Chennai welcomes the Times of India

Yes. It is adieus to The (non)Hindu!

The time has come to part with an association which had assumed a second nature for me. The typical morning routine of a steaming cup of “ticoction” coffee in one hand and the The Hindu on the other. But it is all history.

There was a time The Hindu represented everything that was representative of educated middle class culture in Tamil Nadu. The completeness of the information, the classy and impeccable English (many of the past generation had averred that they got autodidacted with the English language solely by reading The Hindu), uniqueness of authentic reporting, earnestness of the delivery and clear identity with the south Indian culture and tradition. But all this is past glory.

The Hindu, especially after its take-over by the current management, has undergone a total shift from its traditions for which it has acquired a loyal clientèle built assiduously over a century plus. To be precise, it has let down the loyalists by converting the newspaper almost like an official mouthpiece of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), if the recent front-page coverage given to the party’s conference is any indication.

In addition to the major shift in allegiance from the centrism to partisan, the quality also had gone down considerably. Inaccurate reporting galore, prompting the paper to dedicate a big column for publishing corrections. The language too deteriorated considerably. There was nothing left except the name. And name, God, “Hindu” is a misnomer, with the reporting slant being consistently anti-hindu.

WEll, Times of India has launched its Chennai edition and has hit my doorway today. Let me see how it fares.

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