Swarajya (magazine)

Swarajya is an Indian right-wing^[13] monthly print magazine and news portal. The publication reports favourably on the Bharatiya Janata Party and has published misinformation on many occasions.^{[2][14][failed verification][15][16][17]}

Swarajya

May 2018 issue
Editorial Directors	R. Jagannathan Sandipan Deb
Editorial Advisory Board	Jerry Rao Surjit Bhalla Swapan Dasgupta Manish Sabharwal[1]
Categories	News magazine
Frequency	Monthly (2015–present) Weekly (1956–1980)
Publisher	V. Murali Amarnath Govindarajan
Founder	Khasa Subba Rao
Founded	1956
First issue	14 July 1956 (1956-07-14)
Company	Bharathan Publications Private Limited (1956–2014) Kovai Media Private Limited (2014–present)
Country	India
Based in	Coimbatore/Bengaluru (2014–present) Chennai (1956–1980)
Language	English
Website	swarajyamag.com/about-us
OCLC	3999897

R. Jagannathan is the current editorial director. Originally established in 1956 as a weekly under the patronage of C. Rajagopalachari, 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.^[18]

History

Swarajya was launched as a weekly magazine in 1956 by journalist Khasa Subba Rao, under the patronage of C. Rajagopalachari, a prominent independence activist and one of the founders of the Swatantra Party.^[19][20]

The magazine strongly advocated individual freedom and freedom of enterprise as against Nehru's socialist policies.^[21] Minoo Masani, Ramaswamy Venkataraman, and R. K. Laxman have contributed to the magazine.^[22][23] After Rajagopalachari's death in 1972, the magazine slowly began to decline and eventually closed in 1980.^[24]

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.^[24] Coimbatore-based Kovai Media Private Limited purchased the rights to the magazine from Chennai-based Bharathan Publishers, along with 40,000 pages from the earlier editions of the magazine.^[24] The magazine describes itself as "a big tent for liberal right of centre discourse".^[1]

In October 2016, it acquired OpIndia; in 2018, it became an independent entity.^[25] In 2018, Swarajya launched its Hindi edition.^[26]

Reception

The website has misreported news on multiple occasions, according to fact-checkers including Alt News and Boom.^[17] Columnists working for Swarajya have allegedly engaged in a variety of trolling over Twitter.^[34] Journalists working for Swarajya have propagated communally charged fake news via their personal accounts.^{[35][36][37][38]} Swarajya was blacklisted from Wikipedia in 2020 alongside OpIndia and Hindu nationalist website TFIpost.^[39]