Madras:
The director of Madras TV, R. S. Sawdekar – a Dalit intellectual and a Maharashtrian Ambedkarite, is in deep trouble being made a victim of caste prejudice. Sawdekar who was Dy. Director of the Bombay TV, was shunted to Madras on a punishment transfer ordered by then Information Minister, Vasanth Sathe, a Chitpavan Brahmin and an ex-RSS leader from Nagpur. The Madras Brahmins did not like his coming as the boss of Madras TV Centre, under which came the Bangalore TV also. The entire communication media being a complete Brahmin monopoly, they were for long planning to get rid of him. So a conspiracy was hatched with the active collaboration of some local Brahmin journalists. They sent a Bangalore Brahmin woman, Shakuntala Devi, a mathematics ‘wizard’, to his office and made her create a wild scene. The press put out a distorted version of the incident and accused Sawdeker. Both held separate press conferences to explain the position. In press interviews to sympathetic Brahmin reporters, she said Sawdekar hated Brahmins and, therefore, refused to give her a TV programme. But the new Information Minister Salve was a Christian and refused to oblige the Brahmins.
