Just sent this to lett...@thehindu.co.in. I dont expect N.Ram to publish this,
or care about it. But well ..
srs
______________________
About your article 10 CPI(M) cadres feared killed.
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article23355.ece
You were - once, decades back - a newspaper with principles. Where have those
principles gone? And when did a family newspaper with a reputation for solid,
balanced reporting suddenly turn into a single political party's mouthpiece?
The Hindu has had a fairly long history over the past few years of becoming a
left leaning newspaper, with a certain amount of support for the CPI-M that
goes over and above the bounds of journalistic neutrality.
However, there's a lot of difference from your faithfully reporting all the
wise (!) sayings of Comrade Karat, to this utterly contemptible article, where
you cover an attack by Maoists on a CPI-M party office that led to a gun battle
..and that the CPI-M cadre "retaliated". Which means they've been piling up a
sufficient stock of guns too, not to mention a sufficient number of armed
cadres, to resist an attack by "thousands of armed maoists".
The question is - do you actually condone stockpiling of guns by CPI-M cadre?
Or did these valiant comrades "retaliate" using water pistols, or by
propaganda articles in the hindu (which is starting to sound more and more like
an English translation of the Ganashakti)?
The article is wonderfully one-sided in covering a story where neither side has
clean hands. But I expect nothing much more different from The Hindu these
days.
I haven't read the Hindu from when I was a student till well past retirement
like most of the people who write you letters every other day of the week with
opinions on everything under the sun, but my family has bought the Hindu for
all of the 33 years that I've lived.
No longer. Not when a wonderful old institution has turned so completely into
a propaganda mouthpiece of a single political party. I must congratulate the
editor for his stupendous feat in accomplishing all this in a few short years
since June 2003.
Signed .. a sad and disappointed ex-subscriber of the Hindu.
srs
Suresh Ramasubramanian
Madras, India
