A gratuitous use of my photo from the time I write about in the post below.
I write this as one of the original holders of the pejorative political label “liberal-pseudo-secularist” used by the Hindu right in India to contemptuously describe almost anyone who does not share their worldview. That label was given to me as early as 1992 in the immediate aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6 that year.
What earned me that coveted sobriquet was that I reported the event, the runup to it and its aftermath like a professional journalist shorn of ideological angst or predilections. It was a clinician’s approach to the intense social and cultural ferment that followed. I was called that name half in jest, half seriously by the late K R Malkani, a journalist turned a very prominent ideologue of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to my face. He was then vice president of the BJP and generally a fine human being to talk to with a sharp intellect. He did not deploy that construct to insult me at all but partly to get a rise out of me and partly out of genuine conviction, notwithstanding that pseudo is not necessarily a compliment.
As for liberal, I am assertively one and make zero apology about it.
This backdrop is essential to say what I am about to say about the mourning and disdain that pervade India’s left-liberal universe over the hostile takeover of NDTV by the billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani. In this context, I want to talk about the combination of revulsion and exultation over the resignation from NDTV by its star Hindi anchor Ravish Kumar. Revulsion because he was forced into a situation where he had to quit and exultation because he quit responding to his conscience over what the Adani takeover signals for journalism. On the face of it, both these are understandable reactions.
One absurd observation, which is meant to ennoble Ravish Kumar’s journalistic reputation, is to say that even the world’s third richest man, namely Adani, is not rich enough to buy a journalist, namely Ravish Kumar. It is not even remotely that dramatic or noble. Nothing in life is.
I think, like everything else in life, here too context and nuance are essential. Going by the Indian media reports, in 2008, Prannoy and Radhika Roy, the founder-owners of NDTV, took an interest free loan of Rs four billion from Mukesh Ambani, then India’s and perhaps Asia’s richest industrialist whose, and whose late father Dhirubhai and his extended family’s political influence in Delhi and across India was talked about in whispered tones. As it happens with an industrialist of that scale and influence there were always insinuations of their exercising self-aggrandizing influence at various levels. In that Adani is no different than Ambani. In fact, the Ambani influence was and remains legendary.
Why then resignations were not contemplated, let alone carried out by star anchors of NDTV in response to that deal? Why was an interest free loan from Ambani kosher and a takeover, however crafty, by Adani is the end of journalism? I am genuinely baffled by this dichotomy. I bring to bear no judgment on Ravish Kumar’s decision one way or the other. People must do what works for them. The problem arises when certain actions get hailed as heroic and even saintly while lack thereof in manifestly the same circumstances do not get even a passing critical scrutiny.
It is not my case at all that Ravish Kumar and others were wrong in not resigning then or right in doing so now. My point is limited to the convenient selectivity in creating heroes and celebrating heroism. Journalistic absolutism works only in an extremely limited manner and that too if the journalist so acting is ready to confront relentless penury. There is not a single media institution anywhere in the world that is not built on some manner of moral compromise. It comes down to what extent of moral compromise does one choose to accept and beyond which reject it in faux glorious defiance.
Once again, like I wrote the other day, I am neither grandiloquent about nor lachrymose over the resignations of the Roys and Ravish Kumar. They all navigated the system to their best abilities and moral judgement. I have zero say in it.