Narad vs Sanjay: Who is the better journalist?
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Saturday observed Debarshi Narad Jayanti as the day to honour journalists. To choose sage Narad as the prototype of today’s journalists is a particularly curious piece of myth mining, given how Sangh and its social media army view scribes of the Delhi durbar.
Narad is the embodiment of the ace Lutyens' journalist: has unhindered access to the powerful, carries gossip as efficiently as wind carries pollen, goes glibly from advocacy to influence-peddling, is a steadfast devotee, master of silken flattery, backroom adviser, provocateur, lover of quarrels and a consummate mischief-monger. He is also well-read, well-travelled and bit of a celeb himself. He is also possibly the first lobbyist.
If one were to hire a gossip columnist or opinion page writer, it would be Maharshi Narad. But if one were to hire a reporter, the choice would be Sanjay, King Dhritarashtra’s charioteer and narrator of events.
Sanjay, not Narad, is the finest example of a journalist in Indian mythology. He reports the Mahabharata war to the blind king truthfully, amorally… delivers information with the honesty and transparency of a crystal sheet. He never turns away from reporting death after death of his master’s sons at the hands of the Pandavs.
Sanjay’s first and unwavering commitment is to the metaphorical reader or viewer who is eager to be informed — in his case the blind Dhritarashtra. He tells the story, but is never the story. He pleases none, doesn’t flirt with fame, carries word to no one other than his primary reader or viewer. What he narrates may often be controversial, but he never narrates it controversially. He is less of a Jeff Jarvis, the former television critic and former columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, who says, “If it’s not advocacy, it’s not journalism”, more of a David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker magazine.
As The New York Times says about Remnick: “He has no interest in being a court painter to the powerful and makes certain to note the moral or political warts of even those people he most admires. He goes places, talks to many people (including the wives of his subjects) and comes back to tell his readers what he has learned. And like any reporter who learns from what he experiences, he knows that the world contains very few saints.
“Above all, Remnick wants to see the subject clearly, and if that is not possible, to offer evidence that the person is too elusive for any final word to be written.”
In the digital age when a raging ocean of information crashes the gates of our mind, both Narad and Sanjay would exist and excel.
Narad would certainly be the more exciting teller of tales and an effective and entertaining campaigner. He would be the Julian Assange or Alexei Navalny, liberally spilling state secrets or crowdsourcing disclosures of corporate corruption. But Sanjay would remain the journalist of journalists: the unsung chronicler, and the more dependable one.