Why I stopped reading The Hindu


Many of us have grown up reading The Hindu as part of the daily ritual and it has seemed a part of every morning as much as a cup of hot tea and MS Subbulakshmi's rendering of Venkateshwara Suprabatham.

However, in the past few years, The Hindu has taken on a strident anti-Hinduism tone. The most recent example is a recent article attributing the increased occurrence in rapes to traditional Hindu practices and the "masculinity" projected by the famous photo of Swami Vivekananda taken at Chicago in 1893.

The Ramakrishna Math, Chennai had sent a letter to the Editor, demanding an apology, but the Hindu has posted a censored version of the letter on their website which removes the demand for the apology.

There were a number of comments on the article criticizing the author's efforts to drag Swami Vivekananda's name into this discussion and also critical of The Hindu for publishing this. In a reaction similar to what the Chinese (heroes of The Hindu editorial team) do, they blocked further comments and stopped displaying the comments.

Aravind Neelakandan, the co-author of Breaking India, wrote a balanced response to this pop-psychologist on Centre Right India. According to Mr.Neelakandan, "Now for a few years the ‘Mount road Mao’ has been waging a war against Swami Vivekananda the fountainhead of Vedantic humanism and Indian nationalism. Thus a few years back we have in ‘Frontline’, which comes from the house of ‘The Hindu’, Meera Nanda attacking Swami Vivekananda, accusing him Sri Aurobindo and even Nehru of ‘their cardinal sin’ which according to her was that they ‘tried to appropriate for Hinduism’ modern scientific thought "

Given this refusal of The Hindu to remove this slur or apologize, I'm responding in the only way which will affect them - stopping subscribing and asking all my friends to do the same.

In addition to stopping your subscription:
- write to the editor (theditor@thehindu.co.in and readerseditor@thehindu.co.in) explaining why you are cancelling your subscription.
- write to advertisers in The Hindu protesting about their ads in a publication that is offensive to a great hero of India.

Update: The Hindu has twisted themselves in knots to "regret the offence caused to readers"
and published this counter view by Prema Nandakumar.

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