What Makes Ravish Kumar India's Most Famous Anti Hero

Brut India

Winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award and more recently the Gauri Lankesh Award, Ravish Kumar spoke to Brut India about practising journalism in the times of Narendra Modi.

Transcript

00:00People ask me why I am against Modi. I am not against Modi. I am not.

00:07I am the same government entity, Ravi Sheth.

00:31People ask me why I am against Modi. I am not against Modi. I am not.

00:39If I was against Modi, I would have never told the story of all the supporters of Modi who are being harassed for jobs and exams.

00:48I would have never told the story of all the supporters of Modi who are being harassed for jobs and exams.

00:55Why should the minister of the Indian government accuse me? Why should the spokesperson of the BJP accuse me?

01:00Why?

01:01I had given space to half of those people in my program. I used to call them myself and they used to come.

01:07Suddenly it stopped. Why?

01:09This is not an ordinary thing.

01:11If you look at the landmark of 2014, the media has never been so bad in the history of India as it was during the Modi government.

01:30But the media prepared to be bad even before the Modi government came.

01:37They wanted to save themselves on the pretext of the Modi government.

01:42So the media is hiding all their deeds in the name of Modi.

01:47But before the Modi government came, they used to show ghosts.

01:51The Taliban has come 400 km away from Delhi.

01:54There was a channel that used to show that the world will end in November 2012 or 2011.

02:00Look at how the TV has attacked the public's sensibility.

02:09People are still not able to understand that this is a journalist doing his job.

02:15No, no, now that journalist is not doing the job of a journalist.

02:19That is anti-citizen media and pro-government media.

02:24That is why the voice of a citizen is demonized.

02:29It is told that you are a devil, you are bad for the country.

02:32People can be deceived by anyone they want.

02:35The truth is that this media has killed the democracy of India.

02:40It is not a part of the public.

02:43The government does what it wants.

02:54Jawaharlal Nehru and the Taliban

03:02I felt better here than there.

03:06A lot of people are writing letters.

03:09Look, there are 58 postcards from Jawaharlal Nehru.

03:15Different people have written them.

03:18And they have written them with a lot of love.

03:21But they are still spending their hard-earned money on these cheap newspapers.

03:28And they are spending their precious time on TV channels.

03:31I tell them that if you have to go to the toilet and you are not getting anything,

03:34then take the newspaper inside.

03:36It is a very serious job.

03:38Read the newspaper carefully.

03:39How much news is there in it?

03:41And how cunning is the news in the name of news?

03:43If there is, then close that newspaper immediately.

03:45And deposit that money in the Prime Minister's pension.

03:48So that he can help people with that money.

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