Being a land of many languages, India’s media is no monolithic phenomenon. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the regional differences, the vernacular media has a uniformity of character. Thus we can broadly categorize the Indian media into the English version and the vernacular variety. The difference between these is more pronounced in the ‘space value’ of the print media than in the ‘airtime quality’ of the electronic variant.Over to the English print media first. The lament of the learned is that sparse is the space for literature in it. And their nostalgia is for the media that propped up fiction through its columns in the golden era of the novel in Europe. After all, weren’t the...

In his savage state, mere sounds could have been man’s communicative tools to vent out his raw feelings, limited to such as hunger and anger and pain and pleasure. However, in time, as he managed to civilize himself in communes, he would have needed some vocabulary to synchronize the habitation therein. And in that lies the seeds of the tongues, which, when whetted by the tenor of the times, could have yielded the fruits of languages. But it was the character of life, as it evolved in a given commune that would have shaped the nuances of the words, leading to the evolution of languages with their unique characteristics of expression in personal interactions and public communions. While at ...

The universal success of The God of Small Things and the exuberant outburst of Salman Rushdie on ‘regional’ Indian writing call for a dispassionate approach to the genesis of Indo-English writing, nay, all Indian writing. Let us first propitiate the ‘God of Small Things’ before we turn our attention to the ‘Satan of Verses’As Arundhati Roy’s success is of historical magnitude, it would be in order to follow the Gibbonian track to seek its causes. To this enquiry an obvious but satisfactory answer may be returned|: that it was owing to the newness of ‘The God of Small things’, exemplifies by the peculiar and pixilated use of the language to weave a sensuous story in a sinuso...

So to say, in its origins, the writing board consisted the ‘rectangles of recognition’ over which, over time, the ‘pillars of popularity’ were formed that held the interests of the literature and the writers alike for long. However, in the later part of the last century, this ‘from bottom to top’ order was turned topsy-turvy under the ‘pyramids of publicity’ erected by the publisher-media nexus to promote the writers with the right connections. When it seemed, all was irrevocably lost to the unconnected authors, came the internet to usher in the e-book revolution followed by social media explosion that once again restored the rectangles of recognition, albeit in unruly profus...

After the millennia grind under foreign yokes, first that of the Islamic invaders and then of the British colonizers, Bharat Varsha, the ancient land of the Hindus, regained its independence as India, albeit downsized by the latter by carving out Pakistan from it as a homeland for its Muslims. Thus, it would have been logical that the Hindus had the truncated India all for themselves but owing to its wooly political leadership, it was not to be, which forever constrains them to drink the same old wine in a new bottle. What’s worse was Nehru’s nipping the Hindu nationalistic impulses in the bud, perceiving them as offensive to the religious sentiments of the Muslim minority that made Indi...

When the Semitic free run on the Hindu turf under Sonia’s proxy watch ended with the ascent of Narendra Modi onto the Delhi gaddi, the Indian agendas of the Christian west and the Muslim umma faced impediments resulting in the brouhaha over the growing religious intolerance of Hindus towards India’s minorities. Given the racial biases and the religious prejudices of both against the Hindus and that the world media, by and large is controlled by them, a critical appraisal of their propaganda with objective lenses is called for.Hence, as the accusation is on the religious ground, it is imperative that the theocratic credos of Islam and Christianity as well as the philosophical ethos of san...

Unmindful of the old adage, when you point a finger at someone else, there are three pointing back to you, Udhayanidhi, the Christian son of the atheist Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin and his devout Hindu wife, had raged an unseemly controversy through his clarion call for the eradication of sanatana dharma aka Hinduism that he likened to dengue, malaria and corona. It is another matter though that he has no issues with the ethics of the Christianity that required him to get baptized into its fold to wed his believing beloved. Be that as it may, his closet Christian party colleague A. Raja pitched in with AIDS and leprosy tags to picture Hinduism as a menace to the world at large fo...