Four journalists namely Satya of Thuglak, Jatayu (Satyanarayanan) Tamilhindu.com, Padman (Ananda Padman) and Smt. Meenakshi, Executive Editor Mangaiyar Malar were felicitated with Narada Awards in a program organized by Vishwa Samvad Kendra, Chennai on 10th June, 2017. The program began with a melodious song sung by Yamini and Samyuktha.
Chair Person Mahadevan in his presidential address highlighted the qualities of Narada. A community ‘Devangu’ still adhere Narad as ‘Kula-Rishi’. Narada’s communication is so deep, communicating in the interest of the society and the end result, the society benefited, he said. The dignitaries on the dais were honoured and an award was presented. Awardees were overwhelmed and spoke on the occasion.
Throwing light on how Bharat facing many distortions by itself and Narada is one such, Prafulla Ketkar , the Editor of Organiser, elucidated the 56 qualities associated with Narad and who is often referred only as ‘war monger’. Highlighting the ancient tradition of Narad, the first global journalist, was mentioned in 1824, first non-English publication – Uttand Marthand was dedicated to Narad. In the post independent period, K M Munshi called to revive the tradition, and once again Narad Jayanthi was started, he said.
‘Elaborating the distortions faced by our country, it is the 5 M’s haunting the society for a long time and unfortunately the so-called intellectuals, liberals and scholars of our society are inheriting the 5 Ms. The First M is Marx and Marxism (Marx who never visited India) and the two articles published in July and September 1853 clearly points the objective set to British rule to destruct the ancient way of worshipping nature and create distorted history’.
‘Second M is Mill who gave a definition of ‘being liberal’ and ‘being tolerant’ clearly told us that your tradition of acceptance and worship of all the Gods is humbuck. The liberals of India are the most illiberal and most intolerant and they paint anybody and everybody as intolerant, because the so-called intolerance do not agree with the so-called liberals. This is Myth’.
‘Third M being Macaulay, studied India carefully and provided intellectual foundation to destruct Indian ethos. He says that this country has a tremendous social capital and energy which is very difficult to destruct. Despite rule and so many external aggressions, we could not defeat this country because of two elements – one is spiritualism and second is its education system. And he says that if you really want to defeat this country then we need to create the sense of defeatists’ attitude about spiritualism among Indians and we should destruct this education system which is not dependent on the state, but society driven which is providing one school to one lakh population, temple trusts and societies supporting this school, unless we destruct this system, we really cannot defeat Bharat’.
‘The fourth person who has intellectually camouflaged as a Sanskrit scholar called Max-Muller. Again, a person thrown out from his own country called Germany funded by British, studied Sanskrit to ideological edifice the British rule and interpret anything and everything from Sanskrit from the British perspective, unfortunately that is the whole basis of Indian intellectual property. Narada based on kala and war mongering is one of them. This four Ms should have been negated and the new construct of Bharat and Bharatiyata should have been made and unfortunately the fifth M was added to it Mullah war in the name of Secularism. So the appeasement of so-called Minority which is not a minority by any standard, by any definition all over the world and the ideology which is not in tune with the Indian tradition is supported, encouraged with the minority rights and minority votes. So this 5Ms have distorted and destroyed in the Indian ethos and Indian traditions’.
‘Till 1827 in the Indian history there is no word called Dravida. It is the British historians who established this word Dravida. I am not against Tamil language, Tamil tradition, but that is Bharatiyata, the beauty of Bharat is not in unity and diversity as mis-articulated by the so-called mixture of Mill and Marx called Nehru, India is Unity in diversity, Bharat is integral that is express in diverse forms. For British it is difficult, and it was difficult to understand Bharat because in Europe whatever the world as the nation system was essentially based on two parameters one was religion that was catholic or protestant and the second was language. Bharat is one to be experienced, it cannot be explained, there can be many expressions and many ways of worship, that is Bharat. The idea of Bharat was never ever represented either in terms of worship or in terms of language’.
‘Throwing light on the geographical divisions and civilization of our country, he said, ‘the day we understand that the nationality is still Hindutva and Bharatiyata, the Hinduness, the cultural common civilisational denominator the name of the state can change, whether you want to call it Hindustan, Bharat, India or whatever. That is state, the structure that was created by British. The real question is can our state institutions and state mechanism can be tuned with nationality, our national identity, our national ethos. All our problems in the present society are basically because of this in concurrence or contradiction in ethos and state structure’.
‘In the pre-independence period there was no law created to break up our family system, no single law which is created to further our caste differences, not a single incident before 1955 when the language based creation, linguistic based states were created, not a single incident in Indian history where the struggle and conflict took place on the basis of language. These are all our creation of post independence state and it is mainly because we never ask this question in the post independence period, our independence started with partition and even after that you know divided independence, we started our tryst with destiny by Mr Nehru, by saying that we have to build this nation, simply because, he was again referring to the western idea of nation state, he forgot even before Europe as civilization was born, the concept of Rashtra was evolved in Bharat.
In third century BC, we find reference to Bharat, Bharat varsha and Rashtra as a concept. That Rashtra does not any state or institution, there were many kingdoms tell me a single king except Asoka who is today considered as a symbol of secularism, tell me a single king who declared his own faith as the state religion. It was only Asoka who declared Buddha as the official religion and used even for the spread of religion and the irony is, a person who considered one religion as the state religion is considered as the symbol of secularism. There were many kingdoms, the kingdom of Thanjavur ruled by one of the cousins of Chatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj had four linguistic identities – Tamil, Kannada, Marathi and Telugu and still they have no conflicts on the basis of language. That is Bharat. There were many kingdoms but still Om and Om Namashivaya is the connecting force when you go to any part of India and you will find the concept of Shiva and prakruthi, Sakthi and Shiva in some or other form. The real challenge for today’s intellectual world and media is that unfortunately we are wearing the specks of this 5 Ms to understand and interpret Bharat. This whole idea of whether left and right, whether national and anti-national, whether pro-cow or pro-beef. All these are western binaries. They are tuned to think in terms of this or that. They don’t understand the basic principles of nature. Western ideas and thought process keep dividing more and more and they can’t think collectively, and the unity in diverse forms, he said.
Appealing the journalists to work on the lines of Bharatiya perspective, he reminded Narada’s three principles of journalism. First, the truth, the story that is told cannot be ultimate. You can find any stories from different perspective, so don’t negate any possibility. Secondly, he said without being on the spot, you cannot tell the real story and likely he said don’t give a twist story-go to the spot, understand the thing, cross-check and then file a story and third and most importantly he said, always keep the result of your story in mind. In his bakthi sutra, he gave three principles about communication in which he says that the impact of story is more important than the story itself. So, Narada has given information to anybody and everybody who comes in his way, but he is selective about information whom to tell what and how to tell and for which purpose. That sense of purpose is always there, the problem with the present day journalism is that sense of purpose is missing and the core idea of journalism of being on the spot, cross-verifying the facts. The facts are sacred is the first principle of journalism. Now unfortunately, we don’t find stories, we find views and interpretations in the name of stories. The design itself says interprets the actual story, the facts do not support them.
Hoping the credibility of print media and the new media 140 character which can change the discourse of a story, Shri Prafulla Ketkar appealed the journalists to take the challenges on the basis of Narada principles, which is a real challenge. He congratulated the journalists on the dais who took the effort on meeting the Narada’s principles.
Courtesy: VSK Chennai
