Narendra Modi regime’s ‘genes are totalitarian’, says Arun Shourie
Veteran journalist and
former Bharatiya Janata Party minister Arun Shourie on Friday warned the media
against becoming the Narendra Modi government’s “instruments for distracting
your viewers and readers…from the main story”. He was speaking at a
meeting at the Press Club of India in Delhi to protest against the Central
Bureau of Investigation’s raids on NDTV promoters Radhika and Prannoy Roy on
Monday. The CBI has filed an FIR against the Roys in connection with a loss
relating to a loan NDTV had taken from ICICI Bank.
Among other prominent
people who attended the meeting were veteran journalist and former MPs HK Dua
and Kuldip Nayar, jurist Fali Nariman, and senior journalist S. Nihal Singh. Claiming
that the Modi
regime’s “genes are totalitarian”, the former minister in the Atal Behari
Vajpayee government warned that the crackdown on independent media could widen
in the next two years and offered concrete suggestions to journalists,
exhorting them to stand united against any attempt to muzzle the press. Shourie
told the large gathering of journalists, lawyers and activists to boycott the
ministers of the government in protest and not to despair because “everything
passes”.
“And when they control the media completely, then people will see the
great distance between what they are being made to swallow through the media
and what is happening in their own lives,” he said.
Here’s the full text
of his speech:
My dear friends, I
want to begin by expressing my deep gratitude to Narendra Modi because he has
brought so many friends together. And as a return the favour, I want to read
him a couplet, which Kuldip Nayar will tell us who it is by:
Tum se pahle vo jo ik
shakhs yahan takht-nashin tha
Us ko bhi apne khuda hone pe itna hi yaqin tha
Us ko bhi apne khuda hone pe itna hi yaqin tha
[He who occupied this
throne before you
He too believed himself to be God as much as you]
He too believed himself to be God as much as you]
Video of speech
Read more: https://scroll.in/article/840217/full-text-arun-shourie-says-narendra-modi-regimes-genes-are-totalitarian
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