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| Rama Chandra Guha, free-thinker, author and historian |
Ram Chandra
Guha, a free-thinker, author and a historian who has authored numerous books on
Indian History and random societal matters, recently enumerated eight reasons
why Indians cannot speak freely. He says India is a 50-50 democracy. It is
democratic only in a few respects and it is not so in many other respects. He
says the country is free in respect of conduct of free and fair elections and
movement within the country. It is, however, only partly democratic in other
ways. “The democratic deficit” that largely occurs is in the area of freedom of
expression.
According to
him, there are eight ways freedom of expression is being threatened. Analysing
the whole gamut of connected issues, Guha cites retention of archaic British-era
laws, a faulty judicial system where the lower courts, particularly, are too
eager to entertain petitions seeking ban on individual films, books and a
variety of works of art, the rise of identity politics, especially of the
regional kind, behavior of the police force which generally sides with the
“goondas”, pusillanimity of the ruling class in decision making, particularly
when votes are at stake and dependence of the media on the government for
advertisements as some of the ways in which freedom of expression has been
brought under threat, even curtailed.
Guha’s
analysis is unexceptionable. I have purposely not dilated on all the ways that
he thinks freedom of expression is being denied in the following paragraphs only
to keep this discourse short. I, however, wish to write about the last one as
it has hit me, and I am sure many others, at a personal level. I find myself in
tune with the last one as I have experienced the denial of my right of expressing
my views on local and other wider issues.
I am a casual writer and took to writing after
retirement from the Government of India. To start with, the lack of civic
amenities in Bhopal provoked me to write letters to the editor of the Central
Chronicle, then the only English language newspaper in Bhopal with substantial
local content but with limited circulation. In those early days I had no
computer and I used to bang away on my portable typewriter the deficiencies in
performance of the civic body. Twenty years ago the public bodies and other
utilities were far more inept than they are today and there was much to write
about. Most of the times the letters would not have any effect but some would
go home and yield some results. That itself gave a great deal of satisfaction.
The postal system was reasonably good in those
days and my letters to the Central Chronicle on local issues would get
published within two or three days. The ones that I used to send on wider
issues to The Statesman in Calcutta would take five or six days to be published
if the newspaper’s editor, the venerable Mr. CR Irani, happened to put his seal
of approval on it. I was gratified to see that some of my letters would
occasionally lead the letters column on the Centre Page of the Statesman. That
was a huge matter for me, and I would indulge in some slapping of my own back.
The electronic media had till then not made the kind of inroads in the area of
journalism as it has done now. The Statesman was then in a healthy state and
used to be published from New Delhi and Calcutta and its Centre Page
occasionally used to carry letters of readers in two whole columns
Soon the
Hindustan Times came to town. And, perhaps, simultaneously, I acquired a
desktop that made writing far easier. The newspaper had a four page city
supplement which used to cover political, social news as also news from the
world of fine arts and sports. Its editor, Askari Zaidi was a fantastic journalist
who had a different kind of take on journalism. He once happened to tell me that he thought
that the newspaper and the city would gain and become richer if the local
thinking people were given a platform. And he did that and, as far as I am
concerned, there was never an occasion when my piece did not find the light of
day in the Supplement.
He, therefore, published articles from Late
Mahesh Buch, Kripal Dhillon, former DG Police who was hugely concerned about
the deteriorating quality of life in the city, Prof. Zamiruddin Ahmed who has a
flair for writing in English as well as Urdu, RJ Khurana, retired chief of
Joint Intelligence Committee of Government of India and so on. I too joined
them and my first article entitled “The Dying Lake”, a hard copy of which I
left at Zaidi’s office, was promptly published. I had written the piece as
somehow the Lake appeared to me to be degrading and decaying. Mr. Zaidi
published it with photographs and all. It was an out and out criticism of the
way the Upper Lake, a great asset of the city, was being managed.
My honeymoon
with the Hindustan Times continued for more than five years till, sadly, Mr.
Zaidi had to leave. Since then the editorial policy changed and the newspaper
would not publish unsolicited articles. Even the Times of India, which later
started publishing from the town, adopted the same policy. At that time it was
not clear whether this posture of the newspapers was adopted of their own
accord or the management received directions from the local government. Now,
however, it seems the print media is under threat of losing government
advertisements were it ever to publish comments and opinion pieces that happen
to be against the government.
So we, all of us who happen to have opinions
of our own and can ventilate them in our writings were effectively gagged. For
some time I was terribly annoyed and peeved but could do nothing about it. People
who used to read my columns would ask why I discontinued writing. I could only
shrug my shoulders and say that my lips were effectively sealed. Sadly, the
healthy Bhopal supplement that Hindustan Times used to bring out was scrapped
and in its place what they came out with was nothing better than a rag. The
same goes for the supplement of the Times of India which goes by the name of
Bhopal Live – having more of Bollyood news than of Bhopal.
Print media,
whether managed by corporate world or run on their own juice, are financially
very vulnerable. While private sector ads seem to be running riot these days
yet most of the papers hugely depend on government advertisements. Government
is, therefore, a great beneficent for the promoters of print media. Scarce is a
newspaper that cares little for the government ads. The net result is that a
reader has no way to have his opinion published. Most people would have noticed
that even the column of “letters to the editor” has been scrapped. What has been provided is space for a measly
few words through what they call “feedback”. So, even if on an issue one boils
within with rage or gnashes one’s teeth one cannot communicate it to the people
through opinion pieces or letters to the editor
Guha very
rightly says that the dependence of media on government advertisements is
especially “acute in the regional and sub-regional press. The state and
political parties can and do coerce, suppress and put barriers in the way of
independent reporters and reportage.” Quite logically, therefore, the
guillotine fell on us and we were all gagged, our freedom of expression flying
out of the window.
*Photo from internet
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