Mr. Advani’s defence of his ministry’s action in blacklisting a number of MPs, journalists and academicians from participating in political discussions on the government-controlled radio and television cannot convince any fair-minded person. It will clearly be pertinent to recall, as Dr. Rafiq Zakaria did in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, that the minister had earlier denied the existence of the list and to point out, as also Dr. Zakaria did on that occasion, that several others have been excluded by AIR and Doordarshan. These are not small matters. But we can let them pass for the time being. The heart of the matter is the existence of a black list and the criteria used to prepare it. Mr. Advani has said that in order to restore the credibility of the media, his ministry regarded it necessary to keep out of political discussions individuals who had been “vociferous” supporters of the emergency. The briefest reflection by him should have sufficed to convince him that he would thereby achieve the opposite result. Since the credibility of the media had suffered during the emergency precisely because AIR and Doordarshan had shut out the opposition viewpoint and individuals critical of the regime, it could be restored fully only if those earlier associated with Mrs. Gandhi were allowed to have their say. In the first few months after the emergency when passions were still running high, it might have been too embarrassing for the Janata government to have respected properly this democratic norm and obligation. But even then there should have been no question of drawing up a black list and it is utterly disgraceful that it should exist two years after the end of the emergency.
If Mr. Advani was personally party to the so-called guidelines which are so broad as to exclude almost the entire opposition, he must be a very innocent politician indeed. And if he has allowed these guidelines to be drawn up and enforced even partially, without much thought, he must face the charge of having adopted a casual attitude on an important issue of principle. But whatever the facts in this regard, he must now know that the credibility of the government-controlled media remains poor and set about the task of restoring it in the only way it can be restored – by enabling the opposition viewpoints, which must include Mrs. Gandhi’s and her party’s viewpoint, to be adequately represented on AIR and Doordarshan. He must also see to it that the black list is withdrawn and with it the guidelines which are in fact “misguidelines”. Both should embarrass Mr. Advani. For the first includes, among others, two MPs, one of them a distinguished scholar on China and the other an eminent Hindi litterateur, and the vice-chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University who has only recently been nominated to the National Integration Committee over which the Prime Minister himself presides. And the guidelines make “association” with Mrs. Gandhi’s 20-point programme which the RSS chief, Mr. Deoras, praised, among others, in one of his letters to her during the emergency, a ground for boycott by the media.
The Times of India, 21 March 1979