News anchor Kumar stays quietly courageous amid nationalist hysteria in Vinay Shukla’s tense documentary – but its final note of hope has been undermined by recent events
Events have overtaken this sombre documentary, which, though interesting and relevant, doesn’t encompass important recent developments. It is about the sinister pro-Modi nationalist hysteria in India that infected the country’s quasi-Fox TV channels, and one moderate journalist who politely stood against it: NDTV’s news anchor Ravish Kumar. This was especially true in the unbearably tense period before the 2019 election in which Modi was victorious, when the Indian government launched an airstrike on Balakot in Pakistan in retaliation for a terrorist attack on an Indian police convoy in Pulwama in Kashmir.
Indian TV’s shrill pundits denounced traitors everywhere, and this documentary by Vinay Shukla details Kumar’s quiet courage in just carrying on with his reports on the widespread poverty that Modi was ignoring (preferring to stoke diversionary fascist fervour), keeping his cool amid a barrage of abuse and death threats. The pressure on NDTV and its journalists is shown getting worse, with someone having a gloomy leaving party with cake almost every week.
