Playing with privacy

The scandal surrounding the conduct of American politician Anthony Weiner, who send lewd pictures of himself to women, has raised the inevitable question: could it happen here? Or, more appropriately, do Indian constituents care much about their leaders’ personal lives?

In a television discussion on this very point, the general feeling was that the Indian media tended to keep away from the peccadilloes — if any — of politicians and that this was a good thing. As long as their personal life, even if it was illicit, did not affect their professional work, nobody had the right to know anything about it. And there is a tacit understanding in the media (and among fellow politicians) that personal arrangements of politicians were out of bounds. But how would the press and citizens in general react if something like the Weiner scandal were to happen
here?
Mr Weiner is a veteran in politics, a seven-time congressman. Last month, it emerged that he had used his Twitter account to send a link to a photograph showing just a pair of boxer shorts to a 21-year-old female college student who was “following” him.
Though the picture was removed from Mr Weiner’s account the very next day, it fell into the hands of a blogger. It emerges that the blogger was a conservative who closely follows Mr Weiner and several other Democrats. The picture was posted on www.biggovernment.com [2] but Mr Weiner insisted that it was not his body and that his political opponents were behind this to malign him.
But even as he was making his claims, another picture, showing him shirtless, was posted on the website followed by allegations that he had been sending even more explicit pictures to women. The game was up and Mr Weiner had to admit that it was indeed him in the boxer shorts and that he had been having inappropriate conversations with several women and had sent them many such pictures.
The Democrats, unwilling to risk a scandal in the run up to the elections, asked him to resign, with even US President Barack Obama saying, “If it was me, I would resign”. Mr Weiner, who has admitted himself into a clinic for “treatment” however has not stepped down even three weeks after the scandal broke, despite pressure from his colleagues.
How would the Indian media have dealt with such a situation? Hyperventilation is the default pitch on Indian television channels — would they have gone the whole hog if a story such as this emerged about a veteran politician? And more to the point, would a story
like this come out in the open at all?
On the last question first — the Weiner scandal broke when a conservative blogger posted the picture on his website. We do not have an equivalent, but there are many independent bloggers in India; would they have dared to publish something like this? I think not. Even without the latest round of cyber laws, which the government is putting in place, no individual would dare take on a politician.
What if the recipient of such obscene material herself (or himself) brought it out into the open? Even then, it would have to capture the attention of the media, without which it would remain in the dark.
The media would hesitate to take it up, unless there was proof; making such serious allegations against a politician is not a risk any channel would be willing to take. Yet, television channels barely hesitate to quote anyone who calls a minister corrupt; what then makes claims of a sexual nature so different?
There is no one answer, but it has become accepted practice that the personal lives of political leaders — freely discussed among mediapersons off the record — never, or rarely make it in print or on television. There are exceptions of course — in the 1970s Surya magazine printed explicit pictures of Babu Jagjivan Ram’s son cavorting with a woman and more recently, the paternity claims by a man against senior Congress leader N.D. Tiwari cost the latter his job as governor.
But we are happy to read of scandals involving babas and filmstars, and rarely if ever do we hear about the private life of a politician.
This could do with our innate conservatism or bashfulness. Or we may be genuinely unconcerned about who does what in the privacy of their bedroom. One of the points made about the Weiner affair (and many more such scandals that keep breaking in the US) is that the American society is puritanical when it comes to the personal probity of its politician. But we are no less conservative as a society; then why do we look the other way? Could it be squeamishness on our part?
It is worth conjecturing how the spread of the online media will change things. Mr Weiner’s indiscretions were caught out because of the fact that despite quick action to take down the offending picture from his own site, there was a record of what he had sent. It is relatively easy to track down the origins of mails and social media postings. And there was a hawk out there tracking Mr Weiner and his Democrat colleagues for any misstep.
Sooner or later that will happen here; already we have alert online vigilantes looking out for anything that is said about their favoured political party, ideology or cause. In future, they could be out to trip rivals and sex scandals would certainly offer handy ammunition to their cause.
The mainstream media may be careful, but the online world is much more anarchic and freewheeling. Sooner or later, a Weiner-like scandal would then break in India too.

Sidharth Bhatia is a senior journalist and commentator on current affairs based in Mumbai