Breaking down news: Ways of Seeing

only preferential access paid for in ways hidden from the user is at issue in India, not neutrality in its many-splendoured glory.

While parties of all hues fight for the Dalit vote with public events and commemorations, the right has upped the ante by deploying its media. Panchjanya’s current issue has Dr Ambedkar on the cover and a special number is being publicised in hoardings as a “collector’s item”. You bet it is. Blatant acts of appropriation across political lines rarely do well. The Left in West Bengal had valiantly tried and failed to induct Swami Vivekananda into its propaganda arsenal. And, at the other end of the spectrum political, this could be the last time that the right tries the same trick with Dr Ambedkar.

Having compared the appropriative offerings of Panchjanya with those of Organiser, its English-language cousin, one is persuaded that the RSS should restrict itself to the mother tongue. The former presents Ambedkar as Yugdrishta — a philosopher of the times who gazed into the future and prepared India to take a place in it. Organiser paints him merely as a misunderstood national leader. Misunderstood by whom, exactly? Some pop political psychology follows. The first two sentences in the Organiser story constitute a sampler: “Historical events and personalities are analysed and explained with different perspectives. In this process, our perceptions about past, understanding of the present and aspirations for the future has obvious influence.”

This 101 on relativism sets the stage for the unusual claim that Ambedkar was not at odds with Hinduism as it was practised in his time. This is going to give Ambedkarites indigestion.

By the way, Panchjanya’s term for ‘cover story’ is avarana katha, a horrible back construction from English. What’s up? Aren’t traditional Hindi alternatives like mukhya lekh good enough any more? They served editors like Premchand well enough. And who did the back construction? A machine could render ‘cover’ as avarana, but it does not seem to be humanly possible.

In May, BBC Radio 4 launches a landmark 50-part series by Sunil Khilnani, recorded at locations in India as diverse as the island fortress of Janjira and the ruins of Hampi. Khilnani, director of King’s India Institute at King’s College, London, will look at India through two and a half millennia and the lives of 50 major historical figures. He protests that while the world knows all about India’s richly peopled mythology, it knows of only three real Indian people — Nehru, Gandhi and Ambedkar. The series intends to populate India’s human landscape a little more densely, with audio biographies of people like Panini and Jyotirao Phule. We don’t get Radio 4 in India since the demise of Worldspace, but there are online options.

After asserting the right to annoy and outrage with their controversial roast, AIB have moved on to campaign for Net neutrality promoters savetheinternet.in with a video which gained serious traction in Bollywood and was retweeted by stars across generations, from Shah Rukh Khan to Sonakshi Sinha. That kicked off a tweetstorm, and the AIB video was shared with such speed and in such volumes that Facebook’s algo read it as spam and blocked access. Of course, as IBN reported, since Facebook’s free promotion of its services on mobile violates the principles of net neutrality — though in a well-meaning sort of way — many thought that they had taken it down on purpose.

Actually, only preferential access paid for in ways hidden from the user is at issue in India, not net neutrality in its many-splendoured glory. The issue is greed — telcos see attractive app revenues flowing down their pipe, and they don’t get a cut, and that just hurts. Never mind that they invest nothing in developing those apps, the ecosystems they plug into or the user bases they connect with.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com

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