Today NDTV,tomorrow WHO ?

Let me begin this piece with an obituary picked up from an article by Ashok Mahadevan in Reader’s Digest (date changed).

O’CRACY,D.E.M., beloved husband of T.Ruth, loving father of L.I.Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justicia, died on November,9

It was meant to draw the attention of world at large to the prevailing stifling smog of dread and distrust hovering heavily over a nation suffocating under Emergency. To hoodwink censors the text was morphed and, says the writer, surreptitiously inserted in TOI. Today, I have chosen to reproduce it as nothing better describes the depth of my dismay, distress and deep anguish at I & B ministry’s punitive direction to NDTV to be off air on 9^th November and as because the freedom to overtly rebel and bewail assaults on right to expression and information still exists. Tomorrow, maybe not. Already, a debate has germinated whether questioning or doubting state action or failing to be supportive of it is sedition qualifying for quarantine in Pakistan, or in the least, to be pointed out and stigmatised as anti-national. No less than Mr Kiren Rijiju, an Hon. Minister of State adds mite to this debate by defining what does not constitute right culture at Home;

“We should stop this habit of raising doubt, questioning the authorities and the police. This is not good culture”.

So, there is a present and imminent danger of such thoughts mainstreaming. Having breathed the malodorous air of Emergency, even a whiff of censorship in any form, be it dress, food, the choice of slogans, access to information, or religious practices, raises hackles and makes one cry wolf. The Hon minister more than ruffles feathers, in fact, strikes at the very roots of democracy- right to question. I see not a whiff but a gale of authoritarianism and thought policing reminiscent of Joseph Goebbels’s infamous Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda aiming for ‘Gleichschaltung’, achievement of uniformity. The world has moved more than 30 years past 1984., and here we have a state still striving to suppress ‘deviant’ views.

Before Mr Rijiju’s proselytising zeal for true culture ensnares us all into re-defining democracy, it may be worthwhile to bear in mind how USA’s founding fathers of democracy conceptualised the term.

“The duty of a patriot is to protect the country from its government”, Thomas Paine

“It is the first duty of every citizen to question its government “, Benjamin Franklin

Though the Americans have done well for themselves living by this understanding of the term, the current ruling elite in our country have turned a page different  from them or reading some other book.

And what a rotten day to sound ‘quietus’ - 9/11.Granted 9/11 occurred on 11^th Sep but the ban on 9^th Nov is too numerologically close to invoking dark memories of 9/11. If an important edifice of global democracy -twin towers of World Trade Centre was obliterated on the American and 9/11 and Democracy served its heaviest blow since Pearl Harbour. .Is GOI’s intending something similar on Indian 9/11,an equally grievous blow to Indian democracy ?

The unease with the ban arises primarily from what it shows up in bold relief- covert building up of a paradigm of non-acceptable forms of information seeking, expression and speech in public discourse, social interactions and media projections. Information on security operations,surgical strikes, excesses committed by security forces, violations of human rights by armed forces, or pointing out lapses in policing of army camps in JK that lead to its repeated breaches by terrorists, is now deemed prejudicial to national security. Security is truly a daintier damsel in distress in peace times than she was in war. Today a touch and she stumbles. Caricaturing and lampooning are non-approved expressions, more so, if it relates to prominent political personages from the establishment. Chorusing of Bharat Mata ki Jai is sought to be made mandatory. 

An ‘Outlook’ editor gets the sack for an expose on RSS. P. Chidambaran’s interview is spiked by NDTV because it asked questions of surgical strikes.  Reporters of ‘Scroll’, an online magazine get jailed in MP for raising inconvenient questions about anti- Naxal operations by forces. Such instances have multiplied alarmingly. 

That channels will discuss to eternity a shoe flung at Rahul Gandhi, interviewing and focussing on the ‘hero’, but not find time to debate alleged fake encounter killings of SIMI fugitives of Bhopal jail or the mysterious disappearance of a student at JNU can’t all be incidental. It stinks of an unholy nexus between the media and the state, the durban feasting with the thief. The fourth estate has voluntarily entered a self- imposed regimen of doing the bidding of the state under editorial prodding of its owners whose sympathies unabashedly lie with the ruling elite.One fears the Nazi dictum of who controls expression controls the people being actualized.

Why then should a need arise to single out NDTV for ‘treatment’. Let’s defer this question for a while. First why the ban is rotten. GOI has powers under Sec 20 of  Cable Television Networks Regulation Act 1995, to prohibit transmission of any channel in the interest of security. And as Venkiah Naidu says, GOI took TV channels off air 21 times during UPA regime. Right, yet I see three gaping holes in state’s justification. 

First, competitive sinning is not NDA’s popular mandate. People voted this government for change ,not perpetuation. So ‘me too’ is poor politics. Secondly, those UPA instances relate to broadcast of adult content, easily spotted. On the hand, NDTV case is a first-of-its-kind penalty for what essentially is, in the subjective judgment of GOI, prejudicial to security of the nation. What is porn is porn indisputably; the ideological predilections of a regime decide whether it goes on screen or not. But what is prejudicial to security is a subjective assessment in the absence of actual harm or damage hence pregnant with alluring possibilities for abuse for partisan ends. The state should not be the sole arbiter of subjective judgements in matters relating to a the fourth pillar of democracy. Precisely for this reason there exists a state recognised self-regulatory body, Broadcast Editors Association, duly constituted under the relevant government guidelines, for oversight of visual media. TV does not have a statutory regulator like the Press Council of India for print, hence the Editors Guild fills in. For reasons, best known to it, the state ignored it. That’s what makes the order bad and capricious.

 Lastly, government failed to rebut NDTV assertion that "its coverage was sober, and did not carry any information that had not been covered by the rest of the media and was not in the public domain”. Another channel ‘News Times Assam’ too is ordered off the air on the same date for a footage that some other channels also aired. Discriminate brandishing of state power is ominous for democracy. Putting all together it is crystal clear that the order smacks of malafidy and arbitrariness with the intent to put nooses on 'errant' channels.

Now the why NDTV. NDTV (Hindi) is the one channel that has held alternate viewpoints on several policies and events, at times embarrassing the government and its ministers. One can find no other reason for government picking on NDTV while condoning others for identical infraction. Obviously i t is being arm twisted to toe the government line and no other. Dissonace with official views is no reason to snuff it out a news channel. If democracy can’t live with dissent, debate and ambiguity what will ? Intolerance is not only bad governance in a functioning democracy ,it is suicidal for the social fabric of a pluralistic nation.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism, Thomas Jefferson rightly said. Uniformity of thought -my way or the highway, is anathema to democracy. It follows that state must enable citizens to do its patriotic duty of creating various shades of opinion based on unimpeded access to all sources of information including media channels. The state has no inherent right to paint the nation only in black and white, it must allow for shades of grey. As citizens, we too need to be reminded that eternal vigilance is the price we must pay for preserving our individual liberties. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. I agree, Mr Desmond Tutu

These words of Pastor, Martin Niemoller resonate with me as I see its increasing relevance in the present state of the nation.

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.