Newslaundry Podcast

In this week’s episode, host Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by Madhu Trehan, Anand Vardhan, Manisha Pande, and author Kishwar Desai. The podcast starts off with a discussion on Desai’s latest book, Jallianwala Bagh, 1919: The Real Story, and why she believed that this was a book that needed to be written. She says that writing the book became “a journey of discovery” for her as she uncovered unknown facts of the incident like the “sadistic tortures that were inflicted on the people of Amritsar”, especially in its build-up and aftermath. The panel also discusses the importance of an apology, as opposed to regret, from Britain now. Anand observes that although “national psyches have this need for reconciliation with historical memory”, after the decades that have passed, “even if it [an apology] comes, it would not serve that instrumental purpose.”Abhinandan shifts the conversation towards the arrest of Julian Assange and the panel debates if his work qualifies as ethical journalistic enterprise or if it is an ins