Governments and big media houses enjoyed an oligopoly over the means of mass communication until not very long. With the advent and rise of social media, this advantage has all but evaporated and democratized the space like never before.

This is best phase for nationalists to reach out to larger section of people and build their own narrative, said Sri Umesh Upadyaya, director of Reliance media wing at an event organized by Samvit Kendra in Hyderabad on 28 April 2018.

Speaking on the subject ‘Peoples intervention in future of Media’, he said media and government until now propagated only Nehruvian narrative and gave no space for alternative narrative. In a democratic society, every viewpoint must be given due space.

Explaining how narrative are built, he said Ramcharitmanas’ verses were removed from school curriculum in 1980’s on ground that TulasiDas is was religious poet while Kabir was projected as secular and his poems are still taught. This narrative alienated young generation from their roots and made them foreign to their own rich culture and literature.

Thanks to new media, common masses no more need the infrastructure of traditional media outlets to voice their concern and raise issues affecting them. It is enabling small group of people to build their own narratives.

Ever expanding mobile connectivity and surging internet penetration has led to rapid adoption and evolution of social media and made it possible for social media activists to successfully counter and even bypass the traditional gatekeepers. Umesh Upadhyay ji said we have rich content in abundance and if only we can effectively paraphrase the message in lingo used my common folks as revolutionary Tulsidas ji did few hundred years back and we can successfully create our own narrative.

Appreciating the work done by Samvitkendra, he said forums like these should train people how to use new platforms and teach them how to phrase their message. If we can master these techniques we can turn the narrative up and down.

He advised audience to read woks of likes of Dharampal ji, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Rajiv Malhotra to effectively counter prevailing anti-India narrative.

Shri K Sathya Deva Prasad ji introduced to audience his newly launched book “Interrogating Macaulay’s Children”. He said aim of this book is to make people understand how Macaulay culled India’s Indigenous Education system which termed as “cultural genocide”.

Shri Nadimpalli Ayush ji, General secretary of SamvitKendra, gave a brief introduction about publications and works done by Samvit Kendra.