The editorial we didn’t see on Emergency@50: Authoritarianism with anaesthesia in 2025

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 26, 2025

 

Anniversaries are a ritual in India. This week, it has been interesting to watch how the 50th anniversary of the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi at midnight on June 25, 1975, is being observed. 

 

There are several people in the governing party, the Bharatiya Janata Party who opposed the emergency. And in the opposition is the Congress Party, held responsible for the Emergency. As a result, the occasion has been reduced to one of the BJP finding more ways to slam the Congress by pitching the ‘Samvidhan Hatya Diwas’ to counter the opposition’s campaign to uphold the Constitution. This is politics as usual. 

 

But how does all this rhetoric help us to understand what the Emergency was all about, what we should learn from it, and whether what’s happening in India today reflects a difference or a similarity to the events that unfolded 50 years ago? 

I ask this as someone who was a journalist at that time, working with Himmat Weekly, a news magazine founded by Rajmohan Gandhi. Hence, I found this statement of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while speaking about that period in our history, particularly ironic: “Just imagine the moment you became subjects of a tyrant within a day. You were a journalist or a student but suddenly became a danger to the country.”

Perhaps the selective amnesia that afflicts most politicians made him forget people like Umar Khalid, a student leader who questioned the Modi government’s intent in bringing in the Citizenship Amendment Act. Khalid was arrested in 2020 and continues to languish in jail without trial, without bail, for more than six years. He must have wondered how he suddenly became a danger to the country. A country where the government had not declared an internal Emergency.

Or Siddique Kappan, the Delhi correspondent of a Malayalam news portal who was arrested while on his way to report the rape of a Dalit woman in Hathras in October 2020. He was incarcerated for over two years, is out of bail, but still has the cases hanging over his head.

Or the Kashmiri journalists who have been in and out of jail. Why does this government consider them a danger to the country? Read this report in Kashmir Times on these journalists, their battle for bail and the multiple cases they have had to fight. How can this happen if the people who fought the emergency opposed precisely this kind of arbitrary action at that time?

These are the questions we should be asking on the anniversary of the Emergency. Though there is little evidence of them being asked except editorially in Indian Express which has run an extensive series on the Emergency.

Even there, it is political scientist Suhas Palshikar who raises several pertinent questions in his edit page article on June 25. He emphasises that the anniversary should be a time of introspection and asks whether the “Emergency template” has really been discarded. For instance, like the “foreign hand” that Indira Gandhi saw lurking everywhere, today there is the American billionaire George Soros, and if you protest you are labelled anti-national or an urban Naxal. Palshikar concludes: “The essence of the Emergency is being normalised in India’s current moment.”

To understand this better, just look at the state of the Indian media. During the Emergency, censorship was imposed. Everyone was required to check if what was published adhered to “guidelines” issued by the government that kept changing as the Emergency progressed. If the authorities thought you had violated them, your publisher could be fined or jailed, your printing press could be sealed, and you would find it difficult to continue.

As has been recorded in several books and articles over the years, mainstream print media, and there was only print in those days, conformed and fell in line. Indian Express did resist, as recounted in this piece by Coomi Kapoor who was working with it as a reporter at that time. In her first-person account, Kapoor writes about the way the government used all avenues of pressure, including the income tax department, trying to seize the printing press, and denying advertisements from the government and public sector companies to bring the paper in line.

If all this sounds familiar, it is the template this government has followed in the last decade to get the media to conform and relay the official narrative without asking too many questions.

During the Emergency, the Indian Express could withstand such pressure for some time because of its feisty owner Ramnath Goenka and because it had the financial ability to withstand it. 

What is not acknowledged adequately is the role played by many smaller publications, in English and in the regional languages, that also tried to resist censorship. They did not have the deep pockets of mainstream media houses like the Express group. And as a result, many of them had to fold up. 

 

Himmat Weekly, for instance, where I worked, also ran blank editorials after the Emergency was declared. It also tried to bypass censorship by deciding that we did not have to submit a copy to the censor as the government had declared “guidelines”. We thought we were too small and inconsequential to attract the wrath of the government. But in doing so, we were clearly delusional as in an authoritarian regime, even small pinpricks of opposition or questioning will not be tolerated.

Himmat survived the Emergency, just about. It was deprived of advertising; it had fines and notices slapped on it for “violations” of censorship guidelines that seem ridiculous today (such as using a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi about freedom), and had to hunt for a printer who would risk printing the magazine.

I have recounted the Himmat story over the years several times as illustrative of what happened to many other small publications (read here, here and here). And to point out that the story of resistance to authoritarianism is not just about prominent politicians and big media, but also of small independent publications and ordinary people. This is a history that sometimes goes unrecorded and unacknowledged.

For instance, few know about A D Gorwala, a retired civil servant who brought out a small journal named Opinion. When Emergency was declared, he refused to submit to censorship and continued till he was ordered to shut down. In his last issue, he wrote:

“The current Indira regime, founded on June 26, 1975, was born through lies, nurtured through lies, and flourished by lies. The essential ingredient of its being is the lie. Consequently, to have a truth-loving, straight thinking journal to examine it week after week and point out its falsehoods becomes intolerable to it.” 

Others like Minoo Masani’s Freedom First, or Janata Weekly, whose editor G G Parikh is now 100 years old and still as feisty as ever, also resisted. And there were many others across India.

The reason we need to heed such struggles is to understand what we are witnessing today. 

Take the media. Mainstream media has mostly fallen in line. The resisters are the small independent YouTube channels run by journalists who once worked in mainstream, or digital news platforms that perform the kind of “journalism of courage” that we so sorely need today. 

As Palshikar points out, aspects of the Emergency have been normalised. It has happened gradually in a way that most Indians seem to have been anesthetised. We have accepted that governments have a right to suppress dissent, to jail opponents, to put pressure on the media to conform, and to use all the power it has in its hands to ensure that its actions are not challenged.  

And yet, 50 years after the Emergency, we are lamenting that Indira Gandhi did precisely this.  

The Blank Editorials Of Emergency: When Silence Speaks

Published in Outlook magazine on September 19, 2024

Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/national/the-blank-editorials-of-emergency-when-silence-speaks

Ironic is it not, that a film on the Emergency was held up by what we call the Censor Board (officially the Central Board of Film Certification)? For it was during this infamous Emergency from 1975-77 that the Indian media, at that time essentially the print media, faced direct censorship for the first, and only time, since Independence.

On June 26, 1975, when the Indira Gandhi-led government declared a state of Emergency and announced that there would be press censorship, none of us knew what this meant. Censorship? How? Who would execute the policy? What were we as journalists supposed to do?

At the time, I was working with a small independent news magazine called Himmat Weekly, founded by Rajmohan Gandhi who was also the editor-in-chief. I had joined as an assistant editor, and as the name suggests, our remit was to have the courage to call out the powerful and write about the powerless. Within six months of the declaration of the Emergency, I became the magazine’s editor as R M Lala, one of the founding editors, stepped down.

On that first day, our small team of mostly young journalists had to decide what to do. Should we submit to censorship? Or shut shop? Or should we find a way around it, even if it meant taking considerable risks given that practically all the Opposition leaders had been swept up and thrown in jail and even journalists and other critics were not spared. Perhaps it was our youth, our ignorance or sheer bravado that made most of us feel we should fight censorship and continue to publish as long as we could.

Much like the other, and better-known instances of defiance, such as the The Indian Express printing a blank front page to inform its readers about censorship, Himmat Weekly too ran blank editorials in its first two issues. Only to be told that even leaving a blank space violated the censorship guidelines.

These “guidelines” trickled down to the press during the days we were not informed that we had to clear all our copy with an official. As a result, in those initial weeks, publications took chances to see how far they could stretch the meaning of these guidelines.

The guidelines were vague. The first one, for instance, stated: “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.” In other words, we were left to decide what was “dangerous”.

But that window closed quite rapidly. The bigger newspapers were sent a representative from the censor’s office who sat in the newsroom in the evening and checked copy. We, who were small, and one had hoped so insignificant, that we could escape the eye of the censor, had to physically go each day with our typed copy to the censor’s office, wait till he decided what could and could not be printed, and scramble back to find enough copy to fill the magazine.

The guidelines were not set in stone. They morphed and changed as new advisories were sent from the centre through the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, then headed by V C Shukla. The nature and volume of these guidelines came to be known only after the Emergency when a commission of inquiry under Justice J C Shah was established. The Shah Commission report revealed that new guidelines were sometimes issued verbally and a phone call from the ministry in Delhi to the censor could lead to action against a publication deemed to be defiant or running material that was “prejudicial”.

For instance, Himmat Weekly was hauled over the coals for printing this quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole of Swaraj.” We were informed that this was “prejudicial” and asked to pay a fine of Rs 20,000—a huge amount in those days for a small magazine that could barely break even. Instead of paying it, we went to court. Another story that got us into trouble was for reporting that on October 2, 1976, Acharya Kripalani and others, including Rajmohan Gandhi, had been detained for going to Raj Ghat on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary.

On that first day, our small team of mostly young journalists had to decide what to do. Should we submit to censorship? Or shut shop? Or should we find a way around it, even if it meant taking considerable risks.

I give these examples to explain the arbitrary nature of censorship and how power is wielded during times when no one can ask questions. The person in-charge of censoring the press in Maharashtra was a senior journalist, a former editor of The Indian Express. Many of us had known him in his earlier avatar. Yet, as fellow journalists, we could not argue with him or demand an explanation for why he decided what was “prejudicial” or violated the ever-expanding list of censorship guidelines. He knew he had the power, and we knew the price of defiance.

Despite this, small journals like Himmat Weekly, Freedom First edited by Minoo Masani, Janata Weekly, whose publisher Dr G G Parikh is now 99 years old and still as feisty as ever, and others found ways to get around censorship by taking calculated risks.

In spite of our limited reach, these journals remained under scrutiny during the entire period. Himmat Weekly was forced to find another printer as the place where we had printed the magazine from its inception was told that it risked being shut down if it continued to print magazines like ours. We survived, just about, by raising money from our readers to buy a small printing press. By shouldering the legal risk of any fallout from the content we carried, we were somehow able to persuade another printer to print the bulk of the magazine.

Censorship worked in other ways too. The government had divided publications into the following categories: positively friendly, hostile, and continuously hostile. This determined who would receive government or public sector advertising. For journals like Himmat Weekly, obviously in the third category, this meant that the few advertisements we did get from some public sector companies and banks stopped. Given our precarious financial situation, which fluctuated each week depending on the advertisements we received, this was a virtual death blow. Yet, the magazine managed to survive for the entire period.

This form of indirect control on the media did not disappear once the Emergency ended in 1977. Even today, governments, at the Centre and particularly in the states, leverage advertising to exert editorial control. The only difference now, as compared to the 1970s, is that the private sector has grown and is a substantial source of revenue for the media. But then that leads to another kind of editorial control evident in the virtual absence of rigorous investigative reporting in Indian media on the many transgressions of big business.

Furthermore, efforts to exert direct control on the media have accelerated in the last decade under the Modi government. The pressure on independent digital news platforms is especially apparent. Even if their reach is much smaller than the bigger media houses, they are under scrutiny, much as small magazines like Himmat Weekly were during the Emergency. Although the current government has backtracked on some of the regulations it had planned to introduce to control independent media, such as provisions in the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill 2023, the desire to control is evident.

Censorship during the Emergency blocked out the voices of dissidents. But it also silenced the voices of the poor and the powerless. Today, almost five decades later, we must ask ourselves: is the Indian media, bigger and more diverse than during the Emergency, really all that different?

 

The Guillotine or slow bleed?

 I wrote this for the newly launched website of the People's Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL)

Link: https://pucl.org/manage-writings/the-guillotine-or-slow-bleed/

The guillotine or a slow bleed? A sane person would choose neither. More so if they lived in a country that they believed was a democracy. Yet, in democratic India, the very concept of press freedom has faced both – a dramatic cessation and a gradual, though deliberate, suffocation. 

As we approach the 48^th anniversary of “The Emergency”, the state of emergency invoked by then prime minister Indira Gandhi on the night of June 25, 1975, we should reflect on the past, but also ask whether the lessons from that past have informed this country’s future trajectory.

In June 1975, freedom of the press was suspended. It suddenly did not exist anymore. We were told that if you wrote critically about the government, you could personally face arrest, as well as the closure of the publication for which you wrote. In those days, the media consisted only of print. A nascent television (Doordarshan), and radio (All India Radio) were entirely controlled by the government.

Editors and journalists were arrested, even before they had a chance to write a word. Publications closed, either out of choice because they did not wish to be censored or were compelled to do so because they had violated censorship laws or were rendered financially unviable.

Smaller publications, often gutsier and more willing to speak up than the larger ones, were the most vulnerable. They depended on “goodwill” advertising, which is not determined by circulation figures. They also received advertisements from public sector companies and banks. The latter were ordered not to advertise in these publications and the former, mostly private companies, were told that if they continued, they did so at their own risk. Most chose not to take the risk.

All this was then. When press freedom was virtually guillotined.

Today, press freedom is intact, apparently. But it has slowly bled since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party under Narendra Modi, won the majority in Parliament.  What remains can only be revived with a huge infusion of fresh blood.

The most dramatic change has taken place in television, a medium that reaches the maximum audience compared to other media in India.  Pre-2014, privately owned television channels were highly critical of the government of the day, at that time the United Progressive Alliance led by Dr Manmohan Singh.  Every mistake, imagined or otherwise, was amplified and discussed in detail.

Print media undertook investigations into corruption, exposed the shortcomings of government programmes, poked holes in government propaganda and highlighted human rights violations.

Post-2014, most mainstream television channels appeared to do a complete turnaround. Initially it was awe and praise for the ruling party and its leader. When Modi announced demonetisation overnight in 2016, there was barely a critical voice heard on these channels. They gave Modi the benefit of the doubt and allowed airtime for him to put forward his point of view. But only that viewpoint was heard. There was practically nothing about how millions of ordinary people suffered the consequences of this decision.

Till then, print media continued to provide space for critical comment and reporting. But even then, you could see that these spaces were shrinking.

By 2019, when the BJP returned with a much larger majority in Parliament, the change in the media was almost universal.  Television became an extension of the government’s propaganda machine.  It fuelled narratives, especially the Hindutva agenda of demonising Muslims, that the government and the ruling party wanted amplified. And it literally drowned out the few token voices that were willing to say something to the contrary.

Some of this was the consequence of owners of these channels being convinced that the BJP and Modi were the answer for India. And some from the pressures of business and the fear that falling foul of a powerful government would not serve their best interests.  Whatever the reasons, or a combination thereof, by 2019 the capitulation of mainstream TV, barring one channel, was almost complete. This was finally completed in December 2022, when that last, lonely, critical voice was muffled by a business ally of Modi taking it over. 

Print media does not have the reach of television.  Some spaces remain for critical writing and opinion. But they are shrinking by the day as these media houses become increasingly dependent on government advertising. Private advertisers must also be watching their backs, much as they did during the Emergency, by not being seen to support critical media.

The equivalent of the small publications that stood up and spoke out during the Emergency, are the digital news platforms. At the moment, these are virtually the only spaces where legitimate criticism of government policy and programmes, and of human rights violations, can be reported.  Their financial future is precarious given the government’s ability to pressure anyone supporting any form of dissent.

Yet, although the reach of these platforms is nowhere close to that of television, the current government is determined to restrict their reach even further.  This has come in the form of a proposed amendment to the IT rules that allows the government to set up a “Fact Checking Unit”. This body can decide that anything reported on a government programme is “fake”, “false” or “misleading” and compel any intermediary or social media platform to take it down.  Currently, this amendment is being challenged in court. But if it were to go through, it would be a virtual death blow for independent digital platforms that depend on social media to distribute their content.

Indira Gandhi had proclaimed that she invoked the emergency to “save democracy”. The Modi government believes that every draconian step it takes is saving, what it chooses to call the “mother of democracy”.

The intent is the same; only the methods differ. By learning from the past, this government has realised that it has no need to guillotine press freedom. It merely needs to bleed it slowly till the concept itself becomes lifeless.

 

Go to Kashmir to understand what life is like under an Emergency

 On the eve of the 48th anniversary of the Emergency, here's something I wrote for the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) website.

Link: https://nwmindia.org/features/nwmi-writes/the-emergency-writing-back-to-the-future/

Forty-eight years after Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on the night of June 25, 1975, people still ask: What was it like?

If today, in the year 2023, you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Emergency, go and spend some time in what was once the state of Jammu and Kashmir.  Not as a tourist, or a pilgrim, but as a citizen who wants to understand what life is like for people in that region.

Since August 5, 2019, when the rights provided to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 were taken away overnight, and a full-fledged state was reduced to a union territory, there is a virtual state of emergency in the region, especially in Kashmir.

Think about it.  Even as the central government led by Narendra Modi took this step, all political leaders who opposed the move were arrested.

The media, that has never had an easy run because of the presence of security forces, virtually fell silent. Internet was suspended making it impossible for journalists to file stories. They were questioned, intimidated, and detained.

Over time, what little remained of an independent media was snuffed out, while journalists who dared to question were charged under public safety and terror laws.

Four Kashmiri journalists are still in jail, and dozens more have had to either leave Kashmir or tread carefully as the sword of arrest or interrogation hangs over them all the time. Even leaving the country is not an option as several have found themselves on a no-fly list without prior intimation.

Many prominent Kashmiri journalists now write for international publications as their stories are rarely picked up by mainstream Indian media barring some independent digital news platforms.

Newspapers in Kashmir survive only if they toe the line as they are now entirely dependent on government advertising. Kashmir Times, the oldest English language paper founded by the veteran journalist Ved Bhasin and now run by his daughter Anuradha Bhasin, was forced to shut its Srinagar office when the lease was cancelled without explanation.

The Kashmir Press Club in Srinagar, an important meeting place for journalists, was also arbitrarily closed.

 

Kashmir Press Club. Photo by Quratulain Rehbar

A media policy was put in place in 2020 that would penalise any publication or journalist who reported what the government considered “misleading” or “false”. In other words, nothing critical of government policies or programmes could be reported.

How is any of this different from what happened in the days following the declaration of emergency in June 1975?

Then too, opposition leaders were rounded up and put in jail. Most of them remained in jail for the entire period of the emergency.

The press soon fell silent as press censorship was imposed. Any publication violating censorship “guidelines”, which were frequently revised and updated, faced closure. No one could question the logic of these guidelines. You just had to follow them.

Even if journalists working for prominent newspapers wanted to report what they saw on the ground, they could not as their stories would not have been carried by their own publications. Their only option was to somehow sneak out the information they had collected so that it could be published in the international media.

A pall of fear that fell on the country after the first weeks of the declaration of emergency ensured that no dissent or political activity could take place. Such activity was compelled to go underground. Opponents of the Emergency, who had managed to evade arrest, had to devise ways to communicate without being detected.

For the 20 months that the Emergency lasted, people in one part of the country were unaware of what was happening in other parts. We only knew the full extent of the atrocities that were committed during the period when censorship was lifted, elections were held, and the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government was thrown out.

It will soon be four years since the abrogation of article 370. Have things changed in Kashmir?

Although some political leaders have been released, they have no role in the running of their former state because there is no legislative assembly. Normal political activity, such as public meetings and rallies are impossible to hold.  Political parties are compelled to reach out to their constituents in ways that will not attract the attention of the authorities, people who take direct orders from New Delhi.

And what about the media? Before August 5, 2019, many highly regarded Kashmiri journalists reported for mainstream media houses. Their stories included reports on human rights violations and the views of ordinary people about the situation.  They featured opposition politicians even if their views were unpalatable to those in power in New Delhi.

Today, there is a trickle of news from the region. What we read or watch are stories based on handouts by the security forces, and upbeat write-ups about tourism. It’s as if all the human rights abuses we read about in the past have disappeared.

So, even if a formal state of emergency has not been declared in Jammu and Kashmir, what people in the region have lived through in the last four years is not that different from the Emergency period of 1975-77.

What is more worrying is the absence of outrage in the rest of India about citizens in one part of this country being deprived of their basic democratic rights.

Authoritarianism finds fertile ground when the citizenry is immunised against violations of democratic rights, when people are willing to delude themselves that what happens in one region really cannot happen elsewhere, and when they swallow the propaganda that India remains the “mother of democracy”.

We need to recognise that what has happened in Kashmir is an experiment by this government to see how far they can go to deny citizens their basic rights. Why declare a formal emergency when you can manage without it?

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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.

Is it time to redefine what journalism means?

Broken News

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/09/24/is-it-time-to-redefine-what-journalism-means

At a time when we have witnessed mockery of what we prided in calling ourselves – a parliamentary democracy –  when thousands of farmers are protesting the passing of bills that were rammed through the parliament, when the precious few rights that the Indian working class had have been snatched away by new laws, when Covid-19 continues its deadly dance of death and despair, when incessant rains are bringing even big cities to a standstill, not to speak of remoter areas, what is the big story on India's mainstream electronic media? No prizes for guessing that it continues to be Sushant-Rhea-Kangana-Payal-Anurag and now even Deepika. 

Enough has been said and written about this determined effort of India's mainstream electronic media to keep its gaze firmly on a non-story, defying even the most basic norms of what constitutes journalism.

 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is still hearing arguments in the Sudarshan News case on whether regulation of some kind is needed to rein in electronic media. The outcome will not necessarily solve the problem because the trajectory of the electronic news media in India has gone so far in one direction, based entirely on what sells, that it is difficult to imagine a time when some kind of equilibrium will be restored. 

 

The important question raised by this case, in my view, is whether what appears on channels such as Sudarshan News can even be called journalism. Do such media outlets even pretend to follow any of the ethics, values or principles that one is taught comprise the bedrock of journalism in a democracy? How then can what they broadcast be equated with what appears in media outlets that are still trying to do journalism as it was meant? Should such channels even be considered as journalistic enterprises? Or do we need another term to define them?

 

Also, by pegging our hopes on a ruling about one channel that is at an extreme end of the spectrum, are we missing the larger picture of where journalism stands in India today, and whether it can be set right merely by devising ways to regulate it?

 

I would still argue that a reasonably large section of the print media, the majority of the digital news platforms as well as a handful of TV news channels follow the rules of journalism as we have known them. That the attention-seeking hijinks of the popular TV news channels cannot make us throw up our hands in despair and give up on the project of providing the people of this country fair, objective, coherent, relevant and credible journalism.

 

The real danger to this kind of journalism in India, I would argue, lies not with these TV channels, but primarily with the attitude of this government and its different arms. Just as it has demonstrated its complete disregard for any notion of fairness or established procedure when it comes to the functioning of the parliament, we cannot and should not expect that it will push back in its desire to ensure that the media sings its tune.

 

You only have to witness what has been happening in Kashmir this last year to see how this can, and probably will, happen. Kashmiri journalists have to keep reminding us that journalism is not a crime. Yet, for doing their jobs as journalists, they are being surveilled, harassed, questioned, beaten up and imprisoned in Kashmir.

 

This article by Priya Ramani in Article 14 is a devastating recounting of the way in which the very process of doing their jobs as journalists has been rendered a hazardous occupation in Kashmir. Ramani spoke to a cross-section of journalists in the state, women and men. Journalists told her that they were asked why they didn't do "positive journalism" or when they questioned the actions of the state against journalists, they were told, "Instructions have come from the top”. Bashaarat Masood of the Indian Express said it had become "impossible to report from Kashmir". These are highly qualified, experienced journalists who have worked in the most stressful conditions for years. And this is what they are saying today.

 

Perhaps the most telling quotation is from Qazi Shibli, the founding editor of The Kashmiriyat, a news website. Shibli spent nine months in jail, charged under the Public Safety Act.  He was released in April. He tells Ramani, “They’ve polarised the public of the nation into nationalists and anti-nationals. They've divided us into good journalists who follow their line and bad journalists who don’t.”

 

That just about sums up the state of the media in India today. Those who question, expose, basically just do their jobs and necessarily do not follow "the line" of the government are "bad" journalists, liable to intimidation and even arrest. According to a report by the Rights and Risk Analysis Group released in June, 55 journalists were arrested, booked, summoned, assaulted and threatened during the lockdown that began on March 24. All this for reporting on what was really going on in the country during this pandemic. Of these, 11 were from Uttar Pradesh.

 

The short point is that in the process of defanging every institution that can act as a check on the power of the executive, this government has not spared the media. While the majority of media houses have fallen in line following the slightest nudge, or voluntarily because they are convinced that the current regime is the best thing that could have happened to India, the real price is being paid by individual journalists and the smaller, independent publications and websites that are doing what they are required to do in a democracy. 

 

What happened in the parliament last week is an ominous signal of what more will follow. Even the pretence of following procedures and democratic norms has now been set aside by the government. To hope then that a judgement or some idea of self-regulation will salvage the situation of the Indian media is probably unrealistic.

 

We are witnessing today in Kashmir what the state can do to make the media toe the line without imposing censorship. This is the pattern that will be replicated in the rest of the country, even as exhortations about respecting the freedom of the press will be pronounced from the pulpit.