Afia Ambreen
“India is going through an aggressive variant of McCarthyism against the media.”(Prannoy Roy, co-founder of NDTV)
India has constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and by some measures the biggest and most diverse media industry in the world. But journalists there say they are increasingly facing intimidation aimed at stopping them from running stories critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration. According to reports at least three senior editors have left their jobs at various influential media outlets in the past six months after publishing reports that angered the government or supporters of Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Some reporters, as well as television anchors, have told they have been threatened with physical harm, abused on social media and ostracized by Modi’s administration. It is worth mentioning that Congress leader P Chidambaram during the launch of his book of his book ‘Fearless in opposition – Power and Accountability’ has already claimed that there was a “pervasive, systematic and infringed control” over the owners of media by the Narendra Modi government. He said, “Today, believe me, there is all pervasive, systematic infringed control over the owners of the media. You talk to any journalist in Delhi, they will tell you that. Stories are simply killed. This is a serious problem.”
Some journalists in India say they believe media freedoms are now under even more threat in the run-up to an election due next year. There have been some signs of increasing opposition to Modi’s economic policies and to the BJP’s muscular Hindu nationalism. In this context, nearly two months after Cobrapost first reported how some media houses were prepared to strike business deals to promote the Hindutva agenda and help polarise voters in the run up to the 2019 elections, the website has released a second batch of video recordings shot surreptitiously by an undercover reporter that shows managers and owners of some of the largest newspapers and TV channels succumbing to the same package of Hindutva advertorials. Cobrapost said that the recordings it made showed how some two dozen news organizations were willing to “not only cause communal disharmony among the citizens but also tilt the electoral outcome in favour of a particular party” for a price.
It is claimed that none of the business representatives of the media houses like Dainik Jagran, Khabar, SAB group, Daily News and Analysis, UNI, 9X Tashan, Samachar Plus, HNN 24×7, Swatantra Bharat, ScoopWhoop, Rediff.com, IndiaWatch, Aaj and Sadhna Prime News etc. seemed to consider it problematic that a client wanted to use their platform to influence the upcoming election to polarize voters and tarnish the reputation of opposition leaders mainly on communal grounds. The portal said that the media groups agreed to play these because ‘sangathan’ has set aside a budget of Rs. 742 crores for the Karnataka elections alone. It was also revealed that about Rs. 8,000 crores were spent for media management in the last general elections; and that the budget for the 2019 polls will be even more.
Moreover, in its annual World Press Freedom Index released earlier this year, the Paris based Reporters Without Borders said that India was now 138th-ranked in the world out of 180 countries measured, down two positions since 2017 and lower than countries like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan and Myanmar. When the index was started in 2002, India was ranked 80th out of 139 countries surveyed. Reporters Without Borders said that “with Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national’ thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media and journalists are increasingly the targets of online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals.”
The control over media today is unparalleled. But the more damaging development has been the role of the mainstream media in the face of government attempts to muzzle it. This is an extraordinary level of submissiveness displayed by the media. This must also be read in the context of the largest democracy’s abysmal ranking in the World Press Freedom Index. Last year, India ranked 133 out of 180 countries. And this year, it has declined to 136. While all governments, in varying degrees, try to muzzle free speech or physically intimidate journalists, what is radically different under the Modi dispensation is the wider climate of intolerance fostered by the combustible combination of religion and nationalism aided by state power. This has led to unprecedented attacks against religious minorities on accusations like possessing/eating beef or the killings of those who are critics of the government.
In a nutshell, dissent and criticism of government has been construed as an anti-national activity clearly demonstrated by the 40 sedition cases filed in 2016. A film “wrongly” depicting a mythical Hindu queen has caused a nation-wide storm including a death threat to its makers and actors. Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national’ thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media” When the largest democracy in the world, and the oldest one in the Global South, displays authoritarian tendencies betraying the promise of its founding fathers, it has implications beyond India.
