When you were only asked to bend”, said LK Advani, the new Information Minister, “you chose to crawl”. The taunt addressed to the Indian Press in general was well deserved. It would not, however, be true to suggest that the Press collapsed suddenly on the declaration of the Emergency. It was a long softening-up process which began as far back as 1969, but that is history. Suffice it to say that with the connivance and support of Indian newspapermen and Indian newspapers, Indira Gandhi was able to impose on this country a vicious and totally mindless censorship.
She had the effrontery to suggest that a Code of Ethics had been framed by journalists themselves and which she, as a good citizen (sic), was trying to enforce. There were in her camp and on the periphery Indian journalists and newspapermen who set themselves up as “interpreters” and “defenders” of the Emergency and who tried to persuade those of us who resisted that it was futile to do so and the interests of our newspapers required that we be “reasonable”, “flexible” and show “some understanding of the situation” in which the country was placed.
The climate of fear did not follow the Emergency. Fear was in the hearts of Indian journalists and newspapermen like other citizens well before 25 June 1975. Indeed, one could say that if it had not been for this pre-existing climate of fear, Gandhi could not have got away with what she did.
The advent of the Janata government
The new government were off the mark very quickly to dismantle the more obvious shackles that kept the Indian Press in thrall. Censorship was given up; the highly objectionable Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matters Act, which had been given constitutional protection, was summarily removed from the statute book. Newspapers were once again free to report parliamentary proceedings freely and fully.
These actions earned the respect of the Press, both within the country and overseas, and the government, elected on a mandate of restoring civil liberties and basic human rights, got full credit for going about their business in right earnest. The International Press Institute complimented the government in full measure on the steps they had taken.
It is now exactly 19 months since the new government came to power, equal in point of time to the duration of the Emergency. It is also long enough to take stock of the situation and try and ascertain where exactly the Press stands in the Indian situation today.
Advani also said that the Press did not “even rattle their chains, let alone try to break them”. Are there any chains that still bind the Press today? The answer must, with great regret, be that there are a number of such chains and it is no satisfaction that some have been fashioned by the government and that too with the connivance of journalists and newspapers themselves.
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Control of the Press
It was a very perceptive British commentator who said during the Emergency: “Make no mistake about it. Control of the Press is central to Mrs. Gandhi’s dictatorship”. Central to the control of the Press was control of the news agencies. The PTI and UNI, the two principal news agencies, were forcibly merged into one – Samachar. The boards of both organisations were bullied into opting for a “voluntary merger”.
The trade union organisations of journalists and non-journalist employees passed resolutions supporting the merger and the formation of Samachar. Newspapermen helped the government out of the dilemma of how to set up Samachar by suggesting that a cooperative society be organised and this society merely act on behalf of PTI and UNI under delegated authority. The society, Samachar, was then handed over to the highly articulate Special Envoy of the then Prime Minister, with the connivance of newspapermen, and the result was entirely predictable.
Samachar sank so low as to lose all credibility. It reached one of its lowest depths when it sent out a long story in November 1976; the objective was to declare that elections were redundant and that the people did not want them. The story referred to a “nation-wide survey” made by “crews of Samachar reporters trekking the towns and villages in high hills and flat plains who took the pulse of hundreds of men and women from the heights of Kashmir to the coasts of Kerala, from salubrious Shillong to sun-baked Bikaner, where they interviewed countless people from different strata of society in all corners of India” and came to the conclusion that “the country did not want elections and wanted to consolidate the gains of the Emergency”.
Apparently not so long afterwards, the unanimous vote of the Indian people as discovered by Samachar was set aside and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered elections. It is conduct of this nature that must have prompted Justice Tulzapurkar, who now adorns the Supreme Court, to question in a memorable judgment in the Bombay High Court, whether “freedoms were being reserved for the cringing and the craven”.
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The Press and credibility
Credibility was a major casualty. The sole news agency, Samachar, had no credibility. All India Radio lost what little credibility it had, and directed at the instance of Gandhi, addressing a meeting of Station Directors of All India Radio in September 1975, disposed of this question of credibility very quickly.
She declared, “Quite honestly, I do not know what (credibility) means. Who has credibility? The newspapers, who day in and day out print falsehoods?” The double talk and double think proceeded apace.
Very soon, at the non-aligned conference held in New Delhi, the then government put its collective prestige to a report published for the benefit of the participants where it was stated, “While the government authority in India keeps itself scrupulously away from the functioning of the Press, the initiative taken by it has considerably helped the growth of the Press, spatially and in depth. The Press in India has been the beneficiary of several official measures and its freedom of operation has been singularly free from any type of interference.”
By that time, Gandhi had tried unsuccessfully to browbeat “The Statesman” and the “Indian Express” into submission and to try and destroy a number of publications which stood their ground and hit back when necessary. Among them were Raj Mohan Gandhi’s “Himmat”, N G Goray’s “Janata”, Thatte’s “Sadhana”, A D Gorwala’s “Opinion” and Minoo Masani’s “Freedom First”.
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Economic pressures
A financially strong newspaper is not necessarily a good and independent newspaper, but the converse is not true. A good independent newspaper expressing strong views is not a possibility if it is not financially viable. Gandhi understood this very well. She issued instructions during the Emergency that not only government departments but the large number of public sector corporations and autonomous bodies should not advertise in “The Statesman” and the “Indian Express”.
Three secret circulars were issued to this effect. When challenged in court by “The Statesman”, her government disclosed a memorandum from which the three circulars flowed. This Memorandum presumed to give the government the authority to fix the advertising rates for newspapers, to decide which newspapers were to be used for which advertising campaign, and how much advertising was to be given to each newspaper.
This memorandum, signed by K N Prashad, V C Shukla’s “hatchet man” in the Information Ministry, was the government’s charter to financially cripple the ‘inconvenient’ newspapers. After the Emergency, Prashad went, but his memorandum remained. For a whole year, I personally tried to convince the new government that this memorandum was unworthy of its intentions and should be given up.
While reassuring noises were heard, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry worked overtime to go much farther than Gandhi and actually fix the advertisement rates for different newspapers. To Advani belongs the distinction of being the first Information Minister to insert in the government’s Advertising Policy itself the reference to a rate structure for advertisement. The so-called rate-structure has not been disclosed, and nobody knows whether it exists. One is only left to face its consequences.
In the case of “The Statesman” the rate presumed to be fixed by the government is approximately two-thirds of the rate established in the market for the past two years. At the same time, under government encouragement, all expenses — in particular, labour costs — have risen steeply. As an exercise in irresponsible populism, it may earn a few votes today, but nobody is convinced that this implies any real commitment to a free Press.
Finally, after a year’s efforts, “The Statesman” and the “Ananda Bazar Patrika” took the issue to court. Without a hearing, the Prashad Memorandum was withdrawn, but the matter is still sub judice. The latest is that at “The Statesman’s” instance, the evidence given by the new government before the Estimates Committee of Parliament has been called for by the court to enable it to decide the issues raised in the petition properly.
It is “The Statesman’s” contention that the evidence, when produced, will directly contradict statements made on behalf of the government in a sworn affidavit in court. It is no answer to suggest that bureaucrats everywhere wish to hang on to powers they have acquired without bothering too much about whether the powers have been properly acquired or not. Surely, this is where purposeful political direction is necessary; otherwise, we would not need ministers.
When we add to this more echoes of the past like dissatisfaction with ownership patterns and threats of diffusion and delinking, one wonders whether the difference in the attitude of the present government compared to its predecessor is only one of methods and not of objectives.
One must be fair and say that it is unrealistic to expect any executive government anywhere to be fond of the Press because if the Press is doing its duty it will irritate, question and put in their place both politicians and bureaucrats when they step out of line. No executive government can be expected to jump for joy when it is criticised in newspapers.
Therefore, one must expect continuing efforts by governments everywhere to seek to retain levers of influence, if not outright control, over the Press. It is the duty of the Press to stand firm and to resist both inducements and threats.
This essay is part of a series from the Indian Liberals archive, a project of the Centre for Civil Society. This essay is excerpted from the booklet Freedom First with the title “Is The Press In India Really Free?”, which was published in January 1979. The original version can be accessed here.