By Shantanu Guha Ray / The Wire
New Delhi: Former students of Vasant Valley School – one of the leading schools in the national capital – have written to its owner, the India Today group, asking it to refrain from what they say is communally polarising programming under the garb of news reportage in the television channels it runs.
The India Today group has multiple TV news channels, prominent among them being India Today, an English language news channel and Aaj Tak, a top Hindi news broadcaster.
In the letter, the former students said they were shocked to see content on the news channels which constantly undermined the principles of freedom, justice, equality, liberty and fraternity they learned to respect while studying at Vasant Valley.
“Yet, regrettably, it is these same values that are being undermined constantly by many within the India Today ecosystem,” 165 students from 18 batches of Vasant Valley said in their letter to Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief of the news channels and also of India Today newsmagazine.
The letter was emailed to Purie on September 13, 2023 but the students have yet to get a reply. Another letter seeking his response to the letter was sent by The Wire on Monday but has met with no response.
“We write to you today as the alumni of Vasant Valley School,” the students wrote. “The India Today Group are founders of Vasant Valley School and TV Today owns and operates multiple television channels including India Today and Aaj Tak. This is an association that many of us as alumni have been incredibly proud of, given India Today’s historical legacy in holding the powerful to account even during some of our country’s darkest days, including the Emergency, the 1984 Delhi Riots, the 2002 Gujarat Riots, to name just a handful of instances. And It is within the educational institution that you founded, that we learned and internalised our constitutional principles of freedom, justice, equality, liberty, and fraternity.”
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