LONDON: A zoom conference will be held in London tomorrow (Saturday) to inaugurate the “Reporting India” authored by veteran Indian journalist and Chairman ANI, Prem Prakash. The even is organised by Lord Rami Ranger at 11am (GMT), Zoom ID: 852 132 2828.
Prem Prakash is very well and experienced Indian journalist and he has interacted with every prime minister of India and interviewed many of them on camera and also has worked with foreign broadcasters-like gaumont actualities in France, Deutsche Wocehnschau in Germany and Warner-Path News in US who were the pioneers of their time.
“Reporting India: My Seventy-Year Journey as a Journalist” was released by Jaishankar at Kitaab online book launch event organized by Prabha Khaitan Foundation (PFK) of Kolkata in association with Penguin India.
Eminent litterateurs, scholars, book lovers, students and journalists from across the country joined the virtual event for an engaging hour-long session with author Prem Prakash; panelists Sheela Bhatt, Sushant Sareen and Ms Aakriti Periwal of PKF who introduced the session while Venkat Narayan made the concluding remarks.
Reflecting on seven decades of journalistic work by Prem Prakash, Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said, “Prem Prakash’s book in reality is a celebration of his life. He has been there and done that and shaped our recollection of events and the image of India. He has always been at his detached best.”
“Prem, a great recorder of events and history, has always been at the right place at the right time. His book is an engrossing flow which the young generation of today, less conversant of that past era, must read. India has gained enormously from his work,” he said.
Prem Prakash who set up Indian news agency Asian News Network (ANI) in 1971 to provide syndicated multi-media newsfeed to Indian and foreign media houses. ANI was also the first news agency to syndicate video news, said at the launch: “The Chini Hindi bhai bhai slogan was nonsense. India’s views towards the Chinese in the past can be described as a kind of romanticism. We gave up everything on Tibet while the Chinese asserted its sovereignty and went on to capture Tibet.”
The author, who, as a journalist, had first hand witnessed the pitiable condition of ill-equipped Indian Army mauled by the Chinese during the 1962 China-India border war, says in his recent book that Nehru felt personally responsible for the debacle as he had ignored the modernisation of India’s armed forces at the outset of his term in office.
The host Lord Rami Ranger is a founding member of ‘The Hindu Forum of Britain and Chairman of The Pakistan, India and UK Friendship Forum and the British Sikh Association.