One hundred years ago, today, India’s struggle for independence from the British took a decisive and inspired turn, when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had a dream that would catapult him towards ‘Mahatma’-hood. On March 18, 1919, Gandhi met C.Rajagopalachari in the City that used to be known as Madras, in a home on Cathedral Road that…
Tag Archives: Nirmala Lakshman
In a family-owned paper, only furniture is fixed
Nothing is what it appears to be in the thicker-than-water but funnier-than-fill-your-metaphor-here world of family-owned newspapers. Siddharth Varadarajan, installed as editor of The Hindu in a G.Kasturi-N.Ram putsch in 2011, ostensibly to professionalise the paper but allegedly to prevent Malini Parthasarathy from ascending the throne, has resigned dramatically via a Twitter announcement. “With The Hindu‘s…
N. Murali: ‘Hindu’ is run like a ‘banana republic’
N. Murali, the managing director of The Hindu, has retired after a 40-year career in the Madras-based, family owned newspaper. Below is the full text of his farewell letter to employees of the paper, in which he minces no words in describing the current phase of the paper, under the current editor-in-chief N. Ram, as…
Nirmala Lakshman: I didn’t step down, I resigned
This is the full text of Nirmala Lakshman‘s July 20 letter to the board of directors of Kasturi & Sons, the holding company of The Hindu, on why she can no longer continue as the joint editor of the paper, following the elevation of Delhi bureau chief Siddharth Varadarajan as the next editor of the…
Malini Parthasarathy quits as Hindu exec editor
The Hindu boardroom strife—over the appointment of a non-family professional as editor—has claimed its first victim in the newsroom. Malini Parthasarathy, who would have become the first woman editor of a broadsheet English newspaper had the traditional succession plan been implemented, has resigned as executive editor of the paper. This, a day after the Supreme…
The curious case of N.Ram, DMK and Jayalalitha
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: If a picture conveys a thousand words, the picture above should convey a couple of them, and then some more. At left is N. Ram, the editor-in-chief of The Hindu, currently embroiled in a major row with his brothers N.Murali and N. Ravi (and their cousins Malini Parthasarathy, Nirmala Lakshman…
The four great wars of N. Ram on ‘Hindu’ soil
ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: As if to prove the old adage that blood is thicker than water, there have been four rounds of internecine strife in the last 22 years in the undivided Hindu family that owns and runs India’s “most respected” newspaper. To no one’s surprise, Narasimhan Ram aka N. Ram, the card-carrying…
IJR 