Mediafile

Some sad news to report about The Hindu, a newspaper which fortunately has not lived up to its name, in the way that modern-day Hindutva defines it. On 5 March in Pondicherry, Hindu editor N Ravi accepted the Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Lifetime Achievement Award, named after the pro-nuke Hindutva acolyte. Pondicherry governor KR Malkani, well known for his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) credentials, also spoke at the ceremony. Ravi's acceptance of the award is troubling on many levels, not the least of which being that it follows the acceptance of the Vajpayee government's Padma Bhushan award by India Today editor Prabhu Chawla. But all of this pales into insignificance when you have 'Veer' Savarkar's portrait unveiled in the Indian Lok Sabha, hanging opposite the hall from the man whose assassination he in all likelihood condoned – MK Gandhi.

If you find Himal circumlocutory and recondite, or even downright operose to read, you are not alone. By the terms of Robert Gunning's 'fog index', which measures the readability of writing, this publication scores a 14, placing it in the stratum of very difficult (and to some, unintelligible) writing. The fog index is calculated by dividing the total number of words in an article or publication by the number of sentences, and adding to that the total number of 'difficult' words (without counting prefixes or suffixes, defined as being words consisting of three or more syllables excluding proper nouns or compound words) multiplied by 100, divided by the total number of words and then multiplied by 0.4.(If you find this fogy, consult the formula at left). Of publications evaluated, only The Guardian and The Times of London scored as high as Himal, while Outlook, The Times of India, Newsweek and India Today all registered an even 10. Chhetria Patrakar is torn between a sense of pride at elevating Subcontinental writing above the jejune standards of Reader's Digest (8 on the fog index) and concern that the index rating may be an animadversion that Himal's prose suffers from gratuitous obfuscation. Readers, write in and offer your own assessment.