In the early 2000s when I was still a newbie at the Press Trust of India (PTI) I asked one of my seniors at the desk if it was OK to describe a political party as 'right wing'.
I don't think I understood the implications of what I suggested then. I would then watch a lot of 'Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer' on CNN and was probably impressed by the eloquence and the sophisticated crosstalk of the so called 'political' discussions in which people and groups were very cleanly and definitively 'right wing', 'conservative', 'liberal' and 'left wing'.
Times of India journalist Piyush Rai dismisses reportage by Swarajya journalist Swati Goel Sharma as the work of "right wing mouthpiece". The subject is an allegation by a woman student of a Meerut law college alleging "sexual harassment" by her class fellows on account of her being a 'Muslim'.
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I don't think I understood the implications of what I suggested then. I would then watch a lot of 'Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer' on CNN and was probably impressed by the eloquence and the sophisticated crosstalk of the so called 'political' discussions in which people and groups were very cleanly and definitively 'right wing', 'conservative', 'liberal' and 'left wing'.
My senior at the PTI desk regarded the question as if she thought the suggestion inherent in it was outlandish or unwarranted (both of which it was, not to mention productive of prejudice, tendentiousness, and, nowadays, even cultivated hatred). So she told me, very wisely indeed, to stick to the way we'd describe political parties, i.e. sans the 'wings' and any descriptor of that sort.
It may not occur to the younger journalists today that until only 8-10 years ago, Indian media would not describe any person or group as 'right wing' or 'left wing' (except of course the self-described 'left wing' people or parties).
Until I worked at PTI (2000-05), I had never seen a copy where a person or group was described by the journalist writing that copy as 'left wing' or 'right wing' (except self-descriptions). Even the Maoists and Naxalites were described as Maoists and Naxalites, not 'Left-Wing Extremists'.
I think it must have been 2008 or 2009 when I discovered the term 'Left-Wing Extremism' or LWE for the first time and realized that it has been given an official stamp by the central government (most probably by then Home Minister Chidambaram). It's possible LWE existed earlier than that, but I have no idea if it did.
Today, almost every media outlet in India bandies about the descriptors 'right wing' and 'left wing' in line with their destructive agendas as to who (or what) they want to belittle/slander or be seen through their distorted lens.
The 'journalists' working for these media outlets are witting or unwitting foot soldiers of these vicious propaganda wars. Some of the 'journalists' or other commentators -- such as a silly gasbag like Rupa Subramanya -- hardly engage in any communication without branding someone or the other as 'right wing' (mostly) or 'left wing'; they seem to think they sound very 'intellectual' and 'Western' in hurling these labels.
The 'right wing', 'left wing' descriptors have not only ravaged whatever remained of the healthy practice in Indian media of not prejudging people and groups, they have bred a culture of overt demonization, dehumanization and hate mongering, which has been pushing India inexorably towards bloodshed and civil war.
The 'workers' of self-described 'Left Wing' in Kerala, for instance, NEVER kill any human beings; they are not in that line of business.
What they merely do very often is to eliminate 'Hindu Right Wing workers' (often by chopping their bodies into pieces in front of their wives or children).
Each one of us can 'see' the hate-filled, dehumanizing and genocidal path we have all been put on -- and yet we cannot see. We don't seem to do anything about it. We have somehow been made a part of it.
It's about time people make an effort to see through not just the fraudulence and perniciousness of labels like 'right wing' and 'left wing', but also seek to wise up to the colonial-imperial domain that goes by the name of 'political' and seem increasingly to vitiate and envenom all human relationships.
--------------Times of India journalist Piyush Rai dismisses reportage by Swarajya journalist Swati Goel Sharma as the work of "right wing mouthpiece". The subject is an allegation by a woman student of a Meerut law college alleging "sexual harassment" by her class fellows on account of her being a 'Muslim'.
Rai describes his own work in contrast as a "journalist's report," (implying that Swati Goel Sharma's work is not even a 'journalist's report'.)
Piyush Rai
@BenarasiyaaComparing any journalist's report with a right wing mouth piece doesn't make for a good argument guys. People tagging me and my employer in random rants should not waste their time. I will write what I feel is right based on facts and not on what is being peddled on social media.
9:48 AM - 9 Apr 2019
https://twitter.com/Benarasiyaa/status/11156578076997017629:48 AM - 9 Apr 2019
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I wrote and posted this piece on the so called 'political spectrum' in April 2015. It's relevant to what I say above.
The 'political spectrum' is a tool of imperialism in the hands of the West
I regard the whole concept of a 'political spectrum' - book-ended as it is by the 'Left' and the 'Right' - as an open fraud on the peoples of the world. 'Political spectrum' subserves the needs of the Empire that the West is - the need to track, label/mislabel and manage the minds and thinking of people and societies across the world.
On the one hand the Western knowledge system progressively validates the use of its 'political spectrum' across the world, and on the other the Western institutions use it to perversely mislabel and straitjacket the great diversity of thinking found in human societies across the world into narrow and arbitrarily defined categories like 'Left', 'Right', 'Centre', 'progressive', 'conservative', etc.
So 'political spectrum' is a tool -- (a sort of branding iron that is heated and used to brand livestock and was once also used on the bodies of criminals and slaves) -- in the hands of the West to sustain and expand its interventionist and imperialist role in the world.
The West has had the effrontery to wield this tool while presenting itself to the world as made up of 'liberal' States. Could there be anything more illiberal than a system of branding people? How can the world acquiesce in this open fraud?
How can any self-respecting person allow themselves, without resistance, to be labeled and framed within a system of imperial and abusive categories thought up by the agents and apologists of the West?
The 'political spectrum' has been reproducing across the world the increasingly idiotic and sclerotic political theatre of the West. All countries seem to be moving inexorably towards a suffocating sameness characterized and brought about by the Western categories of Left, Right, Centre, etc.
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The full post on 'political spectrum' can be read on this link.On the one hand the Western knowledge system progressively validates the use of its 'political spectrum' across the world, and on the other the Western institutions use it to perversely mislabel and straitjacket the great diversity of thinking found in human societies across the world into narrow and arbitrarily defined categories like 'Left', 'Right', 'Centre', 'progressive', 'conservative', etc.
So 'political spectrum' is a tool -- (a sort of branding iron that is heated and used to brand livestock and was once also used on the bodies of criminals and slaves) -- in the hands of the West to sustain and expand its interventionist and imperialist role in the world.
The West has had the effrontery to wield this tool while presenting itself to the world as made up of 'liberal' States. Could there be anything more illiberal than a system of branding people? How can the world acquiesce in this open fraud?
How can any self-respecting person allow themselves, without resistance, to be labeled and framed within a system of imperial and abusive categories thought up by the agents and apologists of the West?
The 'political spectrum' has been reproducing across the world the increasingly idiotic and sclerotic political theatre of the West. All countries seem to be moving inexorably towards a suffocating sameness characterized and brought about by the Western categories of Left, Right, Centre, etc.
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