N. Ram of the Hindu who makes periodic visits to Tibet to pretend to report first hand from there (and actually only parrots dutifully what his official Chinese hosts want him to parrot) is at it again. This, in itself, is not news (I am not sure what to call such reporting, though Jamyang Norbu calls it intellectual whoredom -- perhaps he is a bit extreme). What is also not news is that his speeches praising the development of Tibet under the 'benevolent' gaze of its Chinese rulers (and gratuitously calling detractors from this viewpoint 'fools') has been approvingly reported by the Chinese News Agency Xinhua. However, what completes this circle of mutual back-scratching is that the Hindu has picked this news item from Xinhua to reproduce on its pages. (It's hilarious to read in the Hindu's own pages the sentence 'A prominent Indian journalist...').
Surely the Hindu could have a separate report of its own about its own Editor!
3 comments:
Rahul,
I just saw the Xinhua article in The Hindu and was outraged by it. Thought of writing to you, and then guessed you would have already blogged about it. Of course I was right.
Even granting Mr Ram the right to his opinions supporting China over the Tibet issue, his comments are in appalling taste. "Make-believe Tibet"! Was it necessary to say that? What next, make-believe Palestine??
Sunil: No, Palestine is 'ok' not for any factual reasons but because the party supports the Palestinian cause (and so does the Chinese Communist Party).
You know, to get back to my younger days, there was a comment I recall made by Henry Higgins to Eliza Doolittle in 'My Fair Lady' which is worth paraphrasing in this context:
"There is not an idea in your head or a word in your mouth that I haven't put there"
Replace the 'I haven't' with 'the Party hasn't' and you have a perfect description of such people.
OLO: the trouble with The Hindu is...
No, I will stop here. That would take too long. So let me try again:
the trouble with you, OLO, is that you take The Hindu too seriously. Why not credit the readers of the paper with some intelligence? Do you think anyone with a strand of sense would believe the tripe dished out by Ram on Tibet? It is best to think of such articles as a replacement for comedy in which the Hindu is sadly lacking, or in the farce or tragi-comedy sections. Do you agree? In any event, let me point you to one of my own articles, see
here.
Post a Comment