Vivek Gumaste's Blog: Musings - Posts Tagged "free-speech-jnu"
Free Speech
Extract from book My India : Musings of a Patriot (kindle edition Re 49 Amazon. in)
It is ironical that this left liberal secular lobby which effectively suppressed the nationalist voice by shutting it out of the English language media for over 50 years should raise a hue and cry about freedom of speech. This writer who has been writing for over 30 years has personal experience in this regard.
Editorial prerogative has been used as an excuse to deny nationalist advocates a space. Recently Rajiv Malhotra, a scholarly nationalist champion- not a rabid hate monger, was denied a right to respond when concocted and exaggerated charges of plagiarism against him were freely circulated in Indian English language publications.
Malini Parthasarty, editor the Hindu wrote this in reply to Rajiv Malhotra’s request: “The newspaper’s right to exercise its own judgment on the need to give space to a self-proclaimed impugned party, must be protected especially in a climate where frenzy is building up on social media virtually dictating an agenda of political and cultural priorities to the media, demanding compliance. We must be careful not to feed into this frenzy or to legitimise it in any way,”
In her book, this dictum however is only applicable to the ‘other side.’ (pp 240)
It is ironical that this left liberal secular lobby which effectively suppressed the nationalist voice by shutting it out of the English language media for over 50 years should raise a hue and cry about freedom of speech. This writer who has been writing for over 30 years has personal experience in this regard.
Editorial prerogative has been used as an excuse to deny nationalist advocates a space. Recently Rajiv Malhotra, a scholarly nationalist champion- not a rabid hate monger, was denied a right to respond when concocted and exaggerated charges of plagiarism against him were freely circulated in Indian English language publications.
Malini Parthasarty, editor the Hindu wrote this in reply to Rajiv Malhotra’s request: “The newspaper’s right to exercise its own judgment on the need to give space to a self-proclaimed impugned party, must be protected especially in a climate where frenzy is building up on social media virtually dictating an agenda of political and cultural priorities to the media, demanding compliance. We must be careful not to feed into this frenzy or to legitimise it in any way,”
In her book, this dictum however is only applicable to the ‘other side.’ (pp 240)
