MAIN MENU
The Hindu’s Ram Rahim advertisement tests the boundary between paid advocacy and editorial trust
The Hindu clearly labelled Dera Sacha Sauda’s full-page defence of convicted rapist Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh as an advertisement, but the episode still raises a distinct media-accountability question: what responsibility does a publisher retain for consequential claims it is paid to carry? The evidence supports scrutiny of advertising standards, not assumptions about The Hindu’s motive or editorial position.
On 12 September 2026, the Delhi edition of The Hindu carried a full-page advertisement titled “What is Dera Sacha Sauda? (Facts vs Fiction)”. The advertisement defended Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, including by asserting that there had been a conspiracy against him and by rejecting the idea that his repeated parole and furlough amounted to VIP treatment. The page itself was marked “ADVERTISEMENT” and carried a disclaimer saying the newspaper had no editorial or journalistic involvement in the creative.
This was paid advocacy, not a news report. That distinction matters because several claims on the page were the advertiser’s assertions rather than findings by The Hindu. Independent reports by Newslaundry and ThePrint confirmed that the same campaign appeared in The Hindu and Dainik Bhaskar. They also noted that the advertisement presented Dera’s own large claims about de-addiction, tree planting and blood donation without independent corroboration.
What the advertisement leaves out
Ram Rahim is serving a 20-year prison sentence after his 2017 conviction for raping two women disciples. The advertisement’s defence of his parole and furlough does not erase that conviction. It also does not establish that allegations against him were a conspiracy merely because the advertisement says so. Other criminal proceedings have had different outcomes, including acquittals in murder cases, and a separate castration prosecution has continued; those distinctions are important and should not be collapsed into either guilt or exoneration beyond what courts have actually decided.
The wider issue is a publisher’s responsibility for paid material
The public-interest question raised by this episode is not whether an advertisement should be mistaken for The Hindu’s editorial position—the page was labelled and disclaimed. It is what responsibility a newspaper retains when it sells prominent space to advocacy containing consequential factual claims.
The Press Council of India’s journalistic norms treat advertisements as part of a newspaper’s standards problem rather than as a completely separate sphere. Its norms call for coordination between advertising and editorial departments over the legality and propriety of advertisements, and more recent Council guidance says newspapers should have machinery to screen advertisements and segregate material that is impermissible under its norms. A disclaimer therefore helps readers identify responsibility for the message, but it does not by itself answer the separate editorial-standards question of what paid claims a publication chooses to carry.
What can and cannot be concluded
The available evidence establishes that The Hindu published the Dera advertisement and clearly identified it as advertising. It also establishes that the advertisement advocated for Ram Rahim and included disputed or advertiser-supplied claims alongside selected legal facts. This supports scrutiny of advertising standards and the relationship between commercial publication decisions and reader trust.
It does not establish why The Hindu accepted the advertisement, what internal review occurred, or that payment influenced its editorial coverage. The Instagram reel by Priya Saroj captures the public criticism and asks why a newspaper with The Hindu’s reputation would publish it; that question is legitimate context, but motive cannot be inferred from the publication alone.
