That Awakened India was launched the senior Hindi journalist said that perhaps Jawaharlal Nehru was more well-read than Gandhiji; Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel had better understanding yet the Mahatma succeeded in his mission. Therefore, the last British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten said when Gandhiji was in Naokholi at the time of pre-partition riots that India badly needed another Gandhi.

“Gandhi was neither handsome nor attractive, nor was his writing very impressive, nor was he a great orator, yet he guided the country to independence,” he said. Ashutosh said Anna Hazare too succeeded because of his sheer simplicity. His message was simple and people of the country was longing for personality like him to lead a struggle against corruption.

Herein comes the role of media, which has in a last couple of years played a very important role in exposing corruption at the top level of the country. He said that JP had the similar quality. He virtually retired from politics, but was urged by the people to lead the movement against corruption. He started his speech conceding that he was an emotional person.

He said that though he had personally covered Anna’s fast for 13 days yet he met him for only a couple of times. “It was at 4:30 AM, a day after Anna broke his fast last August, that I woke up. Something came into my mind and I decided to write a book on such a historic event. I woke my wife up and shared with her my desire to come up with a book. I thought that she would rebuke me, but she did not. Rather she cooperated with me,” he said. Ashutosh regretted that “English-speaking class of India” has contempt for Anna’s movement and dubbed it anti-democracy and anti-Parliament.

There were several channels and newspapers who were against it. The Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan, Shashi Shekhar, who released the book of his one-time colleague in television journalism, said that Ashutosh often get carried away and demolishes the boundary. But the question is why he does so? Because it is essential to do so. What is good is that he had written the book while remaining within his limit. In the Question-Answer session which followed Ashutosh explained why he chose to write the book in English rather than Hindi.

He said that he stands by what Arvind Kejriwal said about parlimentarians and not Parliament, which a section of media distorted. He had only said that there are serious criminal charges against 163 MPs, the IBN7 Managing Editor said. Surprisngly, Shashi Shekhar had to face questions on the pro-government stand his newspaper had taken in Bihar. He denied all such charges.

Comment

comments...