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live mostly on government advertisement. The moment they start writing anything that the government does not want, those advertisements are removed. Those newspapers die automatically without anybody directly killing them. All the newspapers belong to a few super-rich people -- just four or five families.
Those four or five families are basically for the government because they need licenses; they need every kind of support from the government, and it is a deal that their papers should remain according to the government policy. So in fact, looking at the whole picture, India has no free journalism. They write only what their owners want them to write.
Now as far as I am concerned, they have to write only things which create antagonism against me in the Indian mind. To me, life is both day and night, life and death, and I have spoken on it from all possible angles. But a paper which is owned by a Hindu owner will not publish anything that creates sympathy towards me in the masses.
I have spoken on so much that no Hindu has ever spoken on. If they choose to, they could convert the whole of India for me. But that is what they are afraid of, so they choose only those parts where I have criticized.
And I am not a politician. My whole life, politicians have been advising me, "You could become an immense phenomenon in the country, millions of people could stand with you; you just have to be a little careful. You speak so beautifully about Hinduism -- then why do you sometimes start criticizing it! You speak so beautiful about Jainism; then on some small point you criticize it.
"You have spoken so much on Buddhism -- nobody has spoken so much -- and still no Buddhist is sympathetic to you because you go on criticizing it. Ninety percent of your talks explain to them the beauties of Gautam Buddha and his teachings, so if you can avoid the ten percent...."
I said, "That is impossible. That will be cheating people. I know that that ten percent is there; it will be cheating the people not to say anything about it. And it will be a heavy burden on my heart that I have not been completely open: that I have been looking at the people and
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