Sage rad, India's first jouro, an idol for positive jourlism'

 Paji, May 9: rad, an ancient Indian sage who appears prominently in the Ramaya and was known for dissemiting relevant information, spreading gossip and carrying tales that often led to fights, has been projected wrongly and should be held up as a “role model for positive jourlism”, a top representative of an RSS-affiliate has claimed.

Prav Bhonde, editor of the Mumbai-based Vishwa Samvad Kendra, a media training and publication centre that also acts as the publicity wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), claimed that that rad, whose flits in an out of ancient Indian scriptures and epics like the Ramaya and the Mahabharata, was also India’s first jourlist.

“rad rishi not only used to ferry information from one place to another, but he also had the sense to ferry relevant information. He would not ferry the information for persol benefit, but for the good of the people, the country and the religion,” Bhonde told IANS. Bhonde’s organization is in the process of organizing a series of events across the country and in Goa in May, to celebrate ‘Maharishi rad Jayanti’. According to the lur calendar, rad’s birthday fell on May 5 this year.

As part of the agenda, there will be a letter writing contest, felicitation of veteran jourlist Gurudas Singbal and an interactive session that local jourlists and editors are expected to attend.

“Maharishi rad followed the basics tenets of jourlism ages ago. The information he sourced and passed on to the people, was difficult to obtain then, when means of communication were rare,” Bhonde said, claiming rad was omnipresent, as jourlists are required to be, to source information.

“It is mentioned in the old epics and texts that whenever big incidents occurred, Maharishi rad was invariably there. He did not miss anything. He is an idol for positive jourlism. We are trying to establish this across the country,” he added.

The Vedic age sage, has been described in the old texts as having traversed across the “different worlds” and realms ferrying and sharing his repository of information with its inhabitants. radasmriti, a well-known ancient text which also serves as an aggregation of social mores and rules of conduct, has been credited to the sage, who appears in the Mahabharata to counsel the Pandavas over sharing Draupadi as a joint wife.

Ancient scriptures have also described rad as a carrier of missives and instructions, as well as gossip from heavenly abodes to earthlings, giving his character something of a mischievous demeanor.

Bhonde, however, preferred to describe rad as someone who quizzes persolities of eminence, much like the relationship jourlists share with newsmakers of the day. “You cannot say mischievous; his image in the Puras is of someone who quizzes,” Bhonde said. “Whether it is in the Puras, Ramaya, Mahabharata or any other text, what rad has done is communicate society’s ills to people who can address them and resolve issues which are stuck,” he added.