This essay, “In Defense of Polemics” by V.T. Rajshekar, first published in Dalit Voice Vol. 25, Issue No. 10, (May 16–31, 2006), has been thoughtfully reworked, abridged, and paraphrased to speak to the present moment while preserving its original force and vision. The revision retains the text’s historical polemical idioms but removes contingent references and particularized citations to foreground its enduring relevance. It reasserts the conviction that polemics is not a stylistic excess but a principled mode of truth-telling—an ethical and political necessity in confronting the hierarchies that distort public life and silence dissent. In this reframed version, Rajshekar’s defense of argumentative writing becomes a wider meditation on the responsibilities of critical journalism and the politics of speech in unequal societies. It upholds Dalit Voice’s long-standing orientation toward fearless critique, its insistence on clarity over comfort, and its commitment to unsettling dominant truths. By revisiting this essay today, the aim is to reaffirm the centrality of dissenting thought and the continuing need for writing that is rigorous, disruptive, and accountable to those whose voices are systemically denied space in the public sphere.
V. T. Rajshekar
We are often accused of resorting to polemical writing. Some upper-caste critics say we take pleasure in controversies and rarely offer “constructive suggestions.” They call us abusive, hateful, and unworthy of serious journalism. To them we must respond.
A journal of the persecuted cannot exist without polemics. Its very birth is an act of resistance against forces that suppress truth and historical progress. Polemic is not abuse—it is the language of those who have been denied space, ownership, and voice. Without it, new ideas cannot take root.
Brahminical Media Control
Our critics ask if we cannot be “constructive” without being “excessive.” Can truth be told softly in a world where the means of speech itself are owned by our oppressors? India lives in a time of deep ideological struggle between castes and communities, yet the instruments of opinion—the mass media—are monopolized by the upper castes and big business.
This media does not merely conceal truth; it manufactures falsehood. It defends power, consolidates hierarchy, and disciplines dissent. A homegrown authoritarianism thrives here, disguised as democracy. In this landscape, polemic becomes not only legitimate but necessary—it cuts through the noise, draws attention to vital realities, and refuses the civility that sustains injustice.
Those Who Don’t Hate Can’t Love
Our critics accuse us of hatred, of inheriting the anger of Ambedkar, Periyar, and Lohia. They mistake passion for hatred, and confrontation for bitterness. But as Stokely Carmichael once said, to love deeply is to know the opposite of love. A people who have never known hatred cannot understand love, because love itself is born of struggle—of knowing what must be resisted in order to protect what must be cherished.
We are taught that it is noble not to hate. Yet those who hate us—those who burn our homes, violate our dignity, and destroy our futures—lecture us on peace and forgiveness. They want the oppressed to remain polite while being crushed. To reject this false morality is not to hate others, but to love our people more fiercely. If you are incapable of anger, you are incapable of love.
False Philosophy
This false philosophy of non-resistance preaches calmness to the condemned. It demands that we stay quiet while violence is done to us. Imagine watching someone set fire to your home and being told not to hate them. Imagine witnessing your sister’s assault and being told to be “above emotion.” Such moral advice serves only the comfort of the powerful.
We do not hate because hatred is noble—we resist because love compels us to. The refusal to accept humiliation, to expose hypocrisy, to fight lies—these acts come from a place of care and courage, not malice.
Nasty “National” Press
India’s corporate, upper-caste–owned “national press” is the most powerful weapon of domination today. It consolidates privilege, protects capital, and criminalizes the struggles of Dalits, Bahujans, Muslims, and women. It preaches ethics but practices servitude. Its only moral compass is profit.
Publishing in such a society requires enormous capital and caste privilege. Those who own the printing presses and those who write the editorials belong to the same social world. Together, they form a fortress of interests closed to the oppressed. Their media will never side with the poor—it exists to manage them.
Role of the Times of India
The media monopoly is sustained by the financial power of advertisers and corporate owners. The result is a journalism shaped entirely by money. The Times of India, for example, has become an ideological mouthpiece for the privileged. It consistently takes anti-Dalit and anti-minority positions while masquerading as “national.” It has long abandoned the idea of representing the public; it represents the market. What it sells as news is often gossip, prejudice, or intimidation.
Days of Dwarfs
The era of towering editors who understood the social weight of journalism is over. Dwarfs now rule the newsroom—men and women who bend before power and boast of their servility as pragmatism. They avoid pain, skirt real issues, and substitute trivia for analysis. Their papers are full of noise and hollow commentary, never substance.
The Indian press today creates pseudo-issues, buries the real ones, and defends the caste order beneath the façade of modernity. Even the relatively serious papers lose their liberal mask when questions of reservation or caste equality arise.
Caste Ideology
The press’s emptiness is disguised through phrase-mongering. Big words replace genuine thought. Its editorials speak of development and democracy while the writers themselves live comfortably within structures of inequality. Their vocabulary hides their caste ideology.
National icons are manufactured through manipulation—those who pacify the poor are called “Mahatma,” “Lok Nayak,” or “Lok Manya.” Elections are glorified as festivals of democracy when they are only rituals that divide the poor and strengthen the rich. The media celebrates technology and consumption while ignoring human development. It mistakes gadgets for progress and comfort for civilization.
Left Imperialism
Even the so-called progressive press reveals its bias when it confronts the question of caste or minority rights. Urban newspapers cater to the leisure class, not to the majority living in villages. Books, debates, and discussions that challenge hierarchy find no place. Reading itself has been replaced by entertainment, and entertainment is the new censorship.
This English-educated elite, claiming to be the guardians of “merit,” has degenerated into a caste of consumers. Untouchability thrives, yet the national press looks away. The villages that hold the heart of the country remain invisible. Journalists stay in cities, recycling press releases, producing illusions for an audience that prefers not to know.
Collective Lying
When the oppressed resist, the media unites against them. During the 1984 anti-Sikh violence or the backlash to the Mandal movement, the so-called national press became an instrument of collective lying. It manufactured consent for state brutality, smeared the victims, and silenced dissenting voices. Every time caste contradictions sharpen, the media turns into a chorus of slander.
Lies and fear are its twin tools. When truth threatens power, the press replaces it with panic—crying “terrorism,” “anarchy,” or “disorder.” It is not journalism but propaganda disguised as objectivity.
Freedom of Press
India’s corporate, upper-caste–owned “national press” is the most Much is made in India about the “freedom of the press,” but this freedom belongs only to those who can afford a press. When Dalit journalists exercise that same right, they are punished. This editor was arrested under the Terrorist Act, handcuffed, dragged across the country, and silenced for years. That is the real meaning of press freedom in a caste society.
How can there be freedom of expression when ownership itself is monopolized by a few castes and corporations? The press may be free for the rich, but it remains a prison for the poor. True freedom of the press will come only when its ownership and access are democratized—when it becomes a voice of the people, not of their masters.
Offence as Best Form of Defence
The oppressed cannot wait to be attacked—they must speak first, and speak sharply. To expose injustice is not rudeness; it is self defence. To offend the comfort of the powerful is often the first act of truth.
A newspaper of the marginalized must not merely react to events but seek out the buried facts and bring them to light. Delay means defeat. The Brahminical media manipulates truth with skill; we must learn to read it critically—between the lines, against the grain. Only then can we resist its poison.
Did D.V. Go Wrong on Facts?
Those who are praised by the powerful are rarely genuine; those who are attacked are often the ones who speak truth. Awards, honours, and reputations are tools to discipline and domesticate dissenters. We accept that polemics is not an end in itself—it is a method of struggle. Its goal is not hostility but clarity, not abuse but honesty. It is a way to fight lies with facts and expose hypocrisy through conviction.
Dalit Voice and the Dalit Sahitya Akademy exist not to please the ruling class but to awaken the oppressed. Our readers will correct us if we go wrong; our critics will attack us because we go right.
When the powerful preach freedom but punish dissent, when they praise civility but practice cruelty—then polemic is not a choice, it is a duty.