This is a guest post by RAMRAY BHAT  Two weeks ago, tucked in between lurid details of spot-fixing during IPL matches, and an inordinate attention to how Sanjay Dutt spent his first few moments in jail, was an important bit of news about a high profile American movie actor having undergone preventive surgery in order to escape a future encounter with breast cancer. The source of the information was an op-ed written by the actor in The New York Times.

The mainstream Indian media not quite knowing how to report this kind of information first presented it in the blandest fashion and then hurried to the closest cancer hospital to interview its surgeons. The social media took the expected route of initially spouting knee-jerk reactions some of which were misogynous and offensive. The response later evolved into a division between two camps. One hailed the actor for being courageous. The other criticized her for a variety of reasons such as her choice of undergoing surgery without being afflicted with the disease, and her soft advocacy for a detection procedure that is out of the economic reach of a majority of women in her own country, let alone those from the third world. Ruth Fowler’s article from the left-leaning Counterpunch adopted a cavalier tenor and chided the actor for her op-ed with what seemed like nitpicking arguments.

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