Confronting a post-truth world

A popular, weekly column by veteran journalist Anil Kumar Singh in The Free Press Journal ended abruptly allegedly because he spoke truth to power and laid bare the ills afflicting the India of today. Ironically, this was the newspaper with roots in India’s freedom movement and whose founding editor was the fearless S Sadanand who opted to sell his house and fields to pay a crippling fine imposed by the British government when an apology would have sufficed.

The column Singh wrote over two years (2020-22) has now taken the form of a book ‘The Fault with Reality-New Experiments with Truth’ comprising some 40 pieces covering a spectrum of themes, written with clarity and lucidity.

Given the times we live in, politics, in one way or the other, provides the leitmotif of the book. It opens with a section on our current prime minister, drawing comparisons between Mahatma Gandhi and Modi.

The author pulls no punches in noting that the former wrote about his experiments with truth and that his life was an open book; the latter experiments with electoral truths or identity politics with only certain pages of his life open to the reader.

While comparing Nehru and Modi, he observes how Nehru built big dams, heavy industries, and institutes of scholastic and scientific excellence as temples of modern India whereas Modi’s temples show his penchant for the grandiose. No topic is taboo for Singh who in ‘The New India’ section writes about the dismantling of key institutions such as the Election Commission of India, the Judiciary, the Reserve Bank of India, the Central Bureau of Investigation, etc., as well as the Orwellian nightmare of journalists, activists and dissenters who work under constant threats and fear of arrests. “Who wants to be singled out when an FIR is the ruling dispensation’s First Instrument of Revenge?” he asks.

Nor has he shied away from taking on civil servants and their lapses, the hate politics which dominates all discussions, the toxic prime-time news and troll armies. The weekly outpouring was no music to the ears of the ruling establishment and it is not hard to surmise why the author got the axe.

Singh’s column was not just about Modi or politics. He wrote about Mumbai’s politics, crime and civic woes; the doctor-patient relationship and the many malpractices in the medical profession, mental health awareness, the unsavoury happenings in the Mumbai police, geriatrics and the greying of India and even about climate change.

Uncompromising and with meticulous attention to detail, Singh’s writings are reflective of his courage, commitment and sensitivity. He critiques with conviction, offering practical suggestions too. In his piece on Valentine’s Day, he proposes love poems of ‘Bharatiya Sanskriti’ in Valentine’s Cards as well as in the curriculum instead of mushy English rhymes.

Peppered with quotes from Confucius to Lincoln, most of his pieces are informative and entertaining with a touch of humour and brilliant sarcasm. Sample this one: A political prisoner goes to the jail’s library to ask for a book. The librarian says: “We don’t have the book but we have its author.” The book is a bold commentary on our times and must be read by all who dare to speak truth to power.