The Bhosale affair has posed a challenge to serious and responsible journalists in India. They have been agonising over it for almost two months and they do not quite know how to deal with it.
To recapitulate the facts briefly, ugly rumours began to circulate about Mr Babasaheb Anantrao Bhosale in Bombay and Delhi within days of his appointment as Maharashtra’s chief minister in the third week of January. Investigations established that his son, Mr Ashok Bhosale, had filed a divorce case against Mrs Savita Bhosale who had lost both her legs under a running train in 1978. These investigations also indicated that Mrs Bhosale had in all probability made serious charges against the chief minister and alleged that she had attempted to commit suicide on that account.
Several journalists tried to secure copies of Mrs Bhosale’s statement to the police at the time of the alleged suicide attempt and her affidavits in the divorce proceedings but drew a blank. Neither she nor her lawyer would part with these documents and there was no question of the court obliging. It had ordered that the proceedings would take place in chamber as required under the Hindu Marriages Act.
The documents would not have been much help even if these had somehow become available. They could not have been published after February 17 when the lawyers for Mr Ashok Bhosale had secured a prohibitory order from the court. Moreover, their publication would not have settled anything.
Whole Truth
It is axiomatic in the Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence which we in India follow that a man must be considered innocent till he is proved guilty by a due process of law. By this logic, a journalist would not be entitled to probe the Bhosale affair. He would have to wait patiently for the court verdict. But is the axiom applicable in the case of a public figure in high office?
The popular view would be that in such a case the saying that Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion, should apply. By this token, Mr Babasaheb Bhosale should not have accepted the office of chief minister when Mrs Gandhi offered it to him. At the very least he should have told her the whole truth at that very stage and not later.
It is a matter of speculation how she would have reacted. On the face of it, however, the chances are that in view of her bitter experience in the Antulay affair, she would not have selected him. That apart, Mr Bhosale himself should have known that the case would not remain secret for long and that its disclosure, regardless of the correctness or otherwise of the charges against him, would erode his authority as chief minister. Perhaps he took a legalistic view of the affair, concluding that it was a matter for the court, and not public opinion, to decide. Perhaps he also convinced himself that if the case could remain unknown when he was law minister, it need not become public property now.
Be that as it may, this is perhaps the first case of its kind in the history of Indian politics and journalism. As such, there are no accepted guidelines a responsible journalist can follow. In former times when the political process had not lost the capacity for self-correction and the popular concern for standards of public morality was not so strong and widespread especially among the newspaper reading intelligentsia, he could in all conscience have opted for silence. But in the present circumstances when the people have come to expect the press to try and enforce some minimum norms in public life, silence would, it can be argued, amount to evasion of responsibility.
Well-founded
We in The Times of India struggled with this problem for some weeks. In view of the well-accepted proposition that a public figure in high office must not only be above reproach but also be seen to be so, we could have suggested that Mr Bhosale should step down and return to office if the court clears him of the alleged charges against him. Alternatively, we could have advocated that Mrs Gandhi should ask him to resign. Meanwhile rumours broke out in print. We contented ourselves with asking Mr Bhosale to state his side of the story so that the people would have some material on the basis of which they could come to at least some tentative conclusion. And hence the editorial on March 4.
We were not unaware that this suggestion was contrary to the well-recognised rule that nothing should be said or written on a matter which is sub-judice. But we felt a way out was now available to Mr Bhosale if he was looking for one. He could have written to the journals which had published the charges against him, contesting the charges and offering to prove his innocence privately before a respected retired judge of the Supreme Court or the Bombay high court.
We knew that no former supreme court or high court judge was likely to undertake such an inquiry so long as the divorce case was pending before a lower court. Even so we felt that the very offer would help clear the air to some extent by lending a measure of credence to his claim of innocence.
We were not insensitive to the possibility of being misunderstood by some of Mr Bhosale’s supporters. This fear has turned to be well-founded. We have received a couple of angry letters and a pamphlet has come out criticising The Times of India for the March 4 editorial.
For all that we know, the pamphlet may not have been written at the instance of, or with the help of, Mr Babasaheb Bhosale and Mr Ashok Bhosale. They may even be embarrassed by it. But it gives what is in all probability their version of events leading to the amputation of Mrs Savita Bhosale’s two legs and the divorce case. In the process it makes serious charges against her.
This raises several issues, three important ones being whether the writer and the printer have violated any law of the land, whether the Maharashtra government is aware of its existence, and whether it has taken any action or intends to take any action against the writer and the printer in case they have transgressed the law. Then there are the moral issues. Surely, it cannot be proper for anyone to malign a poor woman who is also hamstrung by a court injunction and cannot publicise her affidavit which contains her charges against Mr Bhosale.
Surely, it was not necessary for the writer to indulge in this exercise if his purpose was only to expose the weakness of our suggestions and our alleged irresponsibility. Apparently, he has attacked Mrs Bhosale deliberately. But right now we are not concerned with these issues. We are interested only in investigating the dilemma of the press.
In Mr Antulay’s case, we urged Mrs Gandhi not to leave the matter to the Bombay high court because we felt that this will erode her own political authority, raise popular expectations of courts and thus disturb the proper balance between the executive and the judiciary. In this case, there are two additional complications. The case cannot be settled quickly and it is by no means certain that the court will adjudge the validity or otherwise of Mrs Savita Bhosale’s charges against Mr Bhosale.
Changed Mood
The dilemma is extremely painful. A journalist has no right to judge anyone in advance of a court verdict. He must know that trial by press can be a great source of mischief. But at the same time he cannot avoid his responsibility by saying that law should be allowed to take its own course. What then is he to do?
In a sense the socially aware journalist’s is a self-imposed burden. Indeed, it will be quite legitimate for him to argue that he is no more responsible for the quality of public life than leaders of political parties. If they are not mindful of the consequence of the virtual loss of faith in politicians among the intelligentsia, why should he agonise over it? It is also a fact that journalists have been influenced by the American example which is not easy to follow because the American society is very different from ours. But the fact remains that journalists have acquired a new sense of responsibility and they do not often know how best they can live up to popular expectations of them. Apparently there is no solution to their dilemma. They have to improvise in each individual case as they go along.
A lot of politicians are angry. Some of them continue to believe or wish to believe that journalists have stepped up criticism of them under orders from owners. Apparently they have no idea of the change that has taken place in the mood of newspaper readers and the profession in recent years. Apparently they are not interested in finding out which is perhaps as well. Facts are not likely to please them.
The Times of India, 24 March 1982