The Ali Khan Mahmudabad case is free speech under trial

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 22, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/05/22/the-ali-khan-mahmudabad-case-is-free-speech-under-trial

The arrest and subsequent release on interim bail of Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad, and the discussions in and out of court that have followed, ought to concern journalists, or rather those who believe that in a democracy, journalists should question the powerful. 

Prof Khan was arrested by the Haryana police in the early hours of May 18 based on two complaints relating to his posts on Facebook a week earlier.  Both complaints were registered in the same police station in Haryana, close to the private university where he heads the department of political science. One was by a member of the youth wing of the BJP, the other by the head of the Haryana Commission for Women.

After two days in police custody, and after the lower court sent him to judicial custody, the Supreme Court granted Khan interim bail on May 21.

In the immediate aftermath of the arrest, several national English language newspapers made strong editorial comments against the arrest and the serious nature of the charges brought against Prof Khan, including sedition.

As the speed with which events occurred around his arrest, readers might have overlooked these editorials (which in any case are read by a small number). But for the record, they are worth re-reading, given what followed in the subsequent days.

The Indian Express, in its editorial headlined, “Amid government’s calls for unity, Ali Khan Mahmudabad’s arrest sends a chilling message”, went on to state that fear cannot enforce unity in an open democracy. It argued that the Prime Minister’s call for unity and the strategy to send all-party delegations to present India’s case abroad after Operation Sindoor did not sit well with such actions. 

Deccan Herald was more direct. It wrote that Khan’s arrest “is the State’s strike against the expression of a citizen’s right and it exposes the police and the government which acted against him as partisan, and even communal. It is almost certain that Mahmudabad’s name was the problem here and that shows.” The Times of India suggested that “all thinking Indians must also ask why a professor who praised, logically and cohesively, GOI’s military response to Pahalgam found himself behind bars.”

And The Hindu suggested that the Supreme Court “must reiterate the importance of the freedom of expression and come down heavily on law enforcement agencies that misuse powers to slap serious charges related to sedition, on frivolous grounds.”

We know from the proceedings in the Supreme Court on May 21 in response to Ali Khan’s bail application that nothing even vaguely resembling this has happened. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

Given some of the remarks made by Justice Surya Kant, it appears that he has a different view of such rights. He was quoted as saying “everybody talks about rights…as if the country for the last 75 years was distributing rights.” Nor has the court ticked off the Haryana police for the alacrity with which it responded to the two FIRs.

In fact, just three years ago, in the case of the bail application by journalist Mohammed Zubair of the fact-checking platform AltNews, the Supreme Court had laid down that “Arrest is not meant to be and must not be used as a punitive tool because it results in one of the gravest possible consequences emanating from criminal law: the loss of personal liberty.” It also said, “Individuals must not be punished solely on the basis of allegations, and without a fair trial...when the power to arrest is exercised without application of mind and without due regard to the law, it amounts to an abuse of power.”  

Instead, in this case, instead of criticising the police for arresting a person “solely on the basis of allegations”, the court has directed the Haryana police to set up a Special Investigative Team “to holistically understand the complexity of the phraseology employed and for proper appreciation of some of the expressions used in these two online posts.”  This task has been given to police officers. How they are supposed to “understand the complexity” of posts that are written in reasonably simple English remains a puzzle. 

More alarming than leaving a team of the police to decide whether the charges against Khan hold is the last part of the order which states: “It is made clear that one of the objects of granting interim bail is to facilitate the ongoing investigation. If the SIT/Investigating Agency finds any other incriminating material against the petitioner, it shall be at liberty to place it on record and seek modification of the interim order.”

In other words, there is more to come in this unravelling drama.

Interestingly, in Zubair’s case, the UP government had argued that Zubair should be restrained from tweeting. The SC ruled against the request, stating, “The imposition of such a condition would be tantamount to a gag order... (which) have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech.”

In Khan’s case, exactly the opposite has happened. The court has restrained him from posting anything on the case, or “any opinion in relation to the terrorist attack on Indian soil or the counter response given by our armed forces.”

Khan’s case is one more nail in the coffin of the limits placed today on freedom of expression by this government.  

In his article in Frontline on the Khan case, Saurav Das writes about the “judicial choking of free thought”. Analysing the Supreme Court’s interim bail order in the case, Das doesn’t mince words in his critique. He writes:

“Mahmudabad’s case is a microcosm of sorts. It is a perfect example of how you make a nation of intellectually dead citizens, where critical inquiry is replaced by rote repetition and progressive voices are muzzled to make space for conformist, mediocre opinions. This is how a society dies, where the proliferation of free thought is choked, through a slow, judicially sanctioned suffocation of intellectual life.”

Perhaps free thought has already been choked, if you look at Indian mainstream media, especially TV news. There is precious little that is even mildly critical of recent government actions, even in our newspapers. Or questions, for instance, about how the all-party delegations, which have set out to foreign lands to explain the Indian government’s position on terror and Operation Sindoor, will explain the same government’s actions against minorities, especially Muslims, in India. According to to this piece in Article-14 by Kunal Purohit, there have been 113 incidents of “anti-Muslim hate crimes and hate speeches” since the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam. 

Despite this, every now and then, even TV news can spring surprises. Such as this interview by Preeti Chowdhury on India Today TV with Renu Bhatia, the chairperson of the Haryana Commission for Women who filed one of the cases against Ali Khan.  Chowdhury did what journalists are supposed to do. She firmly and politely asked Bhatia what part of Khan’s post did she think insulted the women in uniform who appeared at the briefings during Operation Sindoor alongside the External Affairs Secretary. Do watch Bhatia’s effort at explaining what cannot be explained. 

India’s fog of war: Print media treads cautiously, TV media loses the plot

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on May 9, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/05/09/indias-fog-of-war-print-media-treads-cautiously-tv-media-loses-the-plot

Illustration of an anchor shouting through a television while viewers cower on their couch. |Manjul

Subscribe nowIndia today is enveloped in a fog, the fog of war. It is so thick that we can neither see nor hear what is going on. We must wait patiently for someone in “authority” to tell us what is happening.

India today is enveloped in a fog, the fog of war. It is so thick that we can neither see nor hear what is going on. We must wait patiently for someone in “authority” to tell us what is happening.

Ever since the launch of Operation Sindoor on the night of May 6-7, when Indian armed forces launched nine precision strikes that targeted what were suspected to be terror outfits in Pakistan, Indian media – or at least some sections of it – has gone ballistic.

As for Indian TV news channels (which gave up on doing any kind of serious journalism years ago), they had already launched their own “operation” against Pakistan without waiting for the Indian government to act. Indeed, within days of the terror attack in Pahalgam where 26 people were killed, TV anchors were not just demanding war, but even demonstrating how it ought to be conducted. (It’s worthwhile, even now, to watch this episode of TV Newsance by Manisha Pande to get a sense of the madness on television screens.)

The official start of the clash between India and Pakistan has now given these channels additional ammunition and the madness has reached a higher pitch. Disinformation, misinformation, drama and ear-splitting decibel levels are par for the course. If you watch Indian TV, you might say this is normal. But is it, when the country is virtually at war with its neighbour, when the government is putting out all kinds of advisories about misinformation and fake news? 

Why is it that no such advisory has been directed at these channels, not even a gentle rebuke, when the government has the power under existing laws to do so? Is it because the government finds it convenient to let them rant in contrast to its official briefings that are restrained and low-key? Is it important for this government to keep up the ultra-nationalist fervour without seeming to be doing so directly? These are questions that we must ask, even if the mere act of asking questions now is considered “anti-national”. 

On the day after Operation Sindoor, barring headlines and display, the news coverage in all major newspapers was almost identical. What was missing was the story of the price being paid by the Kashmiris living near the Line of Control. An exception was the Indian Express, which had a story on its front page giving the names and ages of each one of those killed in the firing across the border.  

But the press could have given a human face to this war by asking why, if the government knew that it was mounting this operation, was there inadequate effort to make sure the most vulnerable, the people living on the border, had shelters, or somewhere else where they could go? 

And why should the Indian media not ask these questions, as Kashmir Times has done? Despite its constraints, Kashmir Times has been putting out daily reports on the lives of the Kashmiris affected along the Line of Control. If you visit some of the villages in Uri district, you can see the other side clearly, across a deep gorge with the Neelam River that divides the two sides of Kashmir. People on both sides face cross-border firing whenever there’s a problem between our two countries. Yet, so often, their stories are never told, or only in passing. The real price of war is paid by such ordinary people.

Apart from not reporting on the casualties along the LoC, the print media is also not asking legitimate questions. For instance, when the defence minister states that 100 terrorists have been killed in Operation Sindoor, we need to know who they are, where they were, and whether they were at any of the nine sites that were targeted in Pakistan. Yet so far, such a question has not been asked, and it is highly unlikely if it ever will be. 

There are other questions, including Pakistan’s claims on Indian fighter jets, and photographs of alleged debris. So far, there has been no official response.

Clearly, print media has decided to tread cautiously because they know that unlike TV channels, this government is not going to be charitable towards them if they report without official confirmation. Any speculation, or source-based story is likely to be regarded as antagonistic.

And with the Indian government’s action of blocking the sites of even established Pakistan media such as Dawn or GeoNews, Indian journalists have to depend on international media houses like the BBC or news agencies like Reuters to get a sense of what is being said and reported on the other side. Surely, this is something that the media in India ought to be able to access. 

Clearly, print media has decided to tread cautiously because they know that unlike TV channels, this government is not going to be charitable towards them if they report without official confirmation. Any speculation, or source-based story is likely to be regarded as antagonistic.

Also, while Indian TV news continues unchecked with its dangerous theatrics, 8,000 accounts on the social media platform X have been blocked on the request of the Indian government. Ironically, X’s own Global Government Affairs account which reported that these accounts had been blocked without a clear reason for why this should be done, has also been blocked.

Strangely too, accounts of senior Kashmiri journalists like Muzamil Jamil from Indian Express, who is not particularly active on X, and editor of Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin, have been blocked. Also, the Kerala-based digital platform Maktoob Media, even though it is reporting on the ongoing exchange between India and Pakistan much as mainstream media is doing. 

At the time of publishing this story, The Wire announced that its website was blocked in India as well. 

When strategic affairs are involved, especially between India and Pakistan, the media is flooded with comments by “experts”. On television news, the expertise of some of some of these men, and they are all men, can be questioned. But they provide the optics for the shouting matches that are always the norm, and more so when the issue is India and Pakistan.

Fortunately, print remains more sober, and one can read, or listen to, counter-terrorism experts who speak with the knowledge and insight needed to clear the fog of disinformation.

One such is Ajai Sahni. In this long, but frank, podcast with senior journalist Nirupama Subramanian for Frontline, Sahni speaks about how much of the government’s response after the Pahalgam terror attack is pure optics, and what if anything can be done to deal with the reality of cross-border terror. Without mincing words, he says that Pahalgam was a policy failure, a propaganda failure, and a political failure.

In the fog of war, disinformation from all sides is the virtual norm. We have seen that in abundance in the last few days. The night of May 6/7 will be remembered for the deluge that followed Operation Sindoor. Yet, it was the much maligned Mohammed Zubair of Alt News who systematically separated the wheat from the chaff so to speak, and revealed how handles pretending to be Indians, were Pakistanis sharing old videos to show the extent of the attack by India. Later he also showed how handles in India, and even TV channels, were using old videos to show what was going on that night.

The scourge of social media did not exist in the previous major clashes between India and Pakistan (although there is hope that this one will not escalate into a major clash). Today, it is something that is virtually impossible to control. As a result, responsible media platforms without independent sources of verification are left with no option but to stick to what is confirmed officially, even if this is not the whole story. However, even within these constraints, there are stories about people, and the impact of conflict, that need to be recorded and told. 

All this started in Kashmir, when 26 people were brutally murdered on April 22 by gun-toting men identified as terrorists. It is a region that has now been pushed back into a time of tension and sorrow. Do read this sensitive and moving piece by Mirza Waheed, Kashmiri journalist and well-known writer, in The Guardian lamenting that Kashmiri voices are still missing. 

 in The Guardian lamenting that Kashmiri voices are still missing.