While We Watched: An Interview With Ravish Kumar & Vinay Shukla

From the start of his career to today, Ravish has been one of the strongest voices of dissent and one of the harshest critics of the communalism, divisiveness, and polarization that certain political entities have been all too willing to embrace.

‘While We Watched’ is a Peabody-winning homegrown documentary that embodies the essence of his journalistic integrity. Over the course of its runtime, it illustrates what it means to uphold your principles and stand up for what you believe in, even in the face of adversity and seemingly insurmountable circumstances. 

Vinay’s lens never hides the pervasive air of doom and gloom that pervades the majority of the film’s scenes inside the NDTV newsroom and studio. Between politically motivated censorship and audits, a lack of funds, and a constant stream of staff resignations, at times it feels very much like Ravish and his team are fighting a tidal wave with a picnic umbrella.

The price that Ravish pays for upholding the truth is that he’s labelled an ‘anti-national’ terrorist sympathiser; an ‘urban naxal’. His life consists of round-the-clock hate calls and death threats. He also has to deal with an organisation that is clearly struggling to survive across a journalistic landscape that has forsaken any semblance of a principled stand in favour of ratings.

Ravish implores people to wake up to the lies and distraction tactics of the ‘godi media’ and to pay attention to issues that are being deliberately obfuscated.