Prime Time
If Ayodhya was the flavor of prime time Wednesday evening, Thursday was more varied — on India Today, anchor Rahul Kanwal asked if V.D. Savarkar should be conferred the Bharat Ratna and CNN News-18’s Marya Shakil discussed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as the face of the BJP-JD(U) alliance in the state elections.
Aaj Tak: The Ayodhya land dispute was discussed, in Ayodhya.
Muslim Political Council of India’s president Tasleem Rahmani believed that mediation is still the best way forward. “This should not become an ego clash. If Hindus are getting the land then they would have to compromise for Mathura and Kashi.”
However, Ram Janmbhoomi Nyas’ Ramvilas Vedanti was unbending: “We will take the land, build the temple and that too without any prior condition.”
Social worker Bablu Khan advocated Hindu-Muslim unity. “Thousands of Muslims cleaned the pillars for the Ram Mandir that is going to be built. The communal harmony that exists here is exemplary.”
Zee News: BJP’s poll promise of the Bharat Ratna to Veer Savarkar made news again: “Why is Congress jolted when BJP proposed Veer Savarkar’s name for Bharat Ratna?” asked anchor Aman Chopra.
BJP’s Sambit Patra was ready with letters from Indira Gandhi and Mahatma Gandhi, praising Savarkar. “It is a shame that Congress which has not even an iota of ‘veerta’ in them, is raising questions on ‘Veer’ Savarkar.”
Political Analyst Nishant Verma countered Patra: “Did BJP give in to Shiv Sena’s pressure…they are avoiding their own leaders like Dr Hedgewar and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and giving Bharat Ratna to Savarkar first?”
Times Now: In a comparatively civil debate, anchored by Padmaja Joshi, the topic was the scope for alternative versions of history. This followed Home Minister Amit Shah’s speech at Banaras Hindu University where he said we need to rewrite India’s history.
Sangit Ragi, RSS, said, “The colonialist historiography, the Islamist historiography and the communist historiography on India have all been very common on one point — they have denounced the Indian Hindu past. They do not celebrate the Hindu civilisation.”
Journalist Ashutosh felt that history has evolved “and everyone has their own version of it’’. He added that the talk is not about Samudra Gupta, only Shivaji or Maharana Pratap. “I have never heard of them talking about Ashoka, maybe because he turned to Buddhism…These people want to see history as a confrontation with Islam.”
NDTV 24×7: On ‘Reality Check’, anchor Sreenivasan Jain discussed India’s low position on the global hunger index despite such surplus of grains that the Modi government wanted to donate food abroad.
On ‘Hunger In Time Of Glut’, Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information said, “There is an alarming level of inequality in the country…If godowns are overflowing with grains, why isn’t there a proper system of making sure that people who need food can access it?”
Vrunda Bansode from Sattva Consulting argued that malnutrition is not an “isolated problem’’. It is deeply connected with other issues like “sanitation, water quality, as well as maternal health…”
Front Page
With Diwali around the corner, mainstream newspapers Friday carry multiple full-page advertisements. Common in four mainstream newspapers is Madhya Pradesh government’s investors’ summit advertisement.
Newspapers, however, choose different leads with international news making it to the front pages, for a change — the Brexit deal is the lead in Hindu and Hindustan Times. The Times of India goes with the unusual story of Mexico deporting 311 Indians who attempted to sneak into the US while The Indian Express stay home: it has an exclusive on Jammu and Kashmir announcing exams to bring children back to school.
Amit Shah: Home Minister Amit Shah’s history lesson is Page 1 news. It is the lead story on TOI’s flap — he “stressed the need to rewrite history from India’s perspective,” it writes. Express quotes him, saying “stop blaming historians from the Left, British and Mughal eras for the ‘injustice done to our true history”. He added that “had it not been for Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the 1857 uprising would have been viewed through the lens of the British”, reports Hindu.
TOI notes that “his comments came against the backdrop of BJP’s push for a Bharat Ratna for Savarkar”.
Manmohan Singh: Former prime minister Manmohan Singh makes it to Page 1, again, for his comments on the economy.
HT’s headline quotes Singh, saying “$5 trillion economy not achievable at this rate”. Singh asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to “stop blaming the UPA regime for the crisis in the economy as the NDA had been in office for over five years,” writes TOI. It also, interestingly, chooses to carry PM Modi’s assertion that India will be $5 trillion economy by 2024 right beside this report.
Express highlights a different perspective altogether: it says Singh “nuanced the Congress position” on Article 370 and Savarkar. He said that Congress did not oppose the removal of J&K’s special status, but the “high-handed” manner in which it was carried out.
Mexico: “In a transatlantic deportation without precedent, Mexico” put the 311 Indians attempting to illegally enter the US on a charter plane to New Delhi, reports TOI. It adds that the “deportees” had entered the country “without valid documents”.
Others: J&K also featured on Page 1 — Apart from the Express lead, HT reports that militants accused of killing a driver from Rajasthan have been identified by the police. Hindu reports that the 70-year Legislative Council of J&K was abolished Thursday in lieu of the new J&K Reorganisation Act.
And in a bizarre news of the day, a man entered a lion enclosure in Delhi Zoo and “spent over 20 minutes inside before he was rescued unhurt by zoo officials”, reports HT. The news made it to the front page of Hindu and TOI as well.
Opinion
Express: It writes that the July 2019 amendments to the 2005 Right to Information Act have resulted in rules to downgrade the office of the chief information commissioner (CIC), along with other officers, revealing “disturbing signals” about the future of one of the “most progressive, democracy-enhancing pieces of legislation” to be enacted in India.
According per the rules, the CIC will now be equivalent to a cabinet secretary and central information commissioners akin to secretaries of the government, in terms of salary. Tenures have also been reduced from five to three years.
Looking at these reductions only as a “matter of pay” misses the point as the new rules undermine the authority of the CIC and ICs. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has reportedly said that the government seeks to share as much information publicly as possible so that there is less need for RTI applications. But what the government “wants to put out is rarely matched with what the citizens want to know”, writes Express.
HT: Discussing women’s representation, HT writes that “substantial” political literature suggests having women political representatives as it promotes gender equality. Women are “more sensitive” to issues that either escape the attention or are “deliberately” ignored by male representatives, which was the rationale behind the Women’s Reservation Bill.
Male political leaders are often ruled by proxy, but the panchayat experience has allowed women to “assert themselves, raise local issues, get groomed as leaders and get empowered”.
It is “disappointing” to see political parties failing to put forward equal or adequate number of women in elections, writes HT. In Haryana, for instance, men effectively make up 90 per cent of the candidature. Parties have begun to recognise the “power of the woman vote”, but this has not translated to an opening up of space in power structures”.
My God! Can one amend history? History is that which has happened. How do you change something that has already happened? If there are different accounts written by historians who were more or less contemporary to the incidents that are recorded, then you can choose one of the two or three such versions, that’s fine. Important phrase is, “more or less contemporary”, because the incident is likely to have been fresh in the memory of the scribe or historian. That’s understandable. But you cannot CREATE a version two hundred or three hundred years later!
Amit Shah and the rest of the RSS clan must remember that Karl Marx was not even born in the period whose historical accounts they find objectionable. There were no leftist or rightist historians in that period, when that bit of history was happening. They were just responsible people who wrote what they saw.