The epistolary pact is one of the interesting literary devices used by critics to understand the relationship between the letter writer and the letter recipient. Janet Gurkin Altman, exploring the multiple dimensions of this relationship, insisted that the basic premise is the fact that the reader is ‘called upon’ to respond. According to her, this is the fundamental impulse behind all epistolary writing. She argues: “If there is no desire for exchange, the writing does not differ significantly from a journal, even if it assumes the outward form of the letter. To a great extent, this is the epistolary pact — the response from a specific reader within the correspondent’s world. Most of the other aspects of epistolary discourse... can be seen to derive from this most basic parameter.” The office of the Readers’ Editor is guided and governed by this parameter.
We receive complaints and compliments, queries and suggestions, and opinions and views in the form of letters. Sometimes the opening sentence is a major giveaway. For instance, if the letter starts with the sentence, “I am neither a BJP member nor a supporter of the RSS but…”, it is invariably against one of our editorials or opinion articles defending the plural fabric of our society. But there are letters that are written in muted forms, bordering on self-deprecation, that open up the space for debate. A recent letter asked about the differences in editorial approach between the main paper and the supplements: Sunday Magazine, Friday Review, MetroPlus, EducationPlus, and so on. The reader wanted to know whether the editorial values are applicable across the board or only to the main newspaper, and said that some columns in the supplements seem flippant, thus failing to uphold the general editorial values.
It was a column, “
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U. Vasuki, national vice president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), responded by raising a series of questions. She wrote: “[The Column] is more than one bird in a shot — trivialise intolerance angst and gender concerns as well. Winking, tongue-in-cheek at the ‘middle-aged women’ taking to streets, (is age a criterion to stand up to injustice?) he goes on to a camouflaged defence of the song, condoning the critical bits to nothing more than ‘infantile bawling’. And he wants us to naively swallow his revelation that obscene words were ‘beeped out’ like in television, whereas the beeps in this song are specifically intended to underline rather than to obscure.”
She questioned the assertion that the protest amounts to “curtailing expression” and that “art is in serious danger” for seeing red in an “amusing” song. “Would it then follow, for example, in a depiction that blames attire for the sexual attack on women, are art and freedom not endangered? The point is that this article is just another of the multi-dimensional gender insensitivity pervading,” said Ms. Vasuki. According to her, in the ‘Beep song’, obscenity is most brazen, offensive, and categorically objectionable, and hence, the protest is a democratic response.
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“Journalism is not free expression. It is constrained expression, we operate in a framework of ethical values, we have public purpose and our form of expression is ‘other regarding’… We take into account, we consider the impact of what we do, what we say, what we broadcast and its impact on others. Social networking is self-regarding,” explains Aidan White of the Ethical Journalism Network. Stylistically, the back-of-the-book features tend to be more colourful and descriptive than the front-of-the-book news reports. But that cannot be an excuse to become an alibi for justifying entrenched misogyny.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in