Media must uphold India's argumentative, dialogue-driven DNA: Shyam Saran

A monochromatic media environment, you are either a patriot or a traitor, Shyam Saran said in his keynote address at the 26th Business Standard-Seema Nazareth Award for Excellence in Journalism 2025

“When the media champions the right to dissent, it ensures that those in authority are constantly tested by the rigors of public reasoning,” former foreign secretary Shyam Saran said in his keynote address at the 26th Business Standard-Seema Nazareth Award for Excellence in Journalism 2025.

 

Delivering a lecture titled “The Argumentative Indian and India’s Media Culture” at the India International Centre, Saran defined the role of the media in the context of a much older civilisational tradition, one rooted in debate, dissent, and the pursuit of truth. 

 

The award is given each year to journalists of Business Standard under 30. The ceremony, which had moved online during the Covid-19 pandemic, was held in a fully physical format after six years. 

 

 

Saran began by invoking Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who, he said, introduced the idea of the “argumentative Indian” to an international readership. “Sen’s central thesis,” he said, “was that this country has enjoyed a long and deeply ingrained tradition of heterodoxy, open debate and persistent questioning, through challenging orthodoxy and inculcating a spirit of curiosity.”

 

Drawing on the Indian Nyaya tradition (school of philosophy focused on reasoning), Saran elaborated on the nature of discourse itself. “There was vada – an honest, respectful debate undertaken collaboratively by a proponent and an opponent to discover the truth,” he said. “In contrast, there was a warning against Jalpa – signifying hostile wrangling to defeat the interlocutor; and against Vitanda or destructive argumentation meant to humiliate the other side.” 

 

Emphasising the ethical core of this framework, he said, “The classical Indian ideal has been built on the premise that you persuade through the power of argument and not through the brute force of coercion. The dissenter was not an enemy but a partner in the pursuit of truth.”

 

With this as the backdrop, Saran turned to the present – “to the immense responsibility resting on the shoulders of Indian media, which faces (an) unprecedented challenge in our age of conformity,” he said.

 

“If the DNA of India is inherently argumentative, pluralistic and dialogue-driven, then the media as the modern public square, must be the true reflection of that DNA,” he continued. However, he cautioned that “current media culture, with a few laudable exceptions, has allowed the art of argument to devolve into Jalpa and Vitanda rather than uphold the tradition of Vada.”

 

The media’s “slide into echo chambers”, courtesy algorhythmic compulsions, commercial pressures, and political polarisation, also had his attention

 

He warned of “a risk of adopting monochromatic approaches, where complex realities are flattened into stark black-and-white narratives, and the loudest voice is mistaken for the most persuasive,” and added, “In a monochromatic media environment, you are either a patriot or a traitor.”

 

Saran also presented the way forward, which he said lay in restoring the media’s commitment to diversity of thought. “A vibrant media culture must be a platform for an exchange of different ideas and different ways of thinking,” he said. “When a newsroom embraces intellectual diversity and insists on civility, it honors our deepest historical legacy.”

 

He outlined three core functions of the media. First, to inform and educate public opinion, which cannot happen “if you only feed them what they already believe”. Second, to hold power to account. “Power thrives in the absence of scrutiny. But more specifically, power thrives when narrative is uniform,” he said. And the third, to safeguard democracy. “As Amartya Sen reminds us, democracy is government by discussion. If the discussion is compromised, then democracy is compromised.”

 

Earlier in the afternoon, the Business Standard-Seema Nazareth Award for Excellence in Journalism 2025 was presented to Senior Correspondent Sanket Koul, who is based in New Delhi.  

 

The award, which carries a cash prize of Rs 75,000, a silver pen, and a citation, has been instituted by Business Standard and the Nazareth family in memory of Seema Nazareth, a young Business Standard journalist who died on March 19, 1999. 

 

The jury commended Koul for “his incisive coverage of public interest issues in sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, education, and real estate”. Among the articles it cited were those on toxic cough syrup, the Union government’s plan to permit the import of used medical equipment, and private hospitals escaping the Ayushman Bharat programme. Koul’s interview- and data-backed analyses, it observed, “also stand as de facto checklists for remedial government action and citizen oversight”.

 

Meanwhile, the Special Mention award was conferred on Mohammad Asif Khan, a New Delhi-based senior correspondent with Blueprint, Business Standard’s monthly magazine focused on defence and geopolitics. The award carries a citation and a cash prize of Rs 15,000.

 

The jury noted that Khan “gives the reader a fascinating insight into India’s evolving military capability, weapons systems and defence concerns – situating these in the context of threats emanating from rivals and the shifting nature of warfare”. It commended his ability to look ahead at “emerging threats and their implications for India”, and recognised his potential to shed light on the “complex interrelationship between geopolitics, military preparedness and diplomacy”.

 

The ceremony also paid tribute to Seema Nazareth. With her father, PA Nazareth, now 90, unable to attend, her sister Premila Nazareth Satyanand was present and shared reflections on her life. She recalled that the first award instituted in her name was presented at Rashtrapati Bhavan by then President K R Narayanan, and that over the years, several distinguished figures, including the great grandson of Leo Tolstoy, have conferred the award.