The India of today: Griping tiger, brazen swagger

By Swapan Dasgupta

To be a successful politician in India, an individual must be blessed with three attributes: the art of listening patiently, the ability to tolerate fools and the skin of a rhinoceros. Most of the successful practitioners of what has come to be a disreputable profession in India normally manage the first two—witness the career graph of Manmohan Singh. However, when it comes to the third, there are too many that falter.

Last month, Mamata Banerjee became a target of derision because she couldn’t countenance the insolence of a farmer who heckled her at a public meeting. He was dubbed a Maoist and spent a week or so cooling his heels in prison.

The man was lucky. On the evening of November 1, 1975, the Government of the day had organised a reception for delegates to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in Delhi’s Red Fort. This being at the height of the Emergency, a group of young men suddenly got up from their seats, shouted a few slogans against the murder of democracy and threw leaflets in the air. The police and some Congress activists rushed in and began rounding up the demonstrators.

According to the Interim Report of the Shah Commission of Inquiry into the Emergency’s excesses, a reporter “saw that one of the demonstrators was caught by the wrist by a lady, who—he later came to know—was Mrs Ambika Soni.” The journalist, in a fit of misplaced meddlesomeness, is said to have told the all-powerful right hand woman of Sanjay Gandhi, “to leave the job of arresting the demonstrators to the police”. Upon seeing this exchange with Soni, “the then SP (CID) came running to the spot and after speaking to Mrs Soni briefly ordered the policemen to arrest” the journalist who was then led away to a police van.

It is said that Soni, on learning that the difficult individual was from the media, asked him: “Don’t you think it was your duty to help me arrest the boy instead of preventing me?” Pat came the reply: “…it was none of your business when the police are there in large numbers.”

This was no way to talk to the head of the Youth Congress. Soni’s reply was terse and to the point: “OK then you go in.” And in he indeed went, detained under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) for nearly nine months.

It is unlikely that the Minister of Information and Broadcasting in Manmohan Singh’s Government would want to be reminded of this incident today. Much has happened in India in the intervening 37 years for anyone to seriously believe that the whimsical highhandedness of the Emergency can ever be repeated. Media insolence has become a feature of contemporary life, despite the consternation of the Establishment. Yet, at odd times the ingrained imperiousness that comes with a hierarchical society resurfaces.

Last week, incensed by a report in Washington Post detailing the falling stock of the Prime Minister,  Soni flew off the handle again. She called the report—which merely replicates what is being said in the domestic media on a daily basis—“yellow journalism” , demanded an abject apology and, failing that, a formal complaint to the US Government. The Prime Minister’s media minders also plugged into the outrage and, given the outburst of ugliness, there could even be a threat to cancel the reporter’s visa.  

There are two issues involved. First, there is an astonishing show of prickliness over anything critical that appears overseas. This suggests a deeply ingrained inferiority complex that most foreigners find deeply amusing. Whereas Chinese xenophobia stems from the country’s upward climb, India’s gripes are centred on either frustration or plain pig-headedness. Somehow we seem to believe that the rest of the world lives to undermine India, its beloved leaders and subvert our pre-destined journey to greatness.

Secondly, despite all claims of treasuring democracy and pluralism, the culture of public discourse remains grounded in assertions, conspiracy theories and sloganeering. The phrase “argumentative Indian” doesn’t imply Indians appreciate arguments. It merely suggests that the country is dotted with rival, unflinching beliefs. Democracy implies irreverence but India dotes on deference. Our politicians mirror society.

Sunday Times of India, September 9, 2012 

Media and the message

By Swapan Dasgupta

I was a student and not living in India during the horrible days of the Emergency. As such, I can’t speak with any measure of authority of the experiences of the experiences of those brave souls who had to encounter the red pen of pig-headed censors. However, the 17 months of press censorship between 1975 and 1977 did have a salutary effect on the Indian media: it made the Fourth Estate fiercely possessive about their democratic rights, enshrined in the Constitution. The attempt by the Rajiv Gandhi Government to enact an insidious law on defamation, for example, was spiritedly opposed by nearly everyone in the media.   

Maybe I am exaggerating in suggesting that everyone in the media opposed every attempt by the Government to impose restrictions on the media. During the Emergency, some powerful media owners went out of their way to oblige the authoritarian regime. They were backed by journalists who saw intrusive official control as a career opportunity. In his recently-published autobiography Beyond the Lines, Kuldip Nayar has supplied sketchy details of the back-stabbing that marked journalistic life in those troubled years. A no-holds-barred account of the media during the Emergency could destroy the reputations of many we have come to view as stalwarts.

Not that it always took an Emergency to put in place an informal but equally insidious system of controls. In the final year of Rajiv Gandhi, the Government tried its utmost to lean heavily on newspapers and journalists who were critical of the regime and who tried to chase up the Bofors story doggedly. Again, during the years of the Ayodhya agitation, a draconian Left-liberal intellectual establishment threw its weight behind a campaign to ensure that the leading newspapers displayed a ‘secular’ bias. I recall a letter to the editor of Times of India signed by a clutch of prominent academics of Delhi suggesting that my articles had no place in the newspaper. In a similar vein, another editor known for his pronounced Left leanings wrote that the writings of Girilal Jain (a former editor of Times of India) should not be published. The main reason why these outrageous demands were disregarded was not that the editorial classes were committed to pluralism—a small handful were—but because the so-called contrarian views were also echoed in the middle classes.

It is also fair to point out that the publications in the Indian languages didn’t always share the political preferences of their English-language counterparts. The vernacular media invariably had their ears closer to the ground.

In the days when the free media meant free press—TV was then a Doordarshan monopoly and internet hadn’t been invented—it was relatively easy for a nervous Government to get its way, even without imposing censorship. Today, the media has grown exponentially and the electronic media has overtaken the print media in many markets. Regulation, under the circumstances, has become more problematic, although the Government’s attempts to exercise control have been unrelenting. Rather than confront the issue with a sledge hammer, intelligent politicians have tried to tame the media with a carrot and stick approach. Obliging media is often preferred with generous government and public sector advertisements; and public sector banks have been known to shower the friendly media with special accommodation, especially in times of economic downturn.

In recent months, the Government has turned its focus on a troublesome social media. Following Anna Hazare’s successful mobilisation in Delhi last year and the exodus of North-eastern people from Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad last month, a section of the political class and officialdom has veered to the view that the destabilising potential of the social media is enormous. Alarmed by reports of the social media’s role in the Tahrir Square mobilisation in Egypt and the London riots of 2010, a shaky political establishment now sees danger in the free flow of information and views on Twitter and Facebook.

The Government’s wariness of anything they can’t comprehend or control is understandable. Less wholesome is the endorsement of regulation and control by a section of the established media.

To the extent that irreverent individuals are inclined to shower TV anchors and award-winning editors with mockery and disrespect and question their biases and motives, it is possible to understand the anger of a media that believes it has a monopoly over correctness. That some of the irreverence is raw, unstructured and built on dubious foundations is also true. But just as bazar talk cannot be regulated or sanitised, it is difficult to sanitise the raw emotions of those on Twitter and Facebook. However, just as they are not accountable to anyone, their rantings are inconsequential until they hit the right nerve.

What the state fears is that unfiltered news may percolate outwards and influence wider judgments. What the established media is afraid of is that their spin of events is too readily being called into question, and in real time. As the Indian media has grown, it has also become less professional and vain. It is this arrogance of believing that it has the monopoly of the public discourse that is propelling many notables into emulating China and endorsing curbs over the free spirit. What they seem to be forgetting that angry messages of anonymous Indians are having an impact because they seem more authentic than the sophistry of the compromised. Democratic rights, after all, can’t be selectively applied.

Deccan Chronicle/ Asian Age, September 7, 2012

The age of intolerance

By Swapan Dasgupta

There are many in the Government who are absolutely chuffed at the ease with which Operation Stop Rushdie was played out. First, the Rajasthan Police (or was it the Central authorities?) informed the organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival that sundry assassins financed by the Mumbai underworld were on the prowl. That ensured Salman Rushdie didn't check-in for his flight to India. Secondly, once it was known that the organizers would use technology to circumvent the unofficial Congress ban on Rushdie, the local hotelier and the organizers were deftly arm-twisted into cancelling the video linkup for fear of violence and police indifference.

Yes, there were voices of liberal outrage at the subversion of democratic freedom. However, since the indignation was confined to a class that rarely bothers to vote, has no worthwhile electoral influence and, if the chairman of the Press Council is to believed, still harbours a colonial mindset, it could be safely ignored in favour of the satisfaction among those who, apart from being more authentic, also control powerful Muslim vote-banks.

What was witnessed last week was cynicism perfected into a fine art by a government that has excelled in the art of subterfuge. Where the regime wants to offset protests against free speech, it does so unapologetically. In Punjab, crowds at a public meeting to be addressed by Rahul Gandhi were compelled to leave their shoes and any black apparel outside the venue for fear that these could become either missiles or black flags. In Jaipur, however, the authorities chose to be cowed down by the threat of small groups of demonstrators. The champions of intolerance won in Jaipur because their victory was facilitated by the might of the state.

Yet, many apologists argue that the events of last week don't necessarily imply any waning commitment to democratic freedoms. Rushdie, it is said, was the exception because his mere mention sends many Muslims into an apoplectic tizzy. And, say the apologists, the timing of the celebrated author's visit was all wrong. If there had been no elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress regimes at the Centre and in Rajasthan may well have been more inclined to showcase India as a place where the bar of intolerance is generously high.

Recent trends suggest otherwise. It is becoming increasingly clear that the kerfuffle over Rushdie was no unfortunate aberration but part of a bid to replace an argumentative society with a regulated democracy where freedom is circumscribed by constant reminders of the limits to freedom.

The attempts to muzzle free speech in the social media and the cyber world can no longer be wished away as obsessive concerns of individual ministers with particularly thin skins. Since September 5 last year, the department of information technology has held five meetings with organizations such as Facebook, Google, Blogspot and Yahoo to force a code of conduct governing their content. It is not that the government is concerned with lewd pictures and pornography. It has demanded that the social media sites "scan and screen/filter the content hosted on their websites for objectionable content about Constitutional authorities, council of ministers in Centre/states, political leadership, public authorities and disable them on their own or as and when brought to their knowledge in writing by an authorized representative of such authorities." A public interest litigation protesting the "damage (to) the secular fabric of India" is also before the Delhi High Court.

In plain language, the government is demanding the right of pre-censorship of all potentially "objectionable content" relating to public life and politics--a demand that has striking resemblance to the censorship practiced by the authorities in China.

It is, of course, possible to dismiss these moves as trivial concerns that will affect a minority of internet loonies who are unaware of the niceties of parliamentary decorum. The only problem is that when the right to determine what is objectionable is given to people who are unaffected by the charms of pluralism, the consequences can be very dangerous. The Rushdie affair last week has vividly demonstrated that for a section of the political class, the right to offend does not count as a permissible freedom. India is being forced into a mental straitjacket.

Sunday Times of India, January 27, 2012