi seat.
South Delhi is considered one of the top upper middle class seats
and was once contested by none other than Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh. It now emerges that senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee had
resisted tickets to the duo while Ahmed Patel had pushed for them.
The Congress buckled two days after Jarnail Singh, a Sikh
journalist, not satisfied with the explanation on the CBI clean chit
to Tytler, threw his shoe at Chidambaram during a press conference.
The ripple effect with demonstrations across
Punjab and Sikhs brought down the killers who were planning to sit
in Indian Parliament once again as lawmakers.
Incidentally, both were sitting Lok Sabha members and Tytler
was even a minister for some time in Manmohan Singh government.
In
Punjab, Amarinder Singh tried to derive benefit from the
development saying he and others in the state had asked the party
high command to withdraw the candidature of Tytler and Kumar as it
could adversely affect party prospects in the elections. Amarinder
did not say why he had not worked all these years to get such people
booted out of the party.
Jarnail Singh himself remained calm, and said he hardly felt
victorious. He visited Sri Darbar Sahib in
Amritsar with his
family, and politely told the SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar that
he has no wish to work as an employee of the SGPC, a job offered by
Makkar. Earlier, he had refused all offers of money.
But more than all the politics that got weaved around the
shoe-cide incident, and the many puns that the print and TV
journalists could spin, it was the persona of Jarnail Singh himself
that was largely responsible for the force that the shoe added to
the anti-Tytler campaign. His soft spoken way, his measured words
immediately after throwing the shoe with a "I Protest" tag, his
my-action-may-be-wrong-but-the-issue-is-right statement and his
later insistence on not being part of any petty politics and keeping
the focus on justice succeeded in underlining the key issue.
Jarnail is clear on his target. He insists till date he never
wanted to hit Chidambaram. “The home minister had said last week
that he was happy that Tytler had got a clean chit. I was bereft of
all hope. Did he not know that our hearts had bled for 25 years?” he
said.
Jarnail Singh is a reticent and uncontroversial man, lives
modestly, celebrated his marriage anniversary last Wednesday, and
loves playing with his six-year-old son and two-year-old daughter.
The shoe was indeed expensive. He had bought the Reebok pair
for $60 from a store in
Seattle
last May when on an assignment. He hasn't got the shoe back, but the
demand for it is likely to be feverish among the Sikh community. How
many would like to mete out some nice treatment to Tytlers of the
world with Jarnail Singh's shoe? For detailed answers, please go to
page 11.
15
April 2009
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