Shun the TV, stop a war

远离电视,停止战争

I HAVE been studiously following the mantra given by George Perkovich, and, accordingly, haven’t watched Indian TV news for a couple of years or more. I would advise my Pakistani friends to do the same with their TV. Switch it off.

我一直在遵循乔治•佩尔科维奇的箴言，已经两年乃至更长时间没有看印度电视新闻了。我建议巴基斯坦朋友也这样做，关掉电视，不看新闻。

The celebrated defence analyst, author of a seminal work on India’s nuclear policy, was in Delhi at the height of one of the avoidable military stand-offs between the South Asian rivals to promote a new book about their unending and fraught adversarial postures. He was asked if there was something that could be done to calm things down. “Unplug the TV,” he said.

这位著名的国防分析人士（乔治•佩尔科维奇）曾就印度的核政策撰写过一部影响深远的著作。在南亚竞争对手之间本可以避免的军事对峙正处于高潮之际，他在新德里宣传一本新书，书中讲述了这两个国家无休止且令人担忧的敌对姿态。有人问他是否有什么办法可以使事态平静下来，他回答：“拔掉电视插头。”

The advice, let me assure friends on both sides of the border, has worked like magic. If the choice is between ultranationalist former army officers from both sides offering ways to start a nuclear war and listening to a delectable Mian ki Todi by the sarod maestro Narendra Nath Dhar on a Sunday morning at a private mehfil — choose the latter.

让我向两国朋友保证，这个建议发挥了神奇的作用。如果要在两种节目之间做出选择，一是看军事新闻，听两国极端民族主义的前陆军军官提出发动核战争的提议，另一种选择是在一个周日早晨，在私人mehfil音乐会上聆听萨罗德(sarod)艺术大师纳伦德拉•纳特•达尔令人愉悦的《Mian ki Todi》——选择后者。

If the anchors are getting excited about insane advice about a Navy SEALS-like operation to pluck out a target from his foreign lair and Vinayak Torvi is singing at the India International Centre, a Bageshwari, followed by three compositions in Tilak Kamod, and ending with two Marathi abhangs, including one by the sage Tukaram, listen to Torvi.

如果要在这两者之间做选择，一是看主播们对采取海豹突击队式的行动，拔掉某个外国巢穴而兴奋不已，另一个是去看Vinayak Torvi在印度国际中心演唱 Bageshwari，随后是Tilak Kamod的三首曲目，最后以两首马拉地语古典音乐结束，其中一首是圣人图卡拉姆(Tukaram)的作品，那就选择去听Torvi的音乐会。

Those going to a concert or a movie are not unaware of or inured to the horrific carnage of unsuspecting paramilitary men in Pulwama the other day. It’s simply that there are less demonstrative ways to share grief than to shout inanities at the top of your voice against a real or imagined foe. Amma and other women in their Lucknow neighbourhood quietly gave away their best jewellery to the national fund because Nehru asked for it during the brief 1962 war with China. Twenty-five years later, Rajiv Gandhi was shaking hands with Deng Xiaopeng. It was a historic handshake.

那些去听音乐会或看电影的人并不是不知道前几天在普尔瓦马发生的毫无防备的对准军事人员的可怕屠杀。简单地说，没有什么比用你最大的声音对一个真实的或想象中的敌人大喊“愚蠢”更能表达你的悲伤了。安玛和勒克瑙附近的其他妇女悄悄地把她们最好的珠宝送给了国家基金，理由是尼赫鲁在1962年与中国的短暂战争中提出了这个要求。而25年后，拉吉夫·甘地与握手，这是一次历史性的握手。

Exceptions apart, TV anchors are mostly lip-syncing the script handed by someone else. When the chips are down, as they are down these days, the ‘news’ becomes shrill advice. The Iraq invasion was carried out by the American deep state, and the justification for the mindless act was left to TV anchors to carry out. The Qatari-owned Al Jazeera channel staked its modest credibility by hawking the spurious narrative of religious zealots against a secular Syria, possibly the only such state left in the Middle East.

除了少数例外，电视节目主持人大多是对口型。当关键时刻到了，就像这些天一样，“新闻”就变成了尖锐的建议。入侵伊拉克的行动是由美国的“深层国家”(deep state)发动的，而为这种愚蠢行为的正名的活儿则留给了电视主播。

I was in Lahore on Aug 14, 1997, to shoot TV footage for a Saarc documentary that was sponsored by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. In the Gujral era, such ideas were possible, and surely enough India’s relations with all its neighbours had suddenly improved overnight.

1997年8月14日，我在拉合尔为一部由印度外交部赞助的南亚区域合作联盟纪录片拍摄电视镜头。在古杰拉尔时代，这样的想法是可能的，而且印度与邻国的关系也能在一夜之间突然改善。

It was a lean day in Lahore so I switched on a Pakistani entertainment channel in my hotel room. A TV drama on the country’s independence day was on. It showed lots of eager young students in fez caps celebrating a speech by Jinnah in 1945

那时候的拉合尔不景气，于是我在酒店房间里打开了一个巴基斯坦娱乐频道，这个频道正在播关于国家独立日的节目，许多头戴毡帽、满怀渴望的年轻学生庆祝真纳1945年的一次演讲。