Latest Amendments to IT Rules Amount to Censorship by Another Name

The one time the media in India did experience direct censorship was during the Emergency. Now, a government-appointed committee has the power to label information as “fake”, “false” or “misleading” and ask them to be taken down.

 Published in The Wire on April 11, 2023

Link: https://thewire.in/rights/it-rules-amendments-censorship-emergency

Are we heading towards another period of direct censorship, like the one some of us experienced first-hand between 1975 and 1977 during the Emergency?

We have to ask this after the government’s recent amendments to the IT rules.

The Editors’ Guild of India has issued a strong statement against what it calls “draconian rules” that will permit a government-appointed committee to label information relating to the Union government as “fake”, “false” or “misleading”. It can ask social media intermediaries like Facebook and Twitter, and internet service providers to take them down. The Guild states: “In effect, the government has given itself absolute power to determine what is fake or not, in respect of its own work, and order take down.”

There are two sides to this development. One is the legal aspect and there could be challenges to the legality of this amendment. As the Internet Freedom Foundation has pointed out, “Assigning any unit of the government such arbitrary, overbroad powers to determine the authenticity of online content bypasses the principles of natural justice, thus making it an unconstitutional exercise.”

The other aspect is the intent behind the move. Given the Union government’s record on issues relating to freedom of expression, it is not unreasonable to conclude that this move is not just “akin to censorship”, as the Editors’ Guild has stated, but is censorship through other means.

The one time the media in India did experience direct censorship was during the Emergency. Initially, the government issued “guidelines” that had to be followed. They were vague and non-specific. But before long, these “guidelines” morphed into random advisories from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting communicated verbally to the chief censor sitting in Delhi, who would then pass them on to censors operating in different states. The only record of these instructions is in the logbook of the ministry, which has been reproduced in the Shah Commission report. 

Reading some of these orders is important today because what stands out above all is the arbitrary nature of this kind of censorship and the consequences of handing over the power to control the flow of information to the government and its functionaries.

How censors worked during the Emergency

During the Emergency, I had first-hand experience of such arbitrariness. At that time, I was looking after Rajmohan Gandhi’s Himmat Weekly in Mumbai. Every week, I had to take the typed copy of the contents of this small magazine to the office of the censor in Mantralaya.

The censor in Mumbai was a former resident editor of Indian Express. He was friendly and courteous. But when it came to the copy, he acted like an editor. He would go through the article and strike out, with a blue pencil, either sections of the article in a way that rendered the entire piece unusable, or the entire piece. And when asked what guideline had been violated, he would refuse to engage in discussion. I was told that I had no right to ask, and he was not expected to explain.

So, from one week to the next, as editors and journalists working with Himmat, we had no clue what would survive this “super” editor’s blue pencil and what would be knocked off.  Sometimes it was a comment, sometimes it was a report and sometimes an article on foreign affairs.  

This happened because “guidelines” were issued at various times and publications had no idea what they were until they were told that they had violated them. 

As the Shah Commission’s report notes:

“In practice censorship was utilised for suppressing news unfavourable to the Government, to play up news favourable to the Government and to suppress new unfavourable to the supporters of the Congress Party.”

The advisories from the government, as listed in the Shah Commission’s report, might appear ridiculous today. But at that time, no one could either question or defy them. 

For instance, instructions were sent out to the press on how parliamentary proceedings could be covered. They could not report, “ruling party members moving to the opposition benches or vice-versa,” remarks made by the chair in either House, and no “reference to some of the empty seats in the opposition benches” or “names of members who were absent.” Obviously, the absent members were those in jail.

The media was also not permitted to report statements by opposition leaders. In Gujarat, where there was a non-Congress government, the advisory specifically stated:

“All the statements made by the Janta Front Leaders alleging that the Centre or Congress was out to topple their ministry or that the Janta Front would take to agitation etc should not be allowed… Anything which is unhelpful to the present plan of the Centre should be killed.” 

Also “killed” was a report on the Allahabad high court judgment “upholding MISA detenues’ right to move high court under Article 226”.

None of these, and scores of other similar missives, fell within the scope of the restrictions on freedom of expression permitted by the constitution. They illustrate the randomness of how censorship works in practice when the power to manage information is placed in the hands of the government. 

Today, even though IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has clarified that a government-appointed fact-check committee, rather than the Press and Information Bureau (PIB) as mentioned in an earlier version of the amendment, will do this job, what is the difference? Who will be on the committee? Surely not people who genuinely believe that “fake” news should be restricted to proven falsehoods and not material critical of government policies? How is it different from the government-appointed censors during the Emergency?

Just as the interpretation of the “guidelines” was left to the censor, today a committee will be given the power to determine what is “false” or “misleading”. And challenging its decision will be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. 

A disproportionate effect on independent media

While the amendments to the IT Act will affect any person or entity putting out information using the Internet and social media, independent media will be disproportionately affected. 

During the Emergency, the government censored all publications and kept a close eye on those that tried to dodge the “guidelines”. But it followed another strategy that virtually crippled smaller publications. The big newspapers had their own printing presses. But small journals like Himmat did not own one. In our case, the printer with whom we had been associated for several years was told informally that if he continued to print Himmat, there was a chance that his printing press could be shut down. We were politely asked to go and find another printer, something that was virtually impossible – but somehow, we managed.

Today, independent digital platforms rely on access to the Internet and social media intermediaries to distribute their content. If something they produce, a news item or an investigation into a government programme, is labelled “false” or “misleading”, their reach will be severely impaired. Much like printing presses refusing to host smaller independent publications, these orders will restrict the impact of such platforms. Although even legacy print media outlets also push content online and use social media networks, they will suffer to a degree but will not be crippled. 

Under the guise of “checking misuse” of the freedom afforded by social media and the Internet, the government is trying to tame those who are effectively using this space to report uncomfortable truths.

The third similarity to those times, although not linked to the change in the IT rules, is the way the government allocates its advertising. 

During the emergency, the government classified publications as positively friendly, hostile, and continuously hostile. The bulk of government advertising went to the first, the second received a bit but the third received none. For many smaller publications, this meant death. For instance, Himmat decided the number of pages to print each week depending on the advertising that came in. When banks and public sector companies were instructed not to release ads to publications in the “continuously hostile” category, the weekly struggled to keep its head above water. 

Today, you only need to look at daily newspapers to see the significant increase in government advertising. Publications that are occasionally critical are fully aware that this largesse could be withdrawn at any time. Toeing the line is a safer business strategy.

As we move into election season, information, especially that available to millions through the Internet, will be crucial. With powers to label anything that exposes the hollowness of government promises as “misleading”, the government has entered the arena of direct control of information. This is precisely how censorship is defined – a system that checks the spread of information that is inconvenient to the rulers.

'Media Owners Always Ensure That Journalists Crawl, During Emergency And Now Again'

Posting here this interview that appeared in The Citizen on June 26, 2017

KARTHIK VENKATESH

Monday, June 26,2017

When the Emergency was declared on June 26, 1975, Kalpana Sharma was with Himmat, an independent news magazine, one of the few that chose to defy the censors and take an independent stand. Over the course of the next 21 months till March 1977 when the Emergency was finally lifted, Himmat got into trouble more than once with the authorities, but chose not to back down. During this time, Kalpana Sharma was in the direct line of fire as she took over the editorship of the publication in 1976 and was therefore directly responsible for everything that went into it.

In this interview conducted over e-mail, she talks of those days and draws parallels to today.

Q. How did the Emergency begin for you at Himmat? Did it begin right after the announcement or did things change over a course of time?

A. It began on the night of June 25, 1975 when the announcement of declaration of emergency was made on the radio. It took two or three days for the reality to sink in, that all opposition leaders had been arrested, that press censorship had been imposed, that fundamental rights had been suspended.

Q.What were some of the stories you wanted to run that were censored? Also, were there instances of self-censorship (yours or anybody else’s) you recall?

A. On October 2, 1975, a prayer meeting was held in Delhi at Rajghat. Amongst those present were Acharya Kripalani as well as the editor-in-chief of Himmat, Rajmohan Gandhi, who is a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. They were arrested along with others at the meeting. Himmat ran a report of this in the issue of October 24, 1975. By then I was the editor of Himmat and I was summoned to the office of the Special Press Advisor, or Chief Censor, and told that we had violated censorship "guidelines" and that from that date onwards, Himmat would be under pre-censorship. Incidentally, one of the guidelines was: “Where news is plainly dangerous, newspapers will assist the Chief Press Adviser by suppressing it themselves. Where doubts exist, reference may and should be made to the nearest press adviser.”

As for self-censorship, the government had issued these "guidelines" within a couple of weeks of the imposition of the Emergency expecting the press to follow them, or to self-censor. But the interpretation of the guidelines was left to the individual publication. We chose to mostly ignore them or interpret them so loosely that it made no difference in what we published. Until, that is, when pre-censorship was imposed. After that, we had to submit every single piece of copy to the censor before sending it to press. Even here we took liberties and sent only the main articles and editorials, many of which were so heavily censored as to be rendered unusable. For a weekly, this meant that with our shoestring budget and tiny staff, we had to keep standby material for almost everything that we submitted to the censor.

Q. Any anecdotes of how you slipped one past the censors in those days?

A.There were certain columns that we simply did not submit. We had a humourous diary column written jointly by several people on the staff. We didn't send this in and hoped that the censor would not catch the sly way in which we were trying to send across messages. We also had a column called This Was a Life in which we featured important women and men who had stood up for their rights. During this period, we made it a point to find people who had defied dictatorship and spoken up for their convictions. Our readers got the message. The censor, fortunately, did not catch on to what we were trying to do.



Q. Do you recall any puzzling/amusing censor guidelines from those days? Any parallels you want to draw with today’s scenario?

A.There are no parallels to the situation today except that for mainstream media then as now, the decision to comply or defy was determined by the owners and not by the editors. Today, too, it is the owners, who fear repercussions if they are too critical of the government, who are making their editors tone down any negative reporting or comment and if a paper is speaking up, it is because the editor has the backing of the owner. Himmat was an independent weekly run by a trust. Hence it was not constrained in this way.

Q. Many people believe that liberals are overstating their case when they state that we are facing an Emergency-like situation today? Things, some believe, aren’t as bad. Having observed both times, what would you say?

A. As I said earlier, the situation today does not resemble the emergency in that the opposition is not behind bars, there is no pre-censorship and fundamental rights have not been suspended. But the government has been successful in curbing criticism through indirect ways, by making journalists feel that they are vulnerable, by reducing the spaces where honest criticism can be made.

Q. In terms of the Opposition that existed then and that exists now, do you see any difference? Was the opposition to the ruling regime better organized as compared to today?

A. Before emergency was declared, there was growing opposition led by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP). Many young people were inspired and joined him. The JP movement took off even as George Fernandes called the first-ever railway strike in 1974. There were agitations in many places against the rise in prices. JP and his followers organised mass meetings in many places around India that openly questioned Indira Gandhi's government. Her supporters argue that she had reason to fear anarchy, especially when JP urged men in uniform not to obey illegal government orders. Compared to that, although there are spontaneous eruptions by Dalits, farmers and students, they are not organised in the same way. Perhaps they will eventually come under one banner.

Q.What about the quality of leaders, both in the opposition and in the ruling party?

A. People like JP were inspiring. They had integrity. There were others too but JP was the person around whom people rallied. Today, there is no one, on either side of the political divide with that kind of stature.

Q. Online trolling is a new form of goondagardi that we see these days. How is it similar/different from how the press was attacked in those days?

A. There is no comparison. At that time, the press was under direct attack from the state. Today, it is people organised and encouraged by the state who try and intimidate and threaten those who speak out. Given the violence on the streets and the lynchings, those who are threatened cannot take these attacks lightly. At the same time, the government can continue to pretend that it respects diverse views and freedom of the press. It is, in fact, far more insidious.

Q. There is a feeling that the press isn’t quite the ‘holy cow’ that is believed to be. The press (both print and the visual medium) have compromised themselves in many ways and when these are investigated, they cry that the freedom of the press is being attacked. What would you say to that?

A. "The press" or more accurately, the media, is a business. There are people employed in that business, the journalists, who are expected to make the product that has to sell. The content of that product is thus decided by how well it will sell. That sadly is what the media, not just in India but also elsewhere has been reduced to. The concept of a fourth estate in a democracy has been negated by this business model. And given that business relies on government, directly or indirectly, the government can dictate what the media can and cannot do. This does not mean that there is no brave, investigative journalism that holds power to account. But it is fast disappearing because it does not have the kind of backing it needs. That is why so much of that kind of writing is now appearing on digital platforms that are able to carve out business models that are different from the existing ones in the media.

Q. About the future of a fearless, independent press are you optimistic or do you think there is cause for despair?

A. I am optimistic because I see around me so many younger journalists infected with the same optimism and passion that we had in the 1970s when we worked with Himmat. They have a much tougher time, in some ways, but they are not giving up. And the evidence of that lies in the fact that despite all the efforts to intimidate the media, stories about atrocities, human rights violations, corruption in high places etc still keep coming out.

Censorship, the Emergency and Himmat

June 23, 2015

It's almost 40 years since the Emergency was declared.  Those of us who lived through it have many memories.  We should have recorded them.  But we got caught up in events and I plead guitly for not having taken the time to write about that period while memories were still fresh.

Here's something I've written in Scroll.in that gives a flavour of those times:

The darkest hour

'Himmat' during the Emergency: When the Press crawled, some refused to even bend

When Indira Gandhi suspended the Constitution, some journalists maintained their independence despite State repression. Why can't today's journalists find ways to resist corporate control to tell readers the truth?

Kalpana Sharma  · Today · 09:05 am

Photo Credit: Kalpana Sharma

Forty years ago on a rainy evening in Mumbai, a group of friends met in an apartment overlooking Grant Road Bridge. It was June 26, 1975.  We knew that a State of Emergency had been declared. We also knew that there would be press censorship. But what on earth did that mean?

All India Radio did not explain. We had to turn to BBC World Service to get a sense of what exactly was happening. That is how we learned that thousands of opposition leaders and political workers had been arrested under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act.

Some of us in that room were journalists. We worked with a small English-language weekly, Himmat, edited by Rajmohan Gandhi. What would censorship mean for us?

When we went into work the next morning, we heard that the government had sent out “guidelines” that the press had to follow. Number one on the list was: “Where news is plainly dangerous, newspapers will assist the Chief Press Adviser by suppressing it themselves. Where doubts exist, reference may and should be made to the nearest press adviser.” Clearly we had to decide what is “dangerous”.

The guidelines also instructed us not to reproduce rumours or anything “objectionable” that had been printed outside India. Given that only newspapers outside India were reporting what was actually going on in the country, this pretty much foreclosed reporting on anything.

Roller-coaster ride

The next 20 months were a roller-coaster ride, but one that formed us as journalists. The principle lesson we learned was that freedom of the press is not a luxury that the rulers bestow on you: it is a lifeline in an unequal society like ours. Without it, the poor would become invisible because it would deprive them of their basic right to be heard as citizens in a democracy.

As the majority of Indians today were not even born when Emergency was declared and this also applies to most of the journalists in the trade today, let me just briefly recount my own experience with censorship.

In the initial days, there was confusion in the press about what censorship would involve. The office of the Director of Information and Publicity of the Maharashtra government had been converted into the Censor’s office, employing around 15 people. Binod Rau, a former resident editor of the Indian Express, was the Censor. An official from this office was sent to each daily newspaper in the evening. But by September 20, 1975, it became evident that it would be impossible to pre-censor every single word that appeared in print. Hence, we were informed that we were expected to “self-censor” and abide by the guidelines.

White-out protest

In the two issues that came out after the declaration of Emergency, Himmat chose to leave its Editorials blank. Thereafter, we decided that we would write as we always did until we were informed that we had violated some guideline. That didn’t take long. In our issue of October 24, 1975, we had carried a report about a prayer meeting at Raj Ghat held on October 2 at whic Acharya JB Kripalani had spoken. The police broke up the meeting and arrested those who refused to leave, including our editor-in-chief Rajmohan Gandhi and his brother, Ramchandra Gandhi. Although they were released later, some of the others spent several months in prison.

By then, I was the editor of Himmat. I was summoned to the office of the Special Press Advisor (as the Censor was known) and informed that as Himmat had violated the guidelines, we would be under pre-censorship with immediate effect. When I asked which guideline, there was no answer. Finally, one official told me that they had been berated by Delhi for allowing the item on the Rajghat meeting to appear.

Despite this, we found ways to dodge the censor. Additionally, the Bombay High Court ruling in April 1976 in the Binod Rau vs MR Masani case on censorship provided some breathing space. Amongst other things, the Court ruled that “if there is a right to praise either an individual or the government, there is equally a right to criticise the individual or the government…”

For a couple of months, everything was quiet. Then in July 1976, someone from the Criminal Investigation Department turned up at our office with a notice stating that the printer and publisher of Himmat (Rajmohan Gandhi) had to deposit Rs 20,000 within 15 days with the Commissioner of Police because there were “prejudicial reports” in three issues in April. No details were given. These details were provided only when we went to court challenging censorship guidelines. Apparently, we had quoted Mahatma Gandhi saying, “The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole of Swaraj” was considered “prejudicial”.

Arbitrary rules

I give these details to illustrate the arbitrariness of censorship during those times. Yet, we had decided that we would rather continue to push the envelope and take risks than buckle under censorship. Such bravado meant that the press where we printed was served a notice to stop printing Himmat, andno other printing press would touch us. Of course, we did not have the money to buy our own printing machines. In desperation, we put out an appeal to our readers. Amazingly, hundreds of readers responded, sending us contributions as small as Rs 5 and going up to a few thousand rupees.  We managed to collect over Rs 60,000 and with some additional funds bought two small printing machines and rented a space in an industrial estate in Prabhadevi. This allowed us to have our own print line and take the risk we felt we must.

Unfortunately, this arrangement was also busted when the authorities found that the bulk of the magazine was being printed elsewhere. So finally, in December 1976, we were left with no option but to go every week to the Censor’s office and be subjected to the irrational and arbitrary slashing of copy. To fill these spaces at the last minute was virtually impossible. Yet we had to because leaving blank pages was also a crime!

The Emergency ended in March 1977 after the spectacular election that threw Indira Gandhi out of office. Although on paper censorship continued during the election campaign, no one paid any heed to it.

The lessons of 1975

Looking back now, four decades later, has the Indian press learned anything from that experience? Do we value the freedom that was snatched away from us?

Some of us as journalists certainly learned important lessons. The 1970s was still a time of idealism. I can count many of my contemporaries who came into journalism believing that our job was to seek the truth and write without fear.

Once the Emergency ended, many such journalists took it upon themselves to unearth the stories that had been suppressed, stories that above all denied poor people their rights. These included slum demolitions in many cities, forcible sterilisation campaigns, torture of prisoners, fake encounters and many others.

Instead of merely reporting on these atrocities, and others like bonded labour, trafficking, denial of human rights, the rights of pavement dwellers and more, journalists followed up these stories by filing Public Interest Litigations in the Supreme Court. No one charged them with being “unprofessional” or “activist journalists”. In the mood that prevailed then, it was accepted that even as we are journalists, we are also citizens and cannot stand by and watch such egregious violations of rights.

If you survey the Indian press of the late 1970s into the 1980s, you see the results of such a commitment by scores of journalists. Newspapers gave space for such writing, even encouraged it. And even though several smaller publications like Himmat closed down because the economics did not work out, many mainstream publications took up the task of unearthing the developments that were hidden during the Emergency.

New priorities

Since the 1990s, there has been a visible change in the Indian media. For one, print is not so dominant, yielding space to the electronic media. In the last few years, the Internet has opened up new spaces.

The growth and variety of the media suggests that there should be greater freedom, that it would be virtually impossible today for the State to control the media. Certainly the kind of censorship regime imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975 would never work today.

Yet, has the space for the kind of writing spawned by the experience of Emergency shrunk or expanded? This is a question we still have to ask.

While the expansion of the media space would suggest that there would be much more room for writing on poverty, on human rights, on the invisible and marginal parts of India, on communities that are forgotten, the reverse is true. In a media driven by the market, such news has no value. So while earlier, falling foul of the government restricted the pursuit of such stories, today the belief that such news will not sell your product denies them space.

Secondly, how do we define “free” in relation to the media? “Free” of what or whom? Perhaps the State does not have the same ability it had in the past to control the content of even privately owned media, but today there are other forces that do. When politics and business come together, and define what can or cannot be reported, is this not a form of covert censorship? The increasing consolidation of media ownership in a few powerful hands, and the nexus between some of these owners and the people in power, gives an entirely different spin to the concept of a “free” media.

What remains the same is the choice that journalists have to make. During the Emergency, as LK Advani famously noted, although the press was asked to bend, it chose to crawl. Yet many journalists chose not to do so, at considerable risk to themselves and their careers.

That choice is one that we still have to make.  If even under overt censorship, some publications managed to communicate the truth to their readers, why can't journalists do it under the indirect forms of control that exist today?

Kalpana Sharma was editor of Himmat from 1976 to 1981 when it closed. She has worked with The Indian Express, The Times of India and The Hindu and is currently consulting editor with Economic and Political Weekly.

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