Mrs Gandhi is apparently furious with the press. Apparently because she, it can be argued, tends to denounce the entire press when in fact she has only one or two journalists and newspapers in mind. But the argument is thin. While Mrs. Gandhi may be indignant only with some journalists and newspapers, she is generally critical of most of them. Her statement in an interview some months ago that “the press is the opposition in India” sums up her general position rather neatly. It was not a stray remark made in anger.
The same approach informed her criticism of the campaign by journalists against the Bihar press bill in Lucknow last Wednesday. She is quoted as having said that this agitation was “bogus” and very much a part of the “crooked game” she believes the opposition is playing to discredit her, her government and her party.
Another observation by her in Lucknow provides a measure of her anger. In response to a question whether this was not the first time since independence that journalists had been beaten up (by the police in Patna), she is reported to have said” “What is so special about you? Was i not myself beaten up during the Janata rule?”
If the Prime Minister has been correctly quoted, she has made a truly extraordinary statement. It was not right for the Janata government to harass and persecute her and some of us said so. By the same token, it is not right for a Congress (I) government in Bihar or elsewhere to harass and beat up journalists. A Mrs. Gandhi or a Morarji Desai deserves to be treated with respect whether in office or out of office. And so do journalists whether they are supporters or critics of the government.
When we argued against attempts to prosecute Mrs. Gandhi on what we regarded as petty or unsubstantiated charges during the Janata rule, we were accused of placing her above the law. Now when we argue that journalists should he treated with a degree of respect, Mrs. Gandhi and her colleagues can make the same charge and say that we are placing a class of citizens above the law. We would plead guilty in both cases.
Approach Undemocratic
This approach strikes at the very roots of democracy, so we would be told. Democracy does mean equality before the law, if nothing else. But only a society in the process of disintegrating would treat its leading citizens as if they were nobodies. Surely, India is not such a society and would not wish to become such a society in the name of democracy. Incidentally, democracy survives and prospers in societies which honour their eminent men and not in those where they are sought to be maligned.
In our view, it did not augur well for Indian democracy that Mrs. Gandhi was pilloried and persecuted during the Janata rule, and, in our view, it does not augur well for Indian democracy that a silent demonstration of journalists in Patna should have been lathi-charged and that the chief minister should have invented the flimsy excuse that they stoned the police.
Leaving these larger issues aside for the time being, let us return to the question why Mrs. Gandhi is so angry with the press. In a sense the answer is obvious. She had said once again that while some journalists indulge in “yellow journalism”, “character assassination” and “sensation-mongering,” the others do not raise even their little finger in protest. But is it an adequate explanation?
It is not known whether by “yellow journalism” the Prime Minister implies what the phrase has come to mean. The phrase, as the Oxford dictionary tells us, came into widespread vogue at the beginning of the 19th century and referred to chauvinistic newspapers in the United States which urged war with Spain. Since then “yellow journalism” has come gradually to refer to newspapers and magazines which specialise in covering sex and crime. They doubtless degrade popular taste. But fortunately we do not have many such publications in the English language which is what Mrs. Gandhi mostly reads. There is no evidence that such publications in Indian languages worry our political leaders. So that leaves “character assassination” and “sensation-mongering” as the possible causes of Mrs. Gandhi’s annoyance with the press.
The problem is real and it does not concern only the politicians alone. Senior journalists themselves are not immune from such unpleasant attack. Witness the number of well-known journalists who were maligned as “CIA agents” in a newspaper with which Mrs. Gandhi’s own name is closely associated. Witness also the write-ups industrial magnates manage occasionally to inspire against their rivals. But the importance of this problem can easily be exaggerated.
Attacks Not Rule
For one thing, such attacks are the exception rather than the rule, at least in newspapers and magazines which matter by virtue of their status and circulation. For another, it would be difficult to name a single political leader or an industrialist or a journalist or a prominent figure in any other walk of life whose fortunes have been ruined by adverse publicity. For Mrs. Gandhi in particular, her own triumphant return to power after the Shah Commission hearings should settle this issue once and for all.
Charges, of course, hurt, especially if they range as wide as they have in the past in Mrs. Gandhi’s case. But this is the price one pays for supreme power. Mrs. Gandhi must know that in the very act of reaching for the kind of position she has enjoyed for so many years, a person exposes himself or herself to the risk of becoming the ultimate scapegoat whom the people can blame for their failures and frustrations. As it happens, she has no alibis left for the failures of her government. She has only followers, not colleagues whom the people could hold responsible for the government’s acts of omission and commission.
In any case, what is the way out? Certainly not the suppression of the press. We did not need to go through an emergency of our own to realize that this remedy is worse than the disease, assuming for the sake of argument that the disease is serious enough to merit attention which so far is not the case in our country. The Indian press on the whole is serious and responsible.
It is open to question whether basically there is a way in which we can preserve the freedom of the press and eliminate the fungus of “yellow journalism”. But if there is any such way, it can be attempted only by someone whose own integrity and bona fides are beyond reproach. Dr. Jagannath Mishra is certainly not such an individual, regardless of whether the charges against him are justified or not. That these charges are widely believed to be true is enough to disqualify him for the role. So if Mrs. Gandhi had to attempt something by way of a legislation regarding the press, the Bihar of Dr. Mishra was not the place to do it. It can do her reputation no good to have identified herself, as she did in Lucknow the other day, with Dr. Mishra’s action. It did her no good to have similarly identified herself with Mr. LN Mishra in the early ’seventies.
Criticism Inevitable
As Mrs. Gandhi sees it, the press as a whole has been less than fair to her; in fact, as she would put it, it has by and large been wholly unfair to her and her family which means basically the late Mr. Sanjay Gandhi. And clearly it is not much of a satisfaction for her to know, if she does know, that criticism, including unfair criticism, is the price one pays for the kind of eminence she has enjoyed in the country’s public life. But it is worth asking whether like many of us members of the intelligentsia, she too, is looking for a scapegoat, perhaps unknown even to herself.
The intelligentsia has certainly looked for one and found it in her. Its members must know from their experience of the Janata rule that there is no alternative to her. They must also know that the moral rot is not limited either to the Congress (I) or to the political realm. They do not have practical and viable solutions to offer to most of the major problems plaguing the country. Those in authority among them are not able to run well the institutions under their control. Their schizophrenia is best illustrated by the fact that even those among them who cannot find honest and efficient managers for their plants are ready to condemn Mrs. Gandhi for not assembling a competent team of ministers and bureaucrats in New Delhi and giving the states under the Congress (I) rule competent and upright chief ministers who can also manage the party. Does Mrs. Gandhi find herself in a familiar dilemma and mood?
In Mr. Nehru’s case, the public criticism was invariably directed towards his cabinet colleagues or the bureaucrats. He was able to create the impression that he was not only above them all but also different from them all. He did not seek to manage the press; the press managed itself for his benefit. He felt that the Indian press could be more responsible and better informed. But he was prepared to live with it as it was because he recognised the dangers of any attempt to reform it. Some of the major papers criticised his policies but their editors often admired him as much as anyone else. There was a distance between him and the editors with one or two exceptions. But there was no ill-will on either side. The relations between Mrs Gandhi and the press have been acerbic. It is pointless to try and apportion blame. All one can say is that it is a pity because basically they are working towards the same end – a decent, humane and free society.
The Times of India, 8 September 1982