A couple of years ago, a person who is not a friend of Internet Hindus, tweeted:
https://twitter.com/Retributions/status/783356284502355968?s=03
It is not that these ‘top journalists/pundits’ really had any basic intelligence. However, they had weaved an image around them that they did have basic intelligence, and if anyone did not know it, then these latter were really idiots. These ‘top journalists/pundits’ are in institutions that are supposed to be manned by people of basic intelligence. They were able to weasel their way into these institutions either by having family connections, or pretending to be proponent of the communist ideology, or substituting logic with the English language.
Thus, exposing was no difficult task. However, the others in the same institutions circled their wagons to protect them. They were actually protecting themselves also, because they are next in line of being exposed. But even this is not fully succeeding. People in some sort of position have recently started to use the social media to call out some happenings, even tangentially.
Fictitious story played by a particular news-channel in Delhi about rebellion within J&K Police if Article 35A is abolished. This TV channel has had a long history of pandering to the propaganda and lies of radical separatists who get money from Pakistan to instigate violence.
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) August 6, 2018
Have worked with two "star" editors, both male, of English language publications in Delhi. Neither can string one sentence in the language. Rewrote entire copies/cover stories etc. I am fluent in Hindi and can wing it in Punjabi. #FinalLutyensDebate
— Chitra Subramaniam (@chitraSD) August 5, 2018
https://twitter.com/Abhina_Prakash/status/1017423622703648769?s=03
The problem with these tweets is that there are no names taken. While those in Lutyen’s Delhi, and informed on the subject, would at best guess – the guesses may be accurate, but still there is a chance for errors. And move just outside the space, there will be less and less people who can guess. Even by those who are otherwise better informed.
I would like to contend that the tweets above have value ONLY if the names are taken. Unless there is a cleansing of most of the present lot of ‘top journalists/pundits,’ the voices of the sane ones will always be suppressed. And the sane ones outside the system will always be pushed back. Surjit Bhalla had correctly observed:
“The Indian people are asking more questions and demanding greater accountability from dynastic political leaders. But the old elite — politicians, corporates, left-intellectuals, academics — cannot be expected to give up their privileges so easily. They will try to derail the transformation and object at every turn: If that means fake analysis, they will do so. If that means intellectual gymnastics, they will do so. The key point is that they MUST do so.”
Fake analysis and intellectual gymnastics means telling lies – the only what the ‘top journalists/pundits’ were considered to be top journalists/pundits, and continue to be so. The situation has reached a level where Anand Ranganathan is forced to observe that they are dangerous:
#FinalLutyensDebate | We all agree there is this Lutyens things… it's not just a geographical tag and exists in other capitals… But what we have to discuss is whether they're dangerous. I think they are: Anand Ranganathan, Scientist and Author https://t.co/LGCyJUWcLF
— Republic (@republic) August 5, 2018
In agriculture fields there is a plant called parasite. It is an organism which obtains its nourishment from or living on another organism (the ‘host’) for survival and usually harming the host and causing disease within it. These parasitic plants have no value for any other living being, either for medicinal or any other purpose. These ‘top journalists/pundits’ can well be said to be parasites, and the host is the Samaj. These parasites demand that the Samaj provide them with funds for living a lifestyle which most members of the Samaj cannot dream for their generation after next.
It is time that the task of naming and shaming the ‘top journalists/pundits’ should be left only to the foot soldiers amongst the Internet Hindus. They have been doing it for a long time, and that why these ‘top journalists/pundits’ are today clamouring for control of the social media. Others who wish to also see sanity in discussions should pitch in.
(Featured Image Source)
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