Cold War, Emergency, Hindenburg: ‘Foreign hand’ pretext to censor media criticism

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 11, 2024

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2024/12/11/cold-war-emergency-hindenburg-foreign-hand-pretext-to-censor-media-criticism

The ubiquitous “foreign hand” is back again. It has hovered over Indian politics for decades, especially when the party in power is criticised for its actions, or inaction. It has been particularly persistent in the last decade and more since Narendra Modi became prime minister.

At the height of the Cold War, the “foreign hand” was either the CIA of the United States of America or the KGB of the erstwhile Soviet Union, depending on your political leanings. Critics of Indira Gandhi were always accused of being CIA. In fact, Piloo Mody, one of the founders of the Swatantra Party and a parliamentarian known for his sense of humour, some of which was either misunderstood or not understood by his fellow parliamentarians, walked into the Lok Sabha once with a placard that read: “I am a CIA agent”. He was, of course, a trenchant critic of Mrs Gandhi and one of the opposition politicians imprisoned during the Emergency.

In fact, in a famous exchange in parliament with the then defence minister, Swaran Singh, Mody is quoted as saying: “What is happening in India is very well known to everybody else in the world except Indians. It is more known to everybody else outside the House than it is known to Members of Parliament.” He was referring to the government’s decisions on defence that he suggested required greater transparency.

Today, even the pretence at transparency has disappeared. Not only is the government getting away without being asked tough questions by the media but even the opposition is being stymied each time it wants to raise questions in both houses of parliament, thanks to the presiding officers. Every question by anyone in opposition is shut down. But when members of the ruling party hold forth, they are permitted to do so without any interruption from the chair.

So, on December 5, when BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi spoke in the Rajya Sabha and once again brought in the spectre of the “foreign hand”, he was permitted to elaborate on his theory by the chair. 

According to a report in The Hindu: “He cited examples pertaining to the past three years, including the Hindenburg report, the COVID-19 vaccine report, a report on Indian farmers, a BBC documentary, the Pegasus issue, and a video on sexual violence against women in Manipur.”  And claimed that “ever since India is emerging as a strategic, economic and diplomatic power, it has been seen that in the last three years, there have been attempts to attack India’s established systems and interests on economic and social fronts through activities from abroad.” 

Just to remind readers, the BBC documentary that Trivedi finds so offensive is the two-part series titled “India: The Modi question” released in February last year. It raised questions about the role of the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, in the 2002 communal carnage in Gujarat. Expectedly, the government banned the documentary even from social media platforms calling it "hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage".  

The ban was challenged in the Supreme Court. The petitioners argued that they had a “fundamental right to view, form an informed opinion, critique, report on and lawfully circulate the contents of the documentary as right to freedom of speech and expression incorporates the right to receive and disseminate information”. The case is due to come up for hearing again in mid-January. 

The Hindenburg Report on the Adani group of companies and subsequent exposes on the prime minister’s closest business ally have clearly put the government on the defensive. But given Trivedi’s intervention, it appears that the government has decided that any report critical of Adani from outside India’s shores is also part of the larger conspiracy to undermine the country’s progress under the Modi government. 

The question that no one is asking is why are these reports on India only on platforms outside the country? What does this say about our own media and why it cannot do such investigations? Especially, as we are constantly reminded by this government that India is the “mother of democracy”.

Under Indira Gandhi, media houses critical of her policies were viewed as part of a larger international conspiracy to undermine her government. During the Emergency, editors and journalists were amongst those put behind bars. The chief suspect then was the US. Some smaller publications were suspected of receiving funds from the US government via foundations. 

Almost every government since then, including some state governments, has trotted out similar theories.

Today, there are laws that restrict media houses from receiving foreign funds. Anyone seeking such funds must comply with the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) which was first brought in during the Emergency in 1976 and has since been amended. Any organisation or institution receiving funds from abroad must register with the government. Since 2014, thousands of non-governmental organisations, especially those working around human rights, have had their FCRA permission cancelled, thereby depriving them of crucial funds. 

Independent digital news platforms, that depend on grants, are also now facing problems getting funding and are under constant scrutiny by government agencies, especially if they carry investigative stories that make the government uncomfortable. 

We have the recent example of NewsClick where its editor Prabir Purkayastha was arrested under UAPA after a report appeared in the New York Times alleging that the funds received by his website were from a foundation abroad that was linked to Chinese propaganda. Purkayastha was released in April this year by the Supreme Court which ruled that his arrest by the Enforcement Directorate was illegal. NewsClick was one of the platforms that wrote consistently and critically about the Adani group.

The message from such actions is clear. The government is watching you and it has the power to shut you down in more ways than one.

The impact of such a message is evident in the silence on the Adani question in mainstream media even as the opposition tries in vain to draw attention to it in parliament.

That silence is broken thanks to the handful of independent platforms that continue to survive. You find through them stories that ought to have been front page news in our newspapers. Stories like this one by The Reporters’ Collective that finds: “Public debate has been focused on the role of state-level politicians and officials in the alleged bribery scandal. The Reporters’ Collective investigation shows the role of the Union government and SECI in crafting a solar power auction tailormade for the Adani Group and helping bag contracts for 8 GW of power supply where it had originally bid for only 4 GW of projects.”

The government will likely choose to ignore such charges to ensure that people do not read the story. Or it will try to locate even a tangential connection to George Soros, the 94-year-old Hungarian American businessman and philanthropist, who is now this government’s “foreign hand”. 

How a movie and a court judgement exemplify India’s crisis of growing Islamophobia

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 17, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/03/17/how-a-movie-and-a-court-judgement-exemplify-indias-crisis-of-growing-islamophobia

March 15, 2022. By coincidence, not by design, three events took place that converge in different ways.

First, the United Nations adopted a resolution (opposed by India) to declare March 15 as International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

Second, the Karnataka High Court gave the much-awaited ruling on the ban of hijab, or head covering, in government schools and pre-university colleges in Karnataka.

And third, for the first time the prime minister of India went out of his way to endorse a Bollywood film.

The connection between the three events might appear nebulous. But the way events are playing out post the Karnataka High Court ruling, and the promotion of the film The Kashmir Files fit neatly into the growing atmosphere of Islamophobia in India. Hence, the significance of a UN designated day to fight this, for whatever such days are worth.

First, let's look at the 129-page hijab judgement, as it has come to be known. Only the concerned and the affected might plough through the text of the judgement. For the ordinary person, it is the media that explains what the ruling is all about, whether it has flaws, whether it is sound, etc.

Here, the popular media’s failure is spectacular. I have argued this before, and must reiterate, that even the best of television channels (and their numbers can be counted on the fingers of one hand) that at least make an attempt to address social and political issues seriously fall short because of the format they have adopted, and which they do not want to change.

In half an hour, three or four people are invited to give their views on a ruling that requires explanation, not opinion. As a result, you have people trying to say something and just when they get to the core of their argument, anchors plead that they have completely run out of time! Why, when you know the time allotted, do these channels not come up with a format that allows for a proper presentation of facts on such a subject? The mystery remains.

Print media, which is now on the decline as shrinking advertising revenue is being swallowed by television and digital, still provides hope. You get well argued articles by legal scholars that explain this kind of judgement. It cannot be abbreviated into a few paragraphs. You also get shorter editorial comments, like this in Indian Express and this in the Hindu, that provide perspective. The latter, especially, is worth reading because it reminds us that the judgement, which has focused on religion, has missed the point entirely. “Freedom of religion is important because freedoms are important, and not because religions are important,” the editorial concludes.

And you get explainers, like this in Scroll, that provide you with more details about the judgement.

Although this is a commendable effort, print and many independent digital platforms are struggling to survive. Often many of the best articles are behind a paywall. Thus, unless you get the physical edition of the newspapers, or subscribe to the digital edition, you miss out on these explanatory articles.

The biggest problem now is that many, especially of the younger generation, are not watching news on television or reading the newspapers. They get their news through social media sites, like Facebook or Instagram, or through WhatsApp forwards, or through news aggregators like InShorts that give you headline news.

This means they just get bullet points without the substance of any development. When it comes to something like the hijab judgement, all you know is that the court dismissed the plea by the students to wear the hijab inside the classroom. How did it come to this conclusion? A headline cannot capture that. In any case, journalists who have worked in print media know that headlines often fail to accurately reflect what is reported. They are designed to attract eyeballs.

Even more insidious are the posts on social media that twist the subject to suit the belief systems of the audience. Therefore, if the aim is to demonise Indian Muslims, it is easy to distort the entire hijab controversy by either blaming the students for being rigid and unreasonable, or, as is being done by some BJP leaders in Karnataka, alleging that they are part of a “terrorist group” and have been instigated to oppose the ban. It is this kind of “news” that gains currency on certain social media platforms and is lapped up and shared widely.

Incidentally, while on the subject of social media, one of the most important investigative stories to emerge in these last weeks is by the Reporters' Collective on surrogate political advertising on Facebook. The story on the Al Jazeera website stretches into several parts. Each one is long and detailed as it draws together the connection between a big business house, Reliance, a company owned by it that paid for the political advertisements, and Facebook.

The series is a must read because it explains the ecosystem that has evolved over these last years that privileges one perspective – that of the right-wing groups and parties, over others, and the crucial role played by social media.

And finally, you have the recently released Hindi film The Kashmir Files.

Irrespective of the merits of the film, which focuses on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the state in the early 1990s at the height of militancy, the timing of its release, the endorsements it has received, and the response of the audience have to be noted within this larger context we are discussing.

In the last week, many senior BJP ministers, including the prime minister, have gone out of their way to urge people to watch the film. It has been given tax free status in the BJP-governed states and dozens of special screenings have been organised for elected representatives.

In this article in Newslaundry, writer Asim Ali gives his views on the contents of the film, what it got right and what it did not. But more interesting is his description of the audience response at the showing he attended in a theatre in Delhi. He posted videos of people jumping up and shouting religious slogans and openly communal, anti-Muslim ones. Social media, in fact, is full of videos of this kind of response from different parts of the country.

The Kashmir Files is not just another Bollywood film. Even though it is being projected as an effort to right a historical wrong, which is the lack of acknowledgment of the sufferings of the Kashmiri Pandits, it is more than that. It comes at a time that suits those invested in cleaving this country on religious lines. The audience response, and the hate-filled cries for vengeance after screenings, confirms this.

Alongside the fallout of the hijab verdict, which is primarily on the future of Muslim women students, to the heightened communal atmosphere stirred up by this film, resulting in police in Delhi, for instance, being asked to be alert in mixed neighbourhoods where the film is being screened, we are in for more difficult times.