South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #2 | 20 Dec., 2004 via: www.sacw.net
[1] India: Media is the medium of Communal "KHAUF" in Gujarat (Digant Oza)
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MEDIA IS THE MEDIUM OF COMMUNAL "KHAUF" IN GUJARAT
by Digant Oza
"Are you sure it is safe to organize harmony program with Ramkathakar Morari Bapu in Juhapura (Ahmedabad) notorious as Mini Pakistan ? Vishwa Hindu Parished and Hinduvavadis would allow it to pass peacefully?
Was the question faced by the group of NGOs who had ventured to organize an event to jointly celebrate Dev Diwali, Idd and Guru Nanak Jayanti on 26th of November in the so called "Border" across Juhapura and Vejalpur Areas of Ahmedabad. It was a first step by a Hindu religious celebrity to reach out to the minority communities.
However, the gereral atmosphere in the city was so created by earlier Media reporting that even the activists themselves were not sure about the outcome of what they had thoughtfully organized.
On 19th of Nov. Crime branch of Gujarat Police told the local Court that there is No case against pota lawyers and on 23rd Nov. the senior Advocate H.N. Zala alsong with his juniors are arrested. What does it mean? Is the crime branch of Gujarat Police lying? Were they misleading the Court while spreading reign of terror, was the question in the minds of so many who were the readers of Local Newspapers.
Needless to say that the POTA has been misused ever since its enactment through out the country, now it is the turn of lawyers to face the terror of POTA, more particularly those who are defending the accused under POTA. The arrest of senior lawyer of Gujarat High Court H.N.Jhala and his colleague Mustaq Ali Saiyed has sent a shockwave in legal fraternity to Gujarat. It is a threat to all lawyers defending POTA accused, and yet print media went on publishing stories after stories, without any crosschecking, which were dished out by the crime branch of Gujarat police to colour a senior Advocate as Anti-national and Criminal Consperator.
The arrest of the lawyers under POTA is absolutely unconstitutional, illegal, malafide and aimed at terrorizing the legal fraternity and therefore, we strongly condemn the arrest of the lawyers under charges of POTA and demand their immediate release and withdrawal of charges of POTA said a communiqu� by the same High Court Advocate Association which till yesterday were adopting resolution condemning supreme Court of India for transferring Best Bakery case out side Gujarat State.
Time and the compulsions of life have dissipated the fires of hatred in Gujarat. But the editorial ire of the English press is still raging, prodding them to send squads of news dogs to sniff relics of the old rivalry and report cases of fresh villainy threatening what S Jaipal Reddy pompously calls the secular fabric of the country discovered by Jawaharlal Nehru. Every day, leader writers, commentators and analysts remind the reader of the real nature of our polity, our society and our press. Obviously, their thirst for bad news is unquenchable.
Riot after riot, the press repeats the performance of our parliamentarians who stall business in both Houses of Parliament to prioritise religious issues. Like the sandhya vandanam for the Brahmin, the editorial parrots must chant the hate mantra every day. Paradoxically, what troubles the English press does not trouble the language press. Less secular? Asked Dasu Krishnamoorty on the net called rediff. It was April 26, 2002.
The media's love for religion came in for criticism by the Press Council of India, which always included several leading journalists. Pained by the new trend of conflictual journalism, the Council pilloried the most venerable English newspaper in the country and its editor for its reporting of the Delhi riots of 1984.
The, fundamental objective of journalism is to serve the people with news, views, comments and information on matters of public interest, in a fair, accurate, unbiased, sober and decent manner. Over the years, the press has become so powerful that, it has soon acquired unique status of "Fourth Estate". It is supposed to playa key role and a crucial role of a watchdog, to see that the other three institutions "Legislature, Executive, Judiciary" function fairly within the constitutional framework and serve the people for whose welfare they were created said Justice K. J. Reddy, at the "Time of turmoil Godhra and After" while discussing the Role of Media at the Inaugural function of Indian First Foundation on April 6, 2002.
Justice Reddy further said, As a fourth organ the press has also the responsibility (rather the most important responsibility) to help build the nation, to implement objectives of the Constitution and to promote social justice and equality, stability and unity and peace, progress and happiness to the society at large. The freedom that the media enjoys is the freedom for and on behalf of the society. Media plays the role of communicator and as such it has to inform and not to misinform, dis-inform or non-inform the people on issues of vital importance. It has to educate, motivate, persuade and entertain. They must have their fingers on the pulse of the people and has a pious obligation not to jeopardise or harm the welfare of the society. Mahatma Gandhi said "The newspaper/press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges the whole country side and devastates crops even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy".
In the midsts of the experiences of missing social respon sibility of the media, One needs to see the performance of Gujarat media in last three years. Gujarat riots raised many issues. Rakesh Gupta of center for political studies in JNU, while discussing communalism asked several questions thru Asianaffairs. Rakesh Gupta questions : First, is India moving away from a liberal political community, let alone liberal democratic community, to a bizarre fascist society and not the Anarchical Society that Gandhi had visualized for the poor? Second, why have those generations that were behind Sanatanic but secular Gandhi failed to regenerate the same Hindu ethos of tolerance, despite the caste rigidity? Third, what has happened to the different strata of Gujarati middle classes that are mute spectators to this fearsome, diabolic design and dance of death? Fourth, what is the local media doing? Fifth, is this premeditated or not? Sixth, what happened to the state of India, its police and its army? Seventh, in the current phase of globalized liberalization in India, who needs endemic communal conflagration and to what end? Eight, whatever happened to the morals and ethics of a cultural milieu and the state is its self-proclaimed purpose? Last but not the least, what has happened to the constitutional right to life? These issues relate to the matters of the state, civil society, cultural communities, citizenship and democracy. Answers to these cannot be found in this brief exercise. But Rakeshbhai should know that No one is bothered about such issues, these days.
PUCL and Shanti Abhiyan, two NGO's in Baroda which undertook a brief analysis for the period Feb 28 to March 24, 2002, gave a report under the caption "THE ROLE OF NEWSPAPERS DURING THE GUJARAT CARNAGE" in the report PUCL and Shanti Abhiyan says, "The purpose of our analysis was to find out how the local press presented the riots to the readers. The report further said : "Gujarat has been ravaged by unprecedented violence since 27th February sending shockwaves all over the country. The spell of genocide that followed the Godhra massacre have seen newspapers playing a significant role in the long spiral of violence. Shanti Abhiyan and PUCL (People's Union For Civil Liberties), two Baroda-based organisations have been following the vernacular press as well as the English newspapers to analyse news reportage throughout this period.
Discussing the role of Local Newspapers the report observed, "According to our above framework, the Gujarati newspaper Sandesh, (Baroda) has crossed all limits of responsible journalism and has been at its inflammatory best. While it is difficult to give an exact translation of the articles and news reports that have appeared in the newspaper we have selected a few reports and summarised them in <http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Religion-communalism/2002/gujarat-media.htm#annex>Annexure. As Shanti Abhiyan and PUCL have formed a few fact-finding teams, it has been possible for us to compare facts unearthed during our field visits with the news that has been reported.
The major characteristic of Sandesh, in the period under review, has been to feed on the prevalent anti-Muslim prejudices of its Hindu readership and provoke it further by sensationalising, twisting, mangling and distorting news or what passes for it. The average Hindu reader in Baroda feels that he is getting value for money and 'real' reportage" the report observes.
According to PUCL and Shanti Abhiyan on 6th March the last page of Gujarat Samachar (Baroda Edition) carried a report with the headline: THE PLAN WAS TO TORCH THE WHOLE TRAIN, NOT JUST ONE BOGEY. In yet another box item on last page a report states that 'a mob was ready for the second attack.' The source of the information is not mentioned. The question is how did the reporter of a Vadodara based Newspaper knew what was in the mind of people gathered on 27th February 2002 at Godhra Railway Platform ?
The two NGO further reports : "Sandesh's sale has reportedly fallen in recent times. It is plausible that it has been resorting to sensational and irresponsible reporting in a bid to boost sales. Whether this is true or not, Sandesh has consciously sought to project a communalised version of events and inflicted serious and long-term damage to a society already fragmented along communal lines."
As a rule, the mainline Gujarati dailies did not print contradictions and clarifications given to their inflammatory and half-truth reports. The credit must go to the private TV networks which brought the horror of the carnage let loose in Gujarat to every home throughout India as otherwise the people at large would not have realised the gravity in the wake of Chief Minister Narendra Modi issuing official statements to deliberately underplay the shocking violence.
Perhapes because of such behevier or the print media well know historia. K.N. Panikar said at an event celebrating the 125th anniversary of the reputed daily "HNIDU" on increasing communalism in the media. Panikkar warned of the increasing acceptance and perceived respectability of communalism, as well as its impact on the rhetoric of nationalism:
Dr. Panikkar said that communalism had gained legitimacy, often through crude and false representations, as a result of which the popular common sense about key concepts such as nationalism and secularism were changing.
One of the several Paradoxes Gujarat of Gandhi is facing to-day is that the citizens have lost the voice of dissent and are silent against all the injustices meted out to the Civil society in the name of pride of Gujarat. Citizens of Gandhi's Gujarat do not have right to know and press is not Free.
It was Gandhi who taught Gujarat and the country to dissent, and have the courage to stand up for it. It was from here that major national movements took shape, and caught the imagination of an entire generation. It was the courageous journalist in Gandhi (of "Harijanbandhu" and "Young India") who pioneered the campaign for the freedom of the press. He stood for these rights when fellow countrymen were considered to be the white man's burden, and the dream of a free India was nowhere in sight.
BETRAYAL OF SILENCE
Governance and the Media is not just about Gujarat only. It is about all of us in the context of a professedly multi -cultural society which should conform to the constiutional legitimacy of social, democratic puralist and secular republic. Citizenry has to get its act together and actively engage in the governance process if these precepts are to be substantiated by practice and not insidiously violated. The events in Gujarat also clearly leave no room for sitting on the fence. As Martin Luther King pointed out long ago, " A time comes when silence is a betrayal."
Public memory is notoriously short. This, coupled with the lack of citizenry engagement has contributed to lessons of the past being consigned to the backburner, and history repeating itself. Timely information, communication, documentation and dissemination can play a vital role in preventing mistakes of the past from casting a long shadow. Media's role, both in terms of raising questions as well as tracking events pertinent to governance, then, assumes additional significance. It is against this backdrop that the raison d'etre for the current issue of this conference has taken shape. Media is driven by communalism and Media is the medium to spread communalism.
If irony had a synonym, it would be Gujarat. For, today, the very same freedom, which Gandhi fought and earned for the country is at stake. Infect, like the father of the nation, respected journalist Bill Moyers was also not exaggerating when he told an audience that 'the very soul of democracy is at stake'. Gandhiji used to say that suffering injustice is like commiting it. That is what both media and the civil society busy with in Gujarat to-day.
The field journalist has been virtually de-linked from the editors-cum-owners of the media group externally by a scheming political establishment, which spends more time in studying the economic dynamics of a running a newspaper vis-a-vis the onslaught of 24-hour TV channels.
While this may be a trend catching up nationally, the establishment in Gujarat goes one step ahead. Having taken care of the owner-editors, the focus is now on to clip the wings of the field journalists, especially those covering the government, which has juxtaposed the freedom of the press as its own right to suppress the press. Attempts are being made to ensure the reporters covering the Secretariat go back in the evening with an empty newsbag or are fed with misinformation and disinformation.
DEPARTMENT OF CLARIFICATIONS
Different ways are being devised to frustrate him. The government today has a section in its Information Department whose job is to issue clarifications and rejoinders to news reports on a daily basis. The Chief Minister of Gujarat spends more time in overseeing the press releases of his functions, while the only department, which seems to be 'working' in the Gujarat Government is the Information Department. What it dishes out, as it was just mentioned, may be both, 'misinformation' as well as 'disinformation,' but you are disliked and harassed if you dare say this.
Even political statements by the opposition parties are replied back by the Information Department of Government, along with the ruling party. When one editor recently "dared" to ask how could the government reply to the signed press statement of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee president on his official letter-head, it was treated like sacrilege. He lost government advertisements for such a "Gustakhi".
IS GUJARAT READY FOR ANOTHER EMERGENCY ?
How would the Indian media react if the Emergency were to be declared at midnight tonight, and if the Freedom of Speech and Expression guaranteed under Article 19 of the Constitution were to be suspended?
If witch-hunts were launched against magazines that refuse to parrot the establishment line�. If flimsy cases were foisted -- and dossiers built up -- on pesky newspaper journalists� If trouble-making publications were so harassed that they wouldn't be able to function much less survive� If foreign correspondents were summarily ordered to leave the country for filing not-so-glowing reports� If television channels were banned for showing the other side of a story� If small newspapers were dis-empanelled so that they wouldn't receive government advertising�
The good news is that it is a hypothetical question. The brazenness (and the eventual electoral backfiring) of Indira Gandhi's Emergency is still too fresh in the minds of our political masters to attempt a similar misadventure 29 years later. The bad news is that a subtler, more sophisticated method of muzzling the media has been mastered by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government.
Each of the 'Emergency' possibilities listed above -- and each of which had the votaries of Free Speech up in arms in 1975 -- has been (or is being) played out in news and board rooms across the country without so much as a squeak in protest. More so in Gujarat. Guess who is the loser.
As Former B.J.P. Minister Arun Jaitley once wrote under the caption : "Nazi priestess", "The German Constitution was envisaged as one of the most liberal constitutions in the world. Yet one man motivated by the desire for personal dictatorial power subverted it and presented to the world one of the most disgraceful authoritarian regimes in history. This man was Adolf Hitler.
How did he do this? He used the constitutional provisions to declare a state of emergency. He imposed censorship on the newspapers. He detained his political opponents. He crushed all dissent. He inspired the persecution of those he was not prepared to suffer. He generated an environment of terror and sycophancy.
And why did he do all this? "To make Germany a powerful nation," he claimed. To legitimise this he announced a 25-point economic programme. He claimed that it was discipline that he was imposing, that it was the hallmark of the system. Even Mussolini had claimed in Italy that the effect of Fascism was that 'trains were running on time'. One of Hitler's Nazi colleagues had proclaimed: "Adolf Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolf Hitler. He who swears allegiance to Hitler swears allegiance to Germany."
How is the todays Gujarat scenario is any different? If personal political position of present chief minister is threatened, one is to belive that is was insult of Five crore Gujaratis, and attack on pride of Gujarat. In other words "Narendra Modi is Gujarat and Gujarat is Narendra Modi".
As Arun Jaitley wrote about Emergency (1975), every dishonest protagonist of the "Mini-Emergency" (Courtesy former CM Keshubhai Patel) would argue that it was to save the state from anarchy and to impose descipline on democracy and save the interests of majority community. The honest truth is very much to the contrary.
Newspapers, magazines, television channels, web-zines� a peevish and paranoid by those who had amended the constitution in favour of Civil liberties, has clicked a perverse 'convergence' of punishment. They are the one who wants POTO in any form to be operationable, it not nationally, atleast within Gujarat.
Remember Thomas Jefferson? 'I would prefer a free press without a government than a government without a free press.'
Censorship in one way or another has always been there. But, in Gujarat it seems to have acquired draconian dimension. When it comes to media there are number of instances which prove this point. Censorship is generally at the other end. At the place where information is being used. But the Gujarat government has its innovative concept. Check the free flow of information. So no problem of 'moral' policing at the user's end. Put the media at tenterhooks using all possible legal (and Not so legal) means. Apparently it may sound an exercise to clean the system, in reality it turns out to be bashing by so called legal baton without any legal sanctity to it. You may be slapped a legal case to give the impression that action is right. But a case on false premises or illogical grounds can serve only one purpose. To harass you. And that is what is happening in Gujarat.
Here are some examples of what the media in general and hapless Secretariat reporter in Gandhinagar (Gujarat) particular, suffers and stoically takes in his stride. The examples are self evident :
DENIAL OF PRESS ACCESS :
If accreditation meant access, it is denied to journalists in Gujarat. It has been 10 months since the government has kept in abeyance issuance of the new press accreditation cards to journalists, while renewals are being given on a provisional basis for a couple of months unlike for a year as has been the practice all over the country. All this is being done in the name of framing a new media policy, which nobody knows when would be finalised. There has been a practice of issuing accreditation cards to "Veteran Journalists" in recognition of their life-long services to the profession. They have even been denied the respect of a renewal. If you ask anyone in the government informally, he will tell you, "We are giving the cards and even renewing it. Please come we will renew your card." Which never happens and I know this from personal experience. Insiders say the Chief Minister has a special hatred for a couple of the 'Veterans', so everyone must suffer.
Needless to say the accreditation is required for security purposes as well as basic facilities of moving in government departments and talking to responsible officers.
Information department officials say the government feels the need to weed out "undesirable and corrupt journalists" and deny them the cards. There is already a set of norms to provide the cards, but nobody in the government would admit that it is neither being monitored nor implemented. There is a special committee, including senior journalists, to verify and decide whom to give the card. The norms are being violated by people from within the government and not by the committee. If you know a minister or MLA from your area, you can get a card and you need a minister only if you are an "undesirable and corrupt journalist" not measuring up to the norms.
World over, governments and their spin surgeons want a rosy picture to be painted in the media regardless of everything. So, the BJP-led government, which essentially believes in governance by media management, cannot be accused of doing something that others elsewhere have not. But it is the method that exposes the madness that has gripped its media-minders.
It is a different question as to what are the professional bodies -- the Editors' Guild, the Indian Newspaper Society, Journalist Association etc. doing to ensure that media professionals are not completely stripped and paraded naked for the cardinal crime we are committing of carrying the message?
And What is the role of institutions like National Minority Commission and National Human Right Commission in safe guarding the Civil liberties of Fifty million Gujaratis.
PRESS (AB)BUS:
For the last almost two decades, media representatives were traveling 28 km to and fro Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar in a government bus. The present Chief Minister stopped this facility on the pretext that most media publications now have representatives in the State capital. Of course, he has not bothered to inform the Press about this reason and it was only after a correspondent inquired that he was told about it by an official. And this is how I also know it. But this argument doesn't work when the Press bus operates on Wednesdays.
The fact is the Chief Minister doesn't like the sight of prying journalists, who refuse to be spoon-fed. From the rest, he has a selected band of loyalists who can take a mouthful from him and still won't mind eating his lunches. Recently, a rumour was systematically spread that the Chief Minister was to hold a press conference, a rare event in itself. Usually, such conferences are held with a proper invitation, so those who had not got it wondered and started inquiring. They were told, "There is no press conference, the Chief Minister wishes to meet some selected journalists over lunch." How many do you assume could be selected journalists? Four, five, six? There were some 25 of them.
THE SECRETARIAT PRESS ROOM:
The PRESSROOM in the Sachivalaya has been locked. Reporters have NO Place to work even if they happen to reach Gandhinagar on their own, i.e. without a state Government Vehicle. The entry to non-accredited journalists has been prohibited, while even those having the cards cannot enter if they have committed the sin of forgetting it.
THE INACCESSIBLE CHIEF MINISTER:
The Chief Minister simply does not meet the press, especially if you have written even one piece against him. The customary post-Cabinet meeting press briefing is generally not held. And when rarely held, spokesmen of government will not entertain questions with an air that you have to write what has been handed out to you.
If you want to start a new publication and want to file a fresh declaration what you need to do, anywhere in the country baring Gujarat, is to approach the district magistrate and apply in prescribed profile with five suggestive names in order of priority, than it is forwarded to the office of registrar of Newspapers in Delhi for further action. But Gujarat is an exemption your papers will not be forwarded to Delhi unless there is a positive report about the applicant from Local Police Station. It is innovation for gagging up the media even before its birth.
The Present Chief Minister is not accessible to media in general and reporters in particular. The organization called 'Gujarat Dainik Akhbar Sangh' ( having membership of Gujarat dailies excluding Gujarat Samachar and Sandesh ) which has a history of having meetings with all the previous Chief Ministers were deprived of a dialogue with Modi till recently. Both Bhupat Vadodaria and Ramu Patel, the past and present presidents of Gujarat Dainik Akhbar Sangh requested for a formal meeting with Modi, but in vain. However, after it was presented at national level the Chief-Minister had a formal meeting only last month. Similarly, no access to any media person, no dialogue with media person - All this in the name of security.
Since Narendra Modi took over, his ministers do not meet press. Though none admits, it is a fact no minister is allowed to speak to press without his permission. And his permission is rare. The formal periodical News conferences, which are denied more then they are organized, are a time bound affair but they are invariably declared over, even while reporters have just started putting their questions.
As a result of this, even senior bureaucrats not only run away at the sight of journalists but they seek "on Deputation" transfer outside the state. The overall effect of this style of functioning is of censorship at the source. So there is no need to go for open censorship.
A senior correspondent of a Gandhinagar based daily once asked a rather longish question in one of the rare news conferences of NAMO (as the present CM is popularly addressed) and the prompt reply came from Chief Minister, "Tamaru Chapun to nanu che ane Saval avado moto" (your Newspaper is small and you are asking such a long question). The question was, however, not answered.
ADVERTISEMENTS ARE SOURCE OF INFERMATION
Advertisements to newspapers have been reduced to minimum while cases have been slapped against number of newspapers on all kind of grounds. In one of its judgements, the Court felt that Government Advertisements are also a source of information apart from income, but the Modi Govt. denies these sources to all those newspapers that the Chief Minister does not like. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Hindu organisation were publishing handbills suggesting economic boycott of the minority during the post-Godhra period in the year 2002, Similarly the state Government puts economic sanction on the Newspaper, to gag them. Gujarat Samachar got the Govt. Advts. restored through a court order and at present they are fighting a legal battle for the compensation for loss of Advt. during the period of stoppage. Jai Hind has filed a case in Gujarat High Court. Rajasthan Patrika is before Press Council of India, another Gujarati daily, Divya Bhaskar, is yet to see Govt. Advts. in their columns even after 15 months of its existence. Both Rajasthan Patrika and Divya Bhaskar are considered pro-BJP newspapers but their guilt is that they are not toeing the present CM's line. One newspaper rented out a part of the building it had constructed on land bought from government in special category and it was charged with commercial use of the building .
A case was filed against a newspaper that had bought a piece of land at a concessional rate in the special category. The charge was that it did not construct the building in the specific time frame. The fact was that the newspaper had to revise its building plan to meet post-Kutch earthquake requirements. Though the paper won the legal battle, the purpose of the government was to terrorise with a kind of censorship that is perpetrated against the non-accommodative newspapers and journalists every day.
Notices for closure of newspapers are issued on technical and legal grounds even when the point involved is some thing like informing the Magistrate about a change of editor or print.
The CM invites a team of selected journalists by name for official briefing over lunch; something never done in the past. He manages to get invitations for the inaugural flight of Air India for journalists of his choice. Certainly it was a move to reward his own men in the media and at the same time a move to create rift among journalists by a policy of carrot and stick. However, a national level controversy over the issue led to cancellation of freebies to the select journalists.
CENSORING OTHER MEDIA
Censorship today doesn't necessarily need a pair of scissors. It can be done by the click of a button. Police across Gujarat, apparently on the orders from the government in Gandhinagar, is using its powers to gag the electronic media.
News channels across Gujarat, which were giving a blow-by-blow account of the riots, blinked off the television screens in several cities as the police silenced certain channels.
On that fateful Saturday during the riots, Ahmedabadis were cut off from the world in more ways than one. Forced inside their homes for the third consecutive day, desperate attempts of the people to know what was happening in the city were met with blank screens as the state government blocked all satellite news channels from beaming into city homes.
Exercising special powers, the then city police commissioner PC Pande issued notices to cable operators in the city, directing them to block all programmes that could incite violence, enmity between two communities and disrupt law and order situation in the city. Those not adhering to the directive would be subject to punishment, the notice said.
Following the same, all three news channels were pulled off air early morning by most cable operators. Blank screens irked residents no end who were depending on the news channels to provide them with updates on the situation in the city.
In Vadodara, Star News channel was blocked, while authorities in Surat blocked two local channels - MY TV and Channel Surat. In Rajkot, the then police commissioner Upendra Singh directed cable operators to block Star News and four local news channels. He also banned publication of special supplements of three local Gujarati eveningers.
Most of the control rooms in the city received phone calls from the collector's office to black out Star News, Zee News, CNN and Aaj Tak," said president of the Ahmedabad Cable Operator's Association Pramod Pandya.
According to the then Surat police commissioner Vineet Gupta, directives had been issued to all cable operators to refrain from showing anything which was provocative. "We directed them not to show anything which could flare up communal sentiments or cause a law and order problem," Gupta said. (A legal explanation of the censorship.)
How can they black out the news channels when news is what we need the most, Vipul Patel, a resident of Manekbaug in Ahmedabad asked. An inquiry made to his cable operator revealed that the cable network hub near Dharnidhar Derasar has been set on fire; so restoring the service would take time.
Interestingly, most resident felt that blacking out news channels was actually more damaging as people then had no option but to rely on rumours. "We are not getting the news channels. Withholding information will only backfire as we would be forced to believe in rumours that are flying thick and fast", says Jigna Shah of Shahpur in Ahmedabad.
"We pay Rs 200 per month for cable services but in the critical time when we need to know local news, we are not getting the news channels. Right to information is a basic right. How can anyone snatch that right away from us," quizzed Shyam Sundar of Vejalpur (Ahmedabad).
Cable service providers when contacted confessed that they had received official notice ordering to discontinue showing news channels in Gujarat till the riots were fully controlled.
We need to sit up in alarm at what's happening because even as recently as the POTO standoff, the Law Commission was cited by the very people who have the least regard for it, to tell us that the rights and privileges of a pressman in India are no different from the rights and privileges of an ordinary citizen of India. If the media, with all its power and reach, can be treated with such disdain; if the media is not free to report what it sees and hears, unhindered; if the media is not free to seek accountability from the government of the day, how free is the ordinary citizen we serve? And how free is the democracy that hosts us all?
Mahatma Gandhi fired the imagination of people with his non-cooperation movement. In his Gujarat, the voice of dissent is dubbed anti-Gujarat. It is an insult to 50 million Gujaratis, the figure has not changed even after the 2001 census.
In her paper for South Asia Forum for Human Rights entitled as "Militarized Hindu Nationalism and the Mass Media" Rita Manchanda wrote in May 2002 : " The unsubstantiated statements of political leaders reported by the media damn the Muslims as ISI agents and the madrassas as hot beds of terrorist subversion. For example, fFormer Rajasthan Chief Minister, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat's claimed at a press conference that 12,000 ISI agents were operating in the border districts of Rajasthan. The Hindu ( Jan 13, 2001) reported his statement that 'traitors' (Muslims) who had helped the Pakistani army in 1965 and 1971 were active again. He "alleged" that 240 madrassas operating in the border areas were the hot beds of fanaticism and Pakistani agents were teaching there. There is no substantiation of his claim. The report does carry an editorial qualification - that this is the first instance of Muslims in Rajasthan being accused of cooperating with the ISI and assisting Pakistan in the wars.
In the forth chapter of here paper Rita Manchanda discusses "The State of Siege & The Enemy Within"
In this final section, I want to essentially focus on how the 'India, a state of siege' syndrome is worked through the media becoming an accomplice of the intelligence agencies. Sections of the mass media are implicated in representing the privileged perspectives of the intelligence agencies as established facts using phrases which have come to be a classic of journalese -'said to be'. Whether it is the reportage of north east conflicts, the recent Indo Bangaldesh border crisis (See Himal Magazine May 2001 )or the activities of the ubiquitous ISI-RAW networks, privileged perspectives - read derived from intelligence agency sources -are camouflaged as fact.
Take a recent TOI Guwahati datelined story 'N-E Rebels die in blast at Banga tryst' which reports a bloodbath in a Bangladesh hotel claiming several lives of representatives of extremist outfits of the northeast, resulting from a fall out between rebel groups. On the basis of unnamed 'reliable sources' we are informed of a meeting in the Shah hotel somewhere on 'Bangladeshi soil'. Reliable sources" are quoted that 15 'extremists' were injured and several succumbed, though the exact number or names not known. The new Bangladesh government is trying to hush it up, it is said. Reports in the Bangladesh press -Dainik Inqualab -obligingly described it as a gas pipe explosion. Furthermore the correspondent adds "It may be mentioned that several militant groups operating from safe houses and camps in Bangladesh for several years now under the official patronage of the ISI. It is well known that several top ULFA leaders have invested in real estate�."(emphasis added).
The information may or may not be false, but the process of reporting clearly is flawed. It is reporting at a distance- based on non verifiable intelligence agencies inputs. The framing is imbued with the correspondent's prejudices vis a vis the representation of the 'extremists', the Bangla press and India - Bangladesh relations under BNP government. The construction of sequence of events and the suggestion and motivation is taken directly from intelli-gence sources. The implications of the public discourse of suspect communities, especially of the Muslim community, in the changing terms of a militarized Hindu nation-alist discourse is fatally visible in the polarised public sphere of Gujarat and the carnage there. However, the national media reportage of the Gujarat car-nage, its exposure of state complicity in the violence and the genocidal na-ture of the attacks on Muslims in Gujarat- testifies to the possibility and capacity of a non communal national print and electronic media to contest the making of an exclusivist Hindu nationalist public sphere. The challenge is for the national media to withstand the anti democratic militarist impulse justified in the context of national security and the paradigm
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Digant Oza (Editor - Jal Seva) B-1, Neeldeep Apt., Opp. Sandesh Press, Laad Society Road, Vastrapur. Ahemdabad-380015.
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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
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