Assault on Reason – 2

Speaking at the panel discussion, ‘The Assault on Reason’, organised in the wake of Dr Dabholkar’s murder, Vineet Kumar, media researcher and blogger gave an insightful presentation in Hindi, in which he argues that the electronic media runs a '24-hr workshop on superstition and consumerism’. It is easy to criticise the so-called ‘religious channels’, he says, but what we often miss is how much the regular entertainment and news channels help to promote superstition. He speaks about the successive Ramayana serials on TV, starting with the famous version by Ramanand Sagar back in the late 1980s, which directly fed into and reinforced the Ram Mandir agenda of the Sangh Parivar. Today, the Ramayana serial has to compete with the Cartoon Network, which explains its most recent tag line: Ramayana, Ek Achhi Aadat (A Good Habit).