A review of #NLHafta from Mrigesh and Karthik BS

Dear NL Team,

This is my first letter in. Must confess, I’m stingier than most, and just started subscribing after over a year of following NL. I did fill in your survey a few months or so back and complained about the general aesthetics & that the logo was a bit below par; a bit too casual. Also, too many boring sans serif fonts everywhere without much style. If you guys do upgrade your theme, please do something along the lines of Vox.com

Okay, I’m a photographer & a designer so pardon the lecture on aesthetics.

Now getting down to the business… this mail is about Anand Ranganathan’s Lynchistan diatribe, what else. I started paying you guys just to listen to the entire portion of that fascinatingly erudite shouting-match. Anyway, those arguments, and the now infamous twitter thread that caused it, urged me to finally put down my thoughts on what I feel are the false equivalences of the right-wing arguments. This is something that’s been on my mind since the reaction’s to the rationalists’ triple-murders and the subsequent award-wapsi that followed.

As Abhinandan said – the crux of the matter comes down to the fact that the political plan on which the Modi-led BJP runs is the one and the same as that of the Hindutva fringe. Therefore, direct culpability.

Do read my article. I try to write using simple words and language such that it reaches the widest audience possible. After all, it’s just a thin slice of Indian middle-class society that gives two hoots about politics.

https://medium.com/@SmartAleck/india-is-not-a-lynchistan-yet-41435d2b84de

As for the individual false equivalences, I’ve addressed them here.

https://medium.com/@SmartAleck/engaging-indian-right-wing-whataboutery-2d982071ac10

Besides this, I think you guys are sitting on gold. Indian audiences are maturing fast and the time is ripe for an Indian version of The Daily Show.

Many thanks for allowing ordinary subscriber to actually participate.

Look forward to the next Hafta,

Reasonably yours,

A well-wisher!

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Hi Hafta team,

Follower since the first Dhobi Ghat, subscriber, two-time Sena member and first-time letter writer. Mr. Njhawan, you are a generous God. Please make the others read this.

This is apropos your dismissal of A’s letter in Hafta 127 and the disdain you showed for data-driven journalism in Hafta 126. To keep this short, I have avoided niceties and am intentionally argumentative.

To start with, Mr. Sekhri, I would urge you to go to your poster listing logical fallacies and look up “ad hominem” attacks. What else would you call defending your position by arguing that A is a teenager or is not well-read? You seek solace in “A Survivor’s Guide to Tyranny”. Why? The author does not say that you should dismiss data. In fact, he warns against the trap that you are falling in—of joining polarized groups of citizens who form their opinions in virtual reality and are more concerned about “what is said” than “what is”. You say that “if you read history, and not just balance sheets, you will educate yourselves a lot more”. But real historians rely solely use data as their primary source. When you stop doing that, history becomes about flying monkeys and talking cows.

Your example concerning tyrants misusing data is well-taken. However, the solution is improving the data you use and rely on context. As an example, if someone tells me that Vladimir Putin is a tyrant, I would look for evidence. Anecdotes regarding poisoning of rivals are persuasive but not conclusive. To be truly valid, an argument must back its thesis with evidence. This is what “we” mean by data—not numbers, rather facts. The real trick of tyrants is to obscure the collection of data; as long as the opposition relies on anecdotes and not well-sourced evidence, the veil of legitimacy cannot be lifted.

Mr. Ranganathan and  A say that there is no evidence that communal attacks or on the rise since 2014. “But, what about Sambit Patra and Sanju Verma?”, you cry out. Yes, the discourse is toxic. Yes, there is a feeling of hate. But, if you want others to compare what is happening now with the precursors of the Emergency or the Third Reich, you must back it up.  Until then, you are granting authority to the shrill voices of small people.

Mr. Sekhri’s “wise old man” argument is as follows: When you are as old as me, you will see that the same data can be used to tell different stories. Hence, data is irrelevant.

This is intellectual laziness. If we have any aspirations of progress, we must begin to grapple with these narratives. And if both sides are equally compelling ask yourself what would convince you either way. Then look for the answer.

To be fair to you, you argue for a balance between evidence and “judgment calls”. The problem is we rely too much on the latter. Many of the pieces that you recommend urges careful institutional thinking, why not try it. Emotional thinking is what leads to the IAC, and the disastrous plan for an unaccountable behemoth like the Lokpal. As an early member, when you say that you supported them despite disagreeing on key platform planks, it is disappointing.  Building and nurturing institutions is hard work, and should be done with care.

At some level, this critique applies to the way Newslaundry is evolving too. It isn’t clear what path you foresee for yourself, but for now, NL is now everything it used to despise—talk shows involving non-experts, unfunny satire shows and poorly edited, unoriginal opinion pieces about trivialities. I hope some of your more ambitious changes pan out soon as your competition has overtaken you on most fronts.

In conclusion, I would like to make a comment about objectivity. Understandably, human beings are fallible, and we cannot always be objective. However, we should hold it up as a gold standard to aspire to, and not dismiss it the way you did. As you will be interviewing them soon, I would urge you the read the Boston Globe reportage on the paedophilia within the church. It is a story told dispassionately, involving careful exposition of facts, never relying on emotion to get its point across. I dare you to go up to them and whisper, “data is irrelevant”.

Thanks,
Mrigesh

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Hi NL Team,

This is my second mail in two weeks. I am writing this as I am listening to Hafta 127 in another tab. The discussion about languages, especially the Namma Metro issue prompted me to write this email.

A discussion of a similar tone started in a WhatsApp group when I asked my friends back home (Mysuru/Bengaluru) about the issue there. I could observe that a majority of my friends agreed with a three language formula – the local language, English, and Hindi. The logic given was that more people speak Hindi in the country than any other language and also that there are a lot of people who come to the south of Vindhyas for work/business, and Hindi signboards are of benefit for them. Although this is a practical solution, I want the NL team to talk about the logic in it. If convenience for non-locals is aimed for, then logically speaking, there should also be Kannada/Tamil/Malayalam/Telugu boards in the Hindi-speaking parts of the nation. If this were the case, then our boards will be large enough to block the sunshine. The argument that more people travel southwards than the other way is, in my opinion, incorrect, although factual. If the last person has to be catered to, this argument makes no sense. It is just linguistic majoritarianism.

One thing that binds every people that I have observed in my puny age of 25 years is that the first connect one feels is when a mother tongue is heard. Reverence and attachment are inadvertently formed between a language and a place. I have been told by an educated North Indian that s/he feels no obligation to learn Kannada because Bengaluru is what it is because of “them”, and the locals should learn Hindi and not the other way around. In shopping malls, when you are spoken to in Kannada (although very rare), you usually hear “Kannad baralla”, meaning “kannad nahi aati” pretty dismissively and rudely, after which you caught between correcting the person’s pronunciation of “Kannada” and wondering what wrong did you commit for such dismissive behaviour. Here, competitive linguistic chauvinism also plays a part. I have heard many Kannadigas wanting to emulate the Tamil model, where only Tamil works and nothing else. Therefore, if the demands of the locals are to be respected, who is to represent the locals? I, for one, do not mind the trilingual signboards. Also, in Bengaluru, more Tamil and Telugu speakers are the populace. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have boards in Tamil and Telugu if the logic of practicality and ease is paramount?

Kannadigas, Tamilians, Telugus and Malayalis feel no connection with Hindi. Schools teach English and the mother tongue, Hindi is introduced pretty late in the school, for 3-5 years, and when given an option, children choose Sanskrit instead of Hindi. For an average person living in the South, learning Hindi gives her the vanity of understanding Bollywood films. And that is perhaps it.

Language is a sensitive, emotional issue. I am a Kannadiga who was born in Mysuru, brought up in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa, studied in Kendriya Vidyalayas between proper representative samples of the Indian populace, worked in a cosmopolitan city like Bengaluru and now studying in a linguistically conservative country like Germany. I have had the fortune of learning about ten languages and I can, in various degrees, converse, read, write or emote in these languages. And I feel that Daaktar Sahib’s logic in having just one language is utterly unromantic and dismissively parochial. You do not see new languages being spread because we see no need of one. Jitne hain unhe koi bhaav nahi deta. Sanskrit toh log bhul hi gaye hain. Warna there will be Klingon or Chewbaca or Sindarin or Valeryain or Na’avi or Dothraki schools to teach these conlangs. I mean, we haven’t been able to convince the Americans to get rid of the FPS system (not scientific publications, of course), and you want one single language? आप कुछ भी बोल देते हो, जनाब. तर्क तो करिए तनिक!

This issue is far more serious than we think it is. Since all of the panelists in the Hafta come from the North of Vindhyas (निकू और डाक्टर साहिब कोई दक्षिण भारतीय भाषा नहीं बोलते, और डाक्टर साहिब यह भी मानते हैं की मैसूर पाक तमिल पकवान है!), imagine having a Param Mitr who spoke exclusively in Kannada. Add to the fact that other than PVNR, no other PM who has completed a full term could speak any south Indian language. Media exclusively covers the north and कुछ लोग तो सिद्धरामय्या का नाम भी सही से नही बोल पाते. (सिद्दा रमैय्या क्या चीज़ है?)

I was very happy to see NL covering the Kaveri issue so well. Also Dhanya Rajendran, TS Sudhir and others were brought in when South politics was discussed. You are definitely different and better, but not enough!

A BIG fan, subscriber, and well-wisher,

Karthik.