https://indianjournalismreview.com/2011/08/10/n-murali-hindu-is-run-like-a-banana-republic/
The Hindu
I remember reading the above news item in 2011 a decade ago … It was a Letter addressed to the public at large in India by the outgoing Managing Director of THE HINDU group of newspapers bidding farewell to his office in a mood of bitter disappointment, regret and frustration.
Like all morning Hindu-&-cup-of-coffee-addicts, I too rued the day when the Hindu’s reputation and credibility as a national newspaper was laid absolutely low by the unsavoury events that overtook its Board governance. Please open the link above and read details … and you will understand why I was so saddened then.
Today after 10 long years, it seems to me nothing has changed much in the Hindu … and the words of Sri N Murali still seem to resonate and ring true with the same relevance as it did when he signed off his farewell letter back in 2011: “It is indeed unfortunate that editorial primacy has been sacrificed at the altar of excessive commercialism and vested interests to pander to the wishes of some of the directors who have a crass disregard of the values The Hindu has always stood for.”
Sri Murali also said in his letter then that he was sad to see the Hindu being run like a “banana republic”.
Today , we all see the unseemly way in which Malini Parthasarathy , Editor-in-Chief of Hindu is being castigated, hectored and bullied in public by the superannuated Board member, N.Ram, for merely meeting the PM of India and saying something politely positive about it. In N Ram’s papal doctrine of editorial politics, the Hindu’s E-in-C committed a cardinal, unpardonable sin.
What does the ugly public spat between N Ram and Malini Parthasarathy tell us?
It tells us that the Hindu is not even a “republic” anymore but only a mere “banana” fruit-basket … meant for consumption by the very same gang of “vested interests” (both political and commercial) that Sri Murali had, back in 2011, said had firmly gripped and held captive with its tentacles the Hindu’s governance policies and personalities.
That Sri N Ram after 10 long years is still able to cast his long baleful shadow upon the Hindu Board of Directors, both on the editorial and non-editorial side, is a telling testimony indeed to the sort of autocratic, power-hungry mentality which he himself surely possesses and yet, so very ironically, he goes about accusing his bête-noire, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, of ! It’s not simply Ram telling Malini here how to do her job as E-in-C … it’s he telling her who she can meet and who she cannot!
The Hindu today has come a long way indeed from the “banana republic” Sri N Murali said it was in 2011… In 2021, the Hindu has mutated into a “banana dictatorship”. Thanks not to the “MURDOCHISM”, Sri N Murali alluded to in his 2011 Letter , but to brazen “NRAMISM” as we see it displayed inside the Hindu today .
☹️🥲🙏🙏. Sudarshan Madabushi