‘Hindutva is profoundly anti-constitutional’: Sagarika Ghose on liberalism, BJP, media

What's your ism? is a podcast about ideas and ideologies that claim to liberate the world and somehow always fall short. TNM's Sudipto Mondal and his guests grapple with impressive sounding isms -- Marxism, Feminism, Ambedkarism, religious systems -- and their inherent contradictions. An attempt to understand academics, activists, politicians, artists, rebels and wannabe revolutionaries who are in search of grand unified theories to solve the problems of the world.

Season 1, Episode 4

Sagarika Ghose, the journalist-turned-politician, recently made headlines for joining the Trinamool Congress, and became a Rajya Sabha member. Has she abandoned the journalism front? How does she look at Hindutva? What made her pull out of mainstream media?

In this candid conversation with Sudipto Mondal for What’s your ism? – a podcast by The News Minute and Newslaundry – Ghose talks about the BJP, media, Hindutva ideology, liberalism and intellectuals in Indian politics.

On joining the opposition at a time it has “no hope in hell”, Ghose says there is “no space left for the kind of writing I want to do”, and the “danger” to constitutional values is “far beyond” what she could do as a journalist.

She says the mainstream media has been “captured by the Modi government” and has become a purveyor of hatred, bigotry, and “trumpeter of the regime”. “The mainstream media runs counter to what journalism should be”.

Ghose further speaks about why Hindutva is anti-constitutional, the “glass club” of men in newsrooms, diversity in media, significance of opposition in a democracy, and why intellectuals don’t make good politicians.