The Hindu’s new masthead will look something like this
It is true. “The Hindu” has been published from Chennai since the 19th century. The paper for long had a reputation for objectivity and fairness. The paper also had a 100% success record in publishing the news of death of leaders correctly as the paper published the news of the death only after the funeral has been completed. Needless to say, the paper’s publishing of the Bofors papers, was its shining hour.
However, the paper has taken a decidedly Leftist turn in the past decade. From the time it had competent bureau chiefs writing op-ed, it is now carrying long and eminently unreadable articles, that essentially focus on topics like “Modi is the 2002 villain”, “Achche Din will never come”, “Capitalism is a bane”, “AAP is the hope”, “ NREGA saved India” and so on. The paper avoids sensationalism and that makes the content even more difficult to read. Under Siddharth Varadarajan, the paper was more readable; Just that no visit of Modi was covered by the paper! Now the duo of N.Ram and Malini Parthasarathy are firing on both the secular and leftist guns at the same time.
Speaking to our correspondent, N.Ram thundered, “It was a historical mistake to have named the paper as “The Hindu”. A more secular name would have helped us start an edition in Lahore and become a truly multinational newspaper. Now we are fighting with rags like Times of India and Indian Express. We are still read by retired gentlemen from Tamil Nadu who kind of think of us like morning coffee. But that is a diminishing demographic. Going forward we are making the following changes to become truly inclusive:
1. The paper will be named “ Secular Leftist” as we have nothing to do with Hindus or Hinduism. (Malini shouted across, “ especially after 2002”)
2. The masthead has Kamadhenu and Airavatha. These have a deep Hindu connotation. In keeping with our new positioning, the masthead will have a sickle doubling up as a crescent and a hammer doubling up as a cross. We will also extrapolate to ensure that all major religions are covered in this masthead itself.
3. We will expand our editorial team to include such accomplished writers like Arundhati Roy, Brinda Karat and other such talent who have been sidelined in the cruel Modi rule. There is also place for confused musicians like T.M.Krishna. For humor, we are considering Sagarika Ghose. Only challenge is it is difficult to know when she is serious and when she is joking.
4. To be truly secular, we are starting an Arabic edition.
5. We find that the sports page is the most popular page. Unfortunately, this does not carry any leftist ideology. So, we are going to be having columns only by left handers like Lara, Ganguly, Akram and so on. We will only write on the exploits of left handers like Nadal and not Federer. Alastair Cook, consistent, hardworking and immensely boring is our role model!
6. There is a small paragraph every day that takes a section from Hindu scriptures. We want to remove this and make it cover passages from all religions.
7. We have stayed away from publishing photos of actresses and models. Henceforth we will publish more photos, as long as they are adequately clad and the picture shows their left profile.
8. Our phone numbers all over the country will change immediately to 20022002.
N Ram added, “I am not happy with my name either! I wanted to take a name like S. Ram Raheem, but there is already such a guy in Haryana. I’ll think of something.”