Any media outlet that creates content to fuel the North vs South divide has to be called out, shamed, and slammed. Such outlets include a news portal that claims to be practising the finest journalism in the South of India.
In an article titled ‘Why we did a TNM series on the southern echoes of the Ayodhya movement’, The News Minute’s Executive Editor Sudipto Mondal wrote why it is important to discuss how the South is better than the North, especially “emboldened saffron-clad activists to boldly walk up to our doorstep and demand our loyalty to their cause.”
What phoney poppycock are you selling to your readers, TNM?
There is no North vs. South divide, except in your imagination, which is desperate to be validated and rewarded by those who will happily watch this country disintegrate. It plays into the hands of forces that will look away when Hindus perish like “malaria-carrying pests.”
And how are you producing this article? Is it hard to write one decent piece that doesn’t contradict itself? You claim that there is a narrative that the South is less “casteist, sectarian, or patriarchal”, but follow that statement with “There is no easy way to answer these questions, not the least because social attitudes are hard to measure.” Then why are you backing this so-called narrative if you have no basis to measure or prove it?
You stated, “We are undoubtedly ahead in material terms: education, healthcare, infrastructure, industrial performance, employment and such. But it would be dishonest to attribute this imbalance to any inherent gap in intellect, ability or culture between north Indians and south Indians.”
Are you even aware of what’s happening in the country, or do you deliberately choose to keep your readers in the dark about how the northern states are performing? Uttar Pradesh has outpaced Tamil Nadu economically. It is the second-largest state in the country in terms of GDP share after Maharashtra. In education, it has the highest number of colleges in India, followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Do you want to tell your readers how the Northern states, while becoming economically more robust, also spend significantly more on healthcare than some southern states? Honestly, you are quite capable of arguing that the Southern people need less money for health care owing to their fictitious superiority over the rest of India in “intellect, ability and culture”.
Your article also reflects your petty values that would much rather fuel these artificial differences than bridge differences across the country.
Before we move to the next problem, can I ask you not to publish garbage like, “Some would say we are more prosperous because we are more socially progressive?” Identify this “some”. Don’t leave your radioactively toxic ideas on the web and attribute them to nameless individuals. That’s cowardice journalism, not “finest journalism”.
Furthermore, why are you so shattered over the public support for Sri Ayodhya? Is it so unacceptable for you that a wounded civilisation is beginning to heal itself? The radicalised barbarians didn’t just attack the Hindus of Sarnath, Varanasi, Kashmir, and Ayodhya. They also brutally repressed the Hindus across Vindhyas just because they were Hindus.
Why don’t you, in the spirit of “finest journalism in south India”, report why the weak and old residents of Srirangam flocked the streets to welcome PM Modi before the Pran Prathistha ceremony? Do you want to write why this rare show of support was significant in Srirangam?
I don’t know if you are capable of taking this piece of advice. Still, I will give it to you for free – Remember that call for breaking up this country, especially the ones that changed the demography of a region by viciously persecuting Hindus, started with “Oh, but we are different than Hindus/Indians. Our ancestry is different”. This narrative precedes every single episode of Hindu genocides – whether it was in Kashmir, Bengal, Punjab, or any other border state in India.
Hindus went door-to-door in every district of the five southern states, reminding people to celebrate the temple’s inauguration in Sri Ayodhya because Sri Rama binds our civilisation together. His story is imprinted across this country and beyond, not just in North India.
Finally, I need help understanding if you people are irresponsible or vicious. For the sake of this profession, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you’re facing a “gap in intellect, ability and culture”, as you said. In that case, I suggest you reevaluate your editorial values and journalistic standards (if they exist somewhere).
Nandini is a former journalist who tracks media bias.
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