The first sign a government is losing its nerve

In my book, one of the first tell-tale symptoms of a government losing its nerve is when it starts attacking news media.

Indira Gandhi’s abuse of the press started almost a year before the Emergency and censorship were imposed. She, and her hatchet-men, held the press (only newspapers then) responsible for all the bad news about her government as India’s economy collapsed under the weight of the 1971 war effort, but even more so, crushed by the sheer stupidity of the fake socialist assault unleashed by those in her charmed, crimson circle, who had all meanwhile carved out for themselves and their progeny the finest slices of real estate in what they saw as India’s Kremlin: Shanti Niketan, Vasant Vihar, Sundar Nagar and so on in Delhi, while condemning the rest of us to the tyranny of the DDA, which I rather call the Delhi Destruction Authority.

Any media criticism was dismissed as capitalist propaganda against a revolutionary “garibi hatao” government shaking up the old feudal status quo. Some national newspapers were dismissed as jute, or drawing from that, predictably, ‘jhoot‘ press. This was a pun on the fact that some of the prominent owners, including Ramnath Goenka of the Indian Express, had old jute mills in their family business portfolios. But none was spared. Capitalist was made synonymous with foreign-hand, foreign-hand with CIA, and by implication any criticism of Indira or her policies was anti-national or unpatriotic. Even the genteel Hindustan Timeswas made to fire its even more genteel editor BG Verghese (so genteel, in fact, that just about a year under him, and I fled to India Today, out of sheer boredom as all he wanted from the Northeast were stories on its natural fabrics, butterflies and river transport rather than the insurgencies then raging there). His “crime”: daring to criticise India’s integration of Sikkim within itself, which he called annexation. The annexation of Sikkim and Indira’s annoyance was just before the Emergency.

Back in power in 1980, Indira Gandhi turned on the media again halfway through her term, calling it anti-national for its coverage of the Nellie killings in Assam while the Non-Aligned Summit was on in Delhi and, specifically, India Today magazine later for a major investigative story I had done, exposing Indian sponsorship of Sri Lankan Tamil rebel camps in our Tamil Nadu. This marked her government going downhill, and it would most likely have lost in 1984 but for the sympathy wave following her assassination changing everything.

Check again what Rajiv does to tell us he was losing grip? Classic old shoot-the-messenger, or at least try to. He unleashed his so-called anti-defamation bill, raided critical newspapers, orchestrated trouble by their unions, but continued going downhill. Later, even the Vajpayee government displayed the same trait, selectively attacking the media, particularly Outlookmagazine, for causing it discomfort.

Even the formidable and thick-skinned The Indian Express, which I then edited, was hit by repeated visitors from CBI demanding to know the source of the so-called Judeo Tapes we had published in 2003. The ones in which the senior BJP MP and minister was seen on camera accepting five lakhs in cash making that immortal statement: “paisa Khuda to nahin, par Khuda ki kasam, Khuda se kum bhi nahin” (money is not God, but by God, it is no less than God). It took us a lot of skill, and hours spent with a very patient genius, Fali Nariman, dealing with that.

 

Four points thus get established beyond doubt:

1. The first indication that a government is losing nerve or grip is when it starts blaming and targeting the media.

2. That it never succeeds in subduing the bringers of bad news. It never could, not fully even in the Emergency. Now, with technology causing such anarchic democratisation, establishments can pretty much go to hell.

3. A war on the news media causes any government terrible, often terminal, damage. It does no real harm to the media, besides some short-term pain, harassment and inconvenience. In the end, journalists emerge with heroism, enhanced by the halo of statedadagiri.

4. It still doesn’t stop any government from trying this. Or maybe it is just a chronic, unsuppressable basic instinct with establishments.

The latest notices by the new bully-fied I&B Ministry to news channels seeking explanation for their coverage of the Yakub hanging follows the same predictable pattern. These should be ignored. Nobody should bother explaining anything because no news media organisation reports to any government. And, media should be united.

And, also introspect. Why does the government dare to send these notices to TV channels but not to the print media, which also has sections deeply critical of the hanging, giving space exactly to the same voices that government objects to on TV? Has TV media made itself specially vulnerable to sarkari interference? Does it go to the I&B Ministry too often seeking clearances, favours, discretionary benefits? Electronic media bodies are much stronger than in print – it is well nigh impossible to collect the Editors Guild for an executive meeting for months, compare that with the efficiency of Broadcasters’ Associations.

But are they only united by their commercial concerns rather than issues of editorial freedom? And if not, why did none of them make an issue when the Union Home Ministry denied security clearance to Maran-owned Sun Group’s channels just because there were cases of financial impropriety against them? Whatever their crimes, this is an issue of media freedom. It slips in the notion of licensing in a diabolical, Stalinist manner. And because we don’t protest, the state thinks we are scared and moves in for the kill, and even better if it can invoke national security or interest, backed by social media fascism.

Which is precisely what it is doing now. It will still fail. But we can help it fail faster by dismissing these notices with contempt, and then learning to speak out for freedom of the press for all, and not merely when we are targeted.