''Swarajya'' is an Indian right-wing monthly print magazine and

news portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayi ...

. The publication reports favourably on the

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Mod ...

. R. Jagannathan is the current editorial director. Originally established in 1956 as a weekly under the patronage of

C. Rajagopalachari Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (10 December 1878 – 25 December 1972), popularly known as Rajaji or C.R., also known as Mootharignar Rajaji (Rajaji'', the Scholar Emeritus''), was an Indian statesman, writer, lawyer, and independence activis ...

, it shut down in 1980 but was relaunched in September 2014, as a daily news website; a monthly print magazine was launched in January 2015. ''Swarajya'' has misreported news on multiple occasions.

History

''Swarajya'' was launched as a weekly magazine in 1956 by journalist Khasa Subba Rao, under the patronage of

, a prominent independence activist and one of the founders of the

Swatantra Party The Swatantra Party was an Indian classical liberal political party, that existed from 1959 to 1974. It was founded by C. Rajagopalachari in reaction to what he felt was the Jawaharlal Nehru-dominated Indian National Congress's increasingly soci ...

. The magazine strongly advocated individual freedom and freedom of enterprise as against Nehru's socialist policies. Minoo Masani, Ramaswamy Venkataraman, and R. K. Laxman have contributed to the magazine. After Rajagopalachari's death in 1972, the magazine slowly began to decline and eventually closed in 1980.

Relaunch in 2014

The magazine was relaunched as an online daily in September 2014, with Sandipan Deb as the Editorial Director; the first edition of the print magazine was launched in January 2015. Coimbatore-based Kovai Media Private Limited purchased the rights to the magazine from

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

-based Bharathan Publishers, along with 40,000 pages from the earlier editions of the magazine. The magazine describes itself as "a

big tent A big tent party, or catch-all party, is a term used in reference to a political party's policy of permitting or encouraging a broad spectrum of views among its members. This is in contrast to other kinds of parties, which defend a determined i ...

for liberal right of centre discourse". In October 2016, it acquired OpIndia; in 2018, it became an independent entity. In 2018, ''Swarajya'' launched its Hindi edition.

Reception

The website has misreported news on multiple occasions, according to fact-checkers including Alt News and Boom. Columnists working for ''Swarajya'' have allegedly engaged in a variety of trolling over Twitter. Journalists working for ''Swarajya'' have propagated communally charged fake news via their personal accounts. ''Swarajya'' was blacklisted from

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

in 2020 alongside '' OpIndia'' and

Hindu nationalist Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. "Hindu nationalism" or the correct term ''Hindū rāṣṭ ...

website ''TFIpost''.

References

External links

* {{commons category 1956 establishments in Madras State Right-wing politics in India English-language magazines published in India Monthly magazines published in India News magazines published in India Magazines established in 1956 Mass media in Bangalore Mass media in Chennai Mass media in Coimbatore Indian news websites