MAKING THE DEAD SPEAK!

BY SANDEEP SHRIVASTWA

Some enterprising authors have invented the art of making the dead speak, instead of speaking for the dead. Taken aback by the stunning disclosure, your reasoning fails precisely when you require it most. In a surge of emotions, the caged animal suddenly escapes from the zoo!

Imagine you just read a passage in a book that was widely publicized like Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ. The passage tells you that Edwina Mountbatten would have her breakfast sitting in Jawaharlal Nehru’s lap. Your imagination running wild, you don’t think even for a moment of the noble Platonic relationship the two had. The gullible have already lapped it up, believing the written word to be the gospel truth.   

Television channels (Times Now included) will soon hold a panel discussion on the Nehru-Edwina affair. One of the panelists, we are pretty certain, would say the British are always an action-oriented people and since Nehru had studied at Cambridge, it stands to pure logic that it’s true. 

A seasoned political commentator like Ravi Shankar Prasad would say Mountbatten used Edwina as bait to get India take the Kashmir issue to the UN. One of Delhi’s most eminent psychiatrists would say he has records to prove that Nehru suffered a depression during that period and Edwina helped him come out of it 

As the nation watch these debates with bated breath, Arnab Goswami would triumphantly declare: I am holding in my hand the secret tapes of the conversation between Nehru and Edwina in a rendezvous, exclusive to Times Now. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, the viewers are intrigued.  

Jacqueline Kennedy’s reported remarks on Indira Gandhi falls in the same genre. For all we know, the US establishment hated Mrs Gandhi for her ideological proximity to the Kremlin. But there is no reason why the first lady should hate the future prime minister of India on presumably her first meeting. The author at his deceptive best must have made the dead speak, which is one of the tricks of bestseller writing. (Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr)  

If they don’t have bread, let them eat cake! Who said it, Marie Antoinette? There is no evidence to prove that she ever said it. The words appear in Rousseau’s Confessions, his autobiography. The author may have invented the anecdote, attributing it to the Great Princess. Marie was nine years old when the book was written in 1765. The Chinese have a similar story, and during a famine the emperor asked, if they don’t have rice, let them eat meat!  

Another tale of distortion comes from George Washington’s biography. His father presented him a new axe, and the boy tested its sharpness by cutting down unwittingly his father’s favourite plant. In the evening, he saw his father beating the servants for cutting down the plant. Facing his father’s wrath, the boy stepped forward and admitted to his mistake. This boy when he grew up became the first President of America! This story is an invention of his biographer but found its way to Indian textbooks – presumably through American books – in the 1950s.  

Why Dan Brown made a fortune in The Da Vinci Code by relying on fraudsters like Pierre Plantard. Born as the son of a butler (described as a cook for wealthy families in police reports), Plantard manipulated his way up the social ladder till a judge investigating a major political scandal had his house searched, which yielded false documents proclaiming him to be the true king of France. Under oath, he admitted he had fabricated everything. At a time when women and men do not share the same dining table, Dan Brown saw Mary Magdalene at the Last Supper, to the exclusion of St John, the Beloved Disciple of Jesus. 

Truth is seldom found in Politics and Media!