Indian media in developed countries need to wake up:Time to remind India of its weaknesses and faults

Indian media in developed countries need to wake up: Time to remind India of its weaknesses and faults

Indian media in developed countries need to stand-up, shed undeserving patriotism, blinkered loyalty and nationalistic bias and become a medium of change for the better of the once proud and respected nation.

Fiji Pundit, in its media watch role reviews changing view of Indian media in Auckland, in particular Indian Newslink and its conservative editor Venkat Raman. Today we analyse its latest editorial on treatment of women in India.

Indian women need to unite, rise, and fight back male chauvinism in India, in form of Shakti

Indian Newslink's editor and the paper was seen by some sections of the community as a friend of NZ Labour party and apparently a spin doctor and public –relations arm of the Indian High Commission and Indian Government. Venkat became a self-appointed gatekeeper to filter and shut out the bad news of India from NZ public. He even went to the extent of censoring and editing out opinion pieces to show them in good light if something critical was written about his Bharat Mata, Mother India. This came to a head when the comments of yours truly (Thakur)  about India on Facebook posting on Independence Day 2012 was misinterpreted and publicized by his friend and Labour Party apprentice politician and MP-aspirant, Sunny Kaushal, and well-supported in agenda-setting character assassination by this veteran editor.

 [Read: http://fijipundit.blogspot.com/2012/12/mera-bharat-mahaan-thakurs-offending.html

Is Bharat Mata, as an epitome of a woman, is being disrobed by Indians today?

However, a pleasant and surprising change appears to have come to this supposedly veteran editor Venkat Raman. Despite the Indian lynch-mob calling me a refugee, uneducated Fijian and a failed journalist writing without research, it appears my articles on Fiji Pundit pricked his conscience and awoken the journalist in a blindly patriotic and nationalistic editor.

 [Read: http://fijipundit.blogspot.com/2012/12/cry-beloved-india-rise-indians-rise.html

If one read his editorial of 15 January, 2013, one would wonder whether it is Venkat Raman or Thakur Ranjit Singh talking the truth about India.

“Corruption in high and low places, arrest of ministers and top officials and violence against women have placed the country in bad light….

But how and why did India degenerate into such a pathetic state of international ridicule and a system that appears to have failed at every stage of its execution? Why did the people, known for their political acumen and democratic values, elect and suffer mediocre or even substandard lawmakers?”

Bharat Mata -Our India is  still a great nation of great people. Are we keeping its pride as its past leaders did?

Who will he now apologise for degrading his Bharat Mata, as I was accused and punished and directed to apologise to some conceited and blinkered Auckland Indian leaders who wished to keep us in dark about real happenings in India? But then the nationalist and Indian patriot took the better of this veteran journalist when he became an apologist for what is happening, blaming it on a minority.

“We know that just a few thousand rowdies and despicable miscreants can create chaos in a land of billion plus people. But these are like a drop of poison that can desecrate a barrel of milk, just as a single cancer cell can destroy the entire body.”

Agreed, we have minorities in other countries committing crime, but nowhere is discrimination and atrocities against women as institutionalized as in India.

Despite being a country, “which has accorded women pride of place and honour as President, Prime Minister, Parliamentary Speaker, Leader of the Opposition, diplomats, leaders and captains of industry and as successful and leading entrepreneurs,” it appears majority of Indian women are still treated as paon ki juti (slippers on our feet) bereft of dignity and honour preached in scriptures and mythologies only, not in reality.. To a great extent some outdated shackles and stereotypes of women, preached by a Brahmin and male dominated Hinduism is to blame for this low status of women in 80% Hindu India because dignity and respect for women preached in scriptures, epics and mythologies are inversely related to reality of their downtrodden treatment there today. But that is another topic for Fiji Pundit to tackle.

Are women in India depicted as strong and respected only in epics, scriptures and mythologies?

Venkat ends his editorial with some hope for the future:

“We hope that the young men and women, who have begun a new age of intolerance towards political and corruption, sex offenders and moral turpitude will not rest until the right things are done in the right way in the right time.”

However, this hope can only be realized if Indian editors, commentators and journalists in developed countries (like New Zealand, Australia, UK, Canada and USA) can join their chorus of objections against rottenness in Indian men, their governments and a corrupt system. The blind loyalty and blinkered patriotism by NRI media people to an undeserving, unfair and discriminatory system in India will not help this hope become reality. 

Hope Indian media in Auckland can digest this.

THAKUR RANJIT SINGH

Indian women need to unite, rise, and fight back male chauvinism in India

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