Rajdeep Sardesai

Rajdeep Sardesai (center) during the book launch of his book Newsman at Teen Murti Bhavan. (L-R) Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Yogendra Yadav, Gaurav Bhatia, Naresh Gujral, Sachin Pilot and Asadudin Owaisi.

Rajdeep Sardesai (born 24 May 1965) is an Indian news anchor and author.

Quotes

• Godhra train burning and terrible communal riots that followed. Tragic loss of so many innocent lives. Closure may come only when all guilty are punished. Thoughts with grieving families.
  • Tweet on 20 year anniversary of Godhra train attack. in 2022. quoted in [1]

Quotes about Sardesai

• In 2005, I recall, while doing a live show from Sonia Gandhi’s residence, he wanted me to change a report that showed up blatant constitutional violations by party loyalist and then Jharkhand governor, Syed Sibtey Razi. Sardesai stood before me and ensured that I followed the editorial line spelled out by him.
  • The Indian Newsroom by Sandeep Bhushan [2].

• Now the scandal is that some newspapers, which normally champion the right to information, actually supported this round of censorship. In a column titled Responsible Censorship, Rajdeep Sardesai called the Doordarshan version, including the statement by V.P. Singh,"blatant untruth". What a stern condemnation, you think. But then he continues and starts justifying this lie for the people's own good, "to shield viewers from the increasing potency of Hindu nationalism". Those people who had "expected [Doordarshan] to telecast Kar Sevaks climbing the walls of the Babri Masjid" and who "expect Doordarshan to be just a dispassionate observer of events", have understood nothing of despotic secularism. "They insist that the viewer's right to know should not be interfered with in any way. Such a line of thought is a victim of some diffused libertarian doctrine where the right to know survives only in unvarnished, absolutist form. However, transporting and adapting such western concepts to the Indian scenario is unrealistic..." This twisting of concepts to justify despotism, concludes by claiming that censorship was necessary to "prevent our right to information from spreading mayhem in the country", because "on an emotive temple-masjid issue that threatens to polarize the nation the electronic medium cannot allow the people to live through symbols and inflammatory images". So this censorship has prevented riots? One wouldn't say so, judging from mr. Sardesai's own remark: "That the possibility of communal violence erupting was great has been proved by subsequent events."
  • Rajdeep Sardesai Times of India, 14/11/1990. Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (1991). Ayodhya and after: Issues before Hindu society.

"Narendra Modi on the Role of NDTV during the 2002 Riots", 2014

Interview answers translated by Madhu Kishwar, Manushi, "Narendra Modi on the Role of NDTV during the 2002 Riots" (8 April 2014). [3]

• It was my endeavour that we restore peace at the earliest possible. If you look at the data you will see that in 72 hours we had put down the riots and brought the situation under control. But these TV channels kept on playing up the same incidents over and over again. At the time, Rajdeep [Sardesai] and Barkha [Dutt] were in the same channel NDTV.

• Since Rajdeep Sardesai was among the leading reporters covering the disturbances, I phoned him to say, "I will have to put a temporary ban on your channel if you continue with the provocative coverage. There is a well-established regulation that media should not name communities during communal riots nor identify a damaged place[s] as a mandir or masjid. Why are you violating that code and [established] protocol about not naming communities or identifying places [...] of worship? You are going against established norms."