It could be argued that Narad, commonly known as the “messenger of the gods”, was the world’s first-ever journalist. A storyteller and musician, Narad appears in a number of Hindu texts, notably the Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Puranas.

Given his importance to Hinduism and journalism, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated Vishwa Samvad Kendras across the country have been felicitating journalists with an award called the “Narad Samman” for almost a decade now. The award is given to journalists at the district and state level. It was created to bring in “a new paradigm” of reporting—one that’s supposedly unbiased towards the RSS.

However, it’s ironic that those giving out these awards don’t seem to believe in the concept of absolute free speech.

“I believe that the (recent) attacks on journalists are unfortunate and should not have happened—but the journalists also need to see what they are doing,” says Arun Anand, CEO of Indraprastha Vishwa Samvad Kendra, the body responsible for conducting and giving out the Narad Samman awards in the Delhi-NCR region. “Prashant Kanojia … you see the kind of language that guy is using on social media … The job of a journalist is that if you want to say or do something, then you write a story—not settle ideological scores on social media. Do a fact-based story.”

Anand says the problem now is that journalists are becoming “opinion writers”: “They are not reporting the facts. But we do have credible journalists; the only thing is we need to identify and encourage them so that they don’t get sucked into power politics.”

He adds: “There cannot be absolute freedom of speech—it has certain limitations and is very subjective. Lady Chatterley’s Lover was banned initially when it came to the market but later, it went on to become a classic. Earlier it was treated as pornographic material. Journalists don’t need to get abusive on social media. This goes for all ideologies.”

The Narad Samman awards were instituted in 2009 by the Vishwa Samvad Kendras. Its structure and categories have been shuffled and redesigned over the years, with awards ceremonies being held by different Samvad Kendras anywhere between May and July every year.

“Somewhere around 2009, we also realised that it is time to establish an award for journalists and we chose Narad Samman because the RSS considers Naradji to be the first-ever journalist,” says Anand. “We call it Narad Samman because we consider him as someone who was reporting facts without editorialising it. Furthermore, what the RSS experienced and realised is that a large section of the media was editorialising or opinionating facts and that these facts were being put in a certain context deliberately to send certain ideological messages. It wasn’t balanced journalism, and the RSS was at the receiving end of most of the reporting you see up until 2010. Therefore, we thought we needed to bring in a new paradigm. That is why we brought out the Narad Samman awards.”

Anand points out that the Narad Samman awards “also strengthens the ideology of cultural nationalism which the RSS adheres to”. According to him, over a period of time, the RSS saw Indian journalism being commercialised and losing its purpose. “We thought it was time to make a positive intervention. It’s not like the whole media had gone bad, but we could see that this tendency was catching up. Therefore, it was important to set up a parallel role model. The whole idea of Narad Samman is to revisit the issue of what is good journalism and let the community and media collectively decide.”

Anand says Narad is a role model for good journalism, thereby also bringing in a “cultural connect”. The awards have a jury of four judges that is shuffled every year. It doesn’t have a uniform set of categories and has “evolved organically” over time. “Our purpose in starting this award is to encourage good journalism. We don’t want to make a statement or set an agenda through it.”

Anand says it “isn’t necessary” for journalists who apply for Narad Samman to share the RSS’s school of thought when it comes to Hindu nationalism. He himself defines Hindu nationalism as “the process of society transforming itself, with the RSS acting as a catalyst wherever it can”. “There are two parts to this: that the society has to transform itself; and no credit for this should be given or will be taken by the RSS.”

Smiling, he says: “Ultimately people can be divided into two categories: those who have joined the Sangh and those who are ultimately going to come and join the Sangh. The third and most important tenet is that the society should transform itself and the RSS should ultimately vanish, so that when history is written, nobody should take the name of the RSS.”

Anand elaborates: “The definition of Hindu is very simple: it is anybody who considers their country to be their fatherland or motherland. If somebody doesn’t like the term Hindu then we can use the term Bharatiya. Ultimately, the essence has to be there. Optics, beyond a point, does not matter.”

The Narad Samman awards kick off every year during or after the month of May—the month when the festival of Narad Jayanti is celebrated. After the commencement of this festival, various Samvad Kendras across the country host their own Narad Samman awards to felicitate journalists in their state. There are about 8-10 award categories, and about 50 entries are received per category. Journalists applying for the awards are required to submit samples of their work, following which a final decision is taken by the judges and the selection committee.

In some cases, the Narad Samman awards have also been experimented with at the district level, but this didn’t become the norm since “a good story in one district might not find good play in another”.

“We look at it in two levels: news part and views part,” explains Anand. “When we look at the news part, we are trying to encourage those journalists who are doing good work over a period of time, approximately about a year. Our school of thought is that there should be more reporting on marginalised sections of society about whom we don’t get front-page news unless there is a scandal. The focus is on positive reporting—good things that are happening in India. In the views part, we look at those columnists or people who are basically not specifically adhering to Left of the centre … those who are rooted in Indian culture and the Indian ethos.”

The Indraprastha Vishwa Samvad Kendra, which hosts the Narad Samman awards in the Delhi-NCR region, could be termed as the grandest version of the awards. The 2019 awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on June 29. “It’s a kind of a jewel in the crown,” says Anand. “The government sits here and it is a hub of political activity. Most of the big stories you see in the national media come from the Delhi-NCR region.” The awards function in Delhi has seen dignitaries like Sumitra Mahajan and Arun Jaitley as chief guests over the years.

Over 500 applications have already been received for this year’s awards, says Anand. “This year, we are trying for Venkaiah Naidu (as chief guest.) We have to establish the credibility of these awards and that takes time. When people who have credibility participate in your function, it sends a positive message.”

In order to understand the role of the Narad Samman awards, one needs to look back at the history of the RSS and the Vishwa Samvad Kendras. “In the RSS structure, there are two outreach units: Sampark Vibhag and Prachar Vibhag,” says Anand. “The latter reaches out to the media and the former reaches out to people from different walks of life who have achieved something and reached a certain level—but who are not a part of the RSS. The Prachar Vibhag was set up in the late 1980s or early 1990s. This was done especially in the wake of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. There was a lot of reporting that was going on and the RSS thought it is time to correct the perception in the media.”

In order to make the Prachar Vibhag—the RSS’s communication and outreach unit—effective, a centralised unit or an apex body called Vishwa Samvad Kendra Bharat was set up, followed by the creation of a Samvad Kendra in every state. Delhi being the hub of national media, the Samvad Kendra in Delhi largely deals with national news.  Initially, activities of the various Samvad Kendras were restricted to the coverage of senior RSS functionaries and acted as an interface between the RSS and the press.

Vishwa Samvad Kendras across the country are autonomous and are registered in their respective states as independent trusts or organisations. Anand says: “The whole idea of running these Samvad Kendras is that there should be a professional setup that should be able to cater to the media. They should be able to translate and convey what the RSS and other organisations that are inspired from it, are working on.” When asked whether the Samvad Kendras and the RSS shared a similar school of thought, Anand said, “The Samvad Kendras’ ideology is based on the RSS’s school of thought because ultimately people who run it have come from the RSS.”

So what’s the difference between Narad Samman and journalism awards like Red Ink and Ramnath Goenka? Anand says, “We tried to fill a gap that we saw: between the limited number of awards and the exceptionally large number of journalists who are doing good work but seldom get recognised. There is a mismatch here. Whatever functions the other awards fulfil, they have their own limitations in terms of outreach to journalists at the grassroots level.  We believe ‘the more the merrier’.”

Anand says the awards also “send a message” that the RSS is wrongly portrayed. “Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70 and well into the ‘90s, the Left had a hold on the academic media and intellectual space. They had an overbearing presence. They portrayed the RSS in a certain manner. Yes, the RSS is opposed to the Left or Marxist ideology and the reason is that Marxist ideology feels that India is a nation in the making. They have a subaltern view that India is a conglomeration of various nationalities. Our idea of nationalism is very different—we believe India is an ancient civilisation. There is a common cultural thread which runs through all of us.”

In some branches of Hinduism, particularly the Vaishnava school of thought, Narad is considered a soul deeply absorbed in singing hymns, praises and glories of Vishnu—thereby gaining his protection. Other scriptures portray him as a warmonger responsible for spreading gossip and mischief. In popular folklore, he is seen as travelling between the realms of gods, demigods, humans and demons, inciting quarrels among them by striking deft, witty conversations, which make them jealous and insecure.

This behaviour seems awfully similar to the brand of sensational journalism that we all are often subjected to on our news channels today.

Mythologist Devadutt Patnaik in a 2008 article refers to Narad as the “cursed gossip monger”. He writes: “If you find office politics, know that Narad has been at work. You can sense his presence at almost every office lunch or late night booze party, where invariably, inevitably, someone will provide fodder for enthusiastic conversations about cunning secretaries, unfair promotions, manipulative colleagues, favouritism of bosses, and disproportionate salaries.”

But Anand says: “The greatness of Hindus is that we can agree to disagree. No viewpoint can be the final viewpoint. The essence of Hinduism and Hindutva is to allow everyone to be a part of it.”

He also admits there is a certain bias when it comes to deciding who would be felicitated with the Narad Samman. “We tend to prefer giving awards to those journalists who are lesser known so that we can encourage them by recognising their work. The person may not be very well-connected in the journalism field and may not come have come from a legacy family background of journalism. People who have already been recognised, they are already self-motivated. These are tough times for journalists. There is a lot of pressure and instabilities in journalism in the current day and age. In the midst of this, it is a nice gesture to recognise and encourage somebody who has done good work.”

Anand says when we about the media, people think of English newspapers and English websites. “But if you look at language media—like Jagran or Bhaskar or Malayalam Manorama or Gujarat Samachar or Rajasthan Patrika—these are in the top 12 papers and only one or two of them are in English. The media landscape of India comprises largely of language media. English media has limited presence in terms of impact and outreach. What happens is that we give too much weight to the opinions which tend to appear here. This isn’t necessarily commensurate with the impact it creates.”

Anand wants to “correct the perception” that the RSS and the people who work with them have a bias against the English media and feel that the whole English media is anti-national. “This is not the case. We don’t have a problem with anybody—not with The Hindu or The Wire or The Quint. Ultimately, we believe that you come and talk to us on facts. If you have put out certain things, we counter it by putting out right facts…”

He adds: “This binary of Left- and Right-wing is wrong. We are what you may call nationalists—but we are not Right-wing. The concept of Left and Right came in when the French revolution happened. At the time, Marxists sat on the right (flank of parliament) and Pro-Democracy liberals sat on the left. We are not monarchists. We are not looking for a king. If you look at our economic policy and philosophy, at best, we don’t want to be defined as Right-wing. This is another facade that has been created. The RSS and Vishwa Samvad Kendras are not Right-wingers.”