The Hindu published an opinion-editorial on Friday where it called BJP MP Tejasvi Surya a virus. The article, authored by one Vaishna Roy, was littered with the usual bile that has come to dominate the pages of the mainstream media.
Vaishna Roy begins her article with the words, “As the number of cases pile up and deaths mount, one imagines that things couldn’t get worse. But one is wrong. Because, of course, one has forgotten the existence of Tejasvi Surya, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s MP from Bengaluru South.” It only gets worse then on.
The Hindu appears to have realised that calling a human being a “virus” is not appropriate and has since then changed its headline.
The headline of the article, which earlier read “Another Virus”, has been changed to “A battle on another front”. We accessed the web page with the initial headline on Google Cache.
As it turns out, Vaishna Roy has a proven track record of airing morbid opinions on the internet. After the Beirut Blast in Lebanon last year, she wished for something of a similar sort to happen in India.
Later, she had retracted the tweet and issued a ‘clarification’ over the matter. “I was lamenting the reluctance of those in office to own similar moral responsibility for administrative failures,” she said.
Roy had also wholeheartedly agreed to Rana Ayyub when the latter made her “What is left for a virus to kill in a morally corrupt nation” comment.
Vaishna Roy had gone to the extent of condemning those who found Ayyub’s comment reprehensible.
Vaishna Roy had also called former NDTV journalist Nidhi Razdan a ‘fascism enabler’ for inviting a BJP MP to her show. She said she was “beyond shocked”.
On a separate occasion, Roy had quote tweeted a tweet by Tejasvi Surya and said, “Now we young Indians can proclaim our cultural identity by loudly shouting Jai Shri Ram and lynching Muslims. Egged on by proud young Indians like this man and by our proud new TV channels.”
Vaishna Roy also opined that Narendra Modi had a “sad trivial obsession with the comfortable middle class”. Like her liberal counterparts, she is clearly not fond of the middle class.
In April, 2019, Roy had dubbed Tejasvi Surya a “younger Narendra Modi”.
Thus, quite clearly, Vaishna Roy has on numerous occasions in the past has aired extremely problematic opinions. Despite that, she continues to receive a platform in the mainstream media. Given her previous lamentations, it is not surprise that she has gone to the extent of calling an elected representative, another human being, a “virus”.