The eminent journalist\u2019s fearless reporting on India under Narendra Modi cost him his job and freedom. Now broadcasting to millions on YouTube, he is the subject of a new documentary<\/p>\n
Ravish Kumar was born near the same Indian city \u2013 Motihari in Bihar<\/a> \u2013 as George Orwell. In his early years as a TV journalist and nightly news anchor, Kumar did not imagine that he would live to be part of a modern-day Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em> nightmare. But that changed almost a decade ago with the election of Narendra Modi\u2019s government<\/a> in India. In the years since then, Kumar has become an increasingly lone voice of truth-telling in an Indian media landscape in thrall to the Hindu nationalist politics of Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). Kumar\u2019s one-man campaign to maintain journalistic integrity, as mainstream news organisations became promoters of politicised fake news, earned him the \u201cNobel prize of Asia,\u201d the Ramon Magsaysay award,<\/a> in 2019. It also led to an unending campaign of harassment and death threats from government supporters.<\/p>\n Kumar, the Indian equivalent of, say, Jeremy Paxman in his prime, finally resigned from his post at NDTV in New Delhi last November, after the station was taken over <\/a>by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, a close friend of Modi. He now lives in virtual hiding with his family and broadcasts through a personal YouTube channel<\/a>. His story, one of repression in modern India and of the existential crisis in truth-telling worldwide, is the subject of an urgently compelling documentary, While We Watched<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n