Dear Editor,
From December 2007 to the present, Stabroek News (SN) published about 442 articles from Project Syndicate of which 27, the largest number by any single contributor, were written by senior Indian opposition leader and Member of Parliament, Mr. Shashi Tharoor. More than 20 of Tharoor’s articles targeted India’s Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and needless to say as might be expected from a political opponent, to put it mildly, they were all full of bitter reproach and sensational denunciation.
My purpose here is not to answer Mr. Tharoor and Western media houses. Tharoor is doing what every opposition politician is expected to do, and Western media houses are simply continuing their long history of anti-India reporting. All of them have been adequately countered by Indian journalists, academicians, and other experts and specialists. But their views never reach the New York Times which, not surprisingly, announced a while ago in an advertisement that it was looking for Indian journalists who were anti-Modi.
My purpose is to simply ask a question about SN’s reporting on Modi and the BJP through the perspective of a noted opposition figure, Shashi Tharoor. India, especially under the present dispensation, has become excessively newsworthy, and if SN feels that its readers need to know about what is going on in India, is it not incumbent on this newspaper that calls itself “Guyana’s most trusted newspaper” to strive for even a small measure of balance and fairness, if not a more nuanced criticism?
One recalls at the same time SN chose to carry Tharoor’s most sensational piece, “India’s COVID Tsunami,” there was another article written by Brahma Chellaney, also a Project Syndicate contributor, who presented an alternative perspective that SN could have used if it had any interest in balance. Could it be that a picture of India different from the one painted by Shashi Tharoor does not accord with the ideology and agenda of our “most trusted” newspaper?
Sincerely,
Swami Aksharananda
Editor’s note: Mr Tharoor is top shelf and the newspaper has no apologies for carrying his pieces. The views of other Project Syndicate columnists on India have also been carried. Interestingly, there have also been 27 Project Syndicate columns by Nina L. Khrushcheva.