The Sangh Parivar has concluded that it must have its own men in the media to highlight issues facing the Hindu community, particularly when other communities take an anti-Hindu stance.
The RSS feels that there is a predominance of the Left ideology in the print media, and the only way to end this is to ensure that more RSS-minded people enter the profession.
In most conflict situations with strong local ramifications, the anti-Hindu viewpoint is often put across more forcefully, because of the dominance of leftists in the print media, an RSS pracharak said.
To consider these aspects, the RSS had a three-day national level meeting of its pradesh media and publicity incharges from June 28. The meeting was chaired by the RSS all India publicity incharge, Srikant Joshi.
The meeting concluded that the RSS must work actively to push its own men in the media, besides trying to convert journalists into RSS sympathisers if they have not been blindly opposing the organisations philosophy, a RSS pracharak said.
The RSS has already identified and prepared a list of journalists who are card holders of either the Communist Party of India (CPI) or the CPM. It is also in the process of identifying those journalist who they feel are aligned too closely with the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.
The RSS pracharaks and organisational heads would be given special instructions not to open up before these journalists. In the RSS view these journalists distort information and present a misleading picture, he said.
The meeting also decided to create a group of professional letter writers in every district. They would be writing letters to the editor on local issues as decided by the local RSS units. All RSS-affiliated organisations are likely to start a serious follow up on the meetings deliberations.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an affiliate of the RSS, has already started working on this. It has organised a five-day camp for training young journalists where they would be taught the art of highlighting the cause of the majority community. It had organised a similar camp last year also but the response was not good, a VHP leader said.
This years training camp was inaugurated by VHP general secretary, Giriraj Kishore, at Gurgaon on Wednesday. VHP joint general secretary Onkar Bhave is the camps in-charge. VHP president Vishnu Hari Dalmia is slated to deliver the valedictory address.
Prominent media personalities, particularly from the vernacular press, are likely to address the trainees. The journalists will be addressing 30 participants who have come from Bihar Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharahstra, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.
Some of the participants are junior level journalists associated with various local newspapers and magazines, a VHP leader disclosed.
Most, however, are young graduates interested in making a career in journalism. All of them, however, have either the RSS background or are sympathisers of the RSS.
They would be trained in the art of writing a good report and writing letters to the editor. Good letter writing would particularly help these people to highlight the Hindus point of view in sensitive cases like Hindu-Muslim conflicts, the VHP leader said. Last months incidence of a dozen Hindu boys marrying destitute Muslim girls in Meerut was not given proper publicity, he pointed out.
The VHP has particularly targeted the rural areas, under the assumption that most such events occur in these areas where the national English press is less visible. The organisation has plans to train more such people in the coming months.
