The Hindu and its Letters to the Editor

Hello Readers’ Editor,
That The Hindu publishes letters only after putting them on a Procrustean bed is a fact that needs no arguing. When some other publications make it known that the views expressed in their readers’ response column were not of the publisher, The Hindu prefers to sanitize them. Letters that are scurrilous, scandalous and libelous are usually avoided by all, but The Hindu avoids even mild sarcasm, risking even appearing as priggish. To cast most of the letters it prints in a mould it thinks will suit its image, which incidentally need not be the images even its dedicated readers of long standing might be carrying with them, it must be cutting, correcting, and even recasting those that are selected to pass its muster. So, when there is a mistake, however small it might be, the blame would fall squarely on it and not on the contributor. This is an unenviable situation The Hindu, I feel, could very well do without.
What made me write this is not what I am citing here alone. This is only the key-hole. Looking through, I find a lot of things not in order with The Hindu.
The key-hole I take you to here is the last sentence in the first letter to the editor in the "Well done" group (25th April): "…is akin to the kettle calling the pot black".
Making the kettle blacker than the pot, though jarring, is excused. The real problem with even a correct usage of the idiom is in determining who of the three, the U.S., India and Iran, is the pot, for, it has space only for two. From the context of the U.S. exhorting India, one may infer that India is the kettle. Did India also start ravaging wars? Did the letter in its unedited form really intend to compare the ‘war-mongering’ of India with that of the U.S? If it did, it did not deserve to be published. If not, the bed has failed Procrustes.
I remember my elders breathing down my neck that I should read The Mail as the first choice and The Hindu as the next to pick up correct language and good style. You know the time. Whatever I could pick up then, I am afraid, I am losing now reading The Hindu. Even its editorials leave a lot to be desired. You may not remember, but I do, my sending you detailed notes on two such editorials some time back. It was sort of throwing out my disappointment. It hurts when expectations that are based on experience are not fulfilled.
Yours faithfully,
P.P.Sudhakaran.