BETWEEN TRUTH AND MANIPULATION: JOURNALISM AND ITS ETHICAL DILEMMAS IN S. L.BHYRAPPA’S TANTU- THE LOOM OF LIFE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65327/ssh.v11i1.2483Keywords:
S. L. Bhyrappa, Tantu, Parva, Mandra, journalism, media ethics, ethical journalism, righteousness, political power, press freedom, cultural struggle, truth and representationAbstract
This paper examines the representation of journalism and media ethics in s. L. Bhyrappa’s novels
Tantu: The Loom of Life, Parva, and Mandra, with particular emphasis on the dialectical struggle
between ethical responsibility and the pressures of political power, commercial interests, personal
ambition, and social expectations. Tantu, set against the political and cultural landscape of
Post-independence India and the emergency of 1975, foregrounds the conflict between journalists
committed to truth and those who compromise journalistic integrity through sycophancy, favouritism,
sensationalism, and political allegiance. Through characters such as Ravindra, Talwar, Shantamurthy,
Shashikala, and Gautam Narayan, Bhyrappa presents journalism as both a crucial democratic
institution and a vulnerable instrument of power. The paper further establishes a continuity between
the ethical questions raised in Tantu and Bhyrappa’s treatment of information and truth in Parva,
where Sanjaya’s reporting of the Mahabharata war becomes an early literary configuration of the
tension between truth and the appeasement of political authority. In Mandra, this concern extends
into the domains of celebrity culture, privacy, sensationalism, publicity, and the commercialisation of
information. Across these novels, journalism emerges not merely as a professional practice but as a
cultural arena in which competing conceptions of righteousness are negotiated. The paper argues that
Bhyrappa’s largely non-didactic treatment of these conflicts allows readers to confront the ethical
ambiguity of reporting and to independently examine the relationship between truth, power,
responsibility, and social values. His fiction thereby presents journalistic ethics as part of a wider and
continuing cultural struggle over the meaning and practice of righteousness.
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References
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