Gabeed Liyo: Rajdeep's International Humiliation
I have spent a lifetime around journalists. They are an odd tribe—self-important, loud, and convinced that they alone carry the burden of the nation’s conscience. Give them a studio light and they glow with righteousness. Give them a microphone and they begin sounding like prophets. Every now and then, however, reality walks in and punctures the balloon. Something like that happened after the recent India Today Conclave. The man who ended up catching the arrow was Rajdeep Sardesai. Sardesai is a familiar face on Indian television—energetic, opinionated and forever eager to lecture the nation. But if you watch closely, another trait emerges: an extraordinary ability to hold two positions at the same time. He can sermonise about intolerance with great passion, and in the next breath provide a platform to people whose remarks about non-Muslims would make any decent person uneasy. In our part of the world we call this double standard. In television studios it passes for balance. Into this ...
