It was not the first time on September 3 that journalists all over the country struck work. They have done so before on several occasions. But never before for many years has there been such unity among them. Even editors who often do not belong to unions and do not normally join strikes, stayed away from work on Friday. In many cases they participated in protest demonstrations. The obvious provocation was, of course, the Bihar press bill which would do honour to any tin dictator anywhere in the world. And there can be little doubt that the struggle that the journalists in Bihar have been carrying on in that state without the law has stirred their colleagues in the profession all over the country. But there is a deeper cause for the rare unity of purpose which the journalists have demonstrated this time – the gnawing feeling that the Union government was aware of Dr. Jagannath Mishra’s plan to enact the disgraceful bill, that it let him go ahead with it because it itself wanted to send out a trial balloon to test the strength of the reaction and that if journalists and others interested in the freedom of the press do not make it difficult for the President to give assent to the Bihar bill, the Centre would in course enact a similar legislation.
This distrust of the Union government may not be wholly justified. We ourselves do not share it. But it will be naive or dishonest to deny that it exists. The Prime Minister is only too well aware of this alienation of a vast body of journalists from her government. The least she could have done in the circumstances was not to have identified herself with the Bihar chief minister’s action. This was not the proper occasion for her to talk of “character assassination” by newspapers. On the face of it, Mrs. Gandhi was justified in asking the journalists why they had not agitated against a similar enactment in Tamil Nadu. In reality she must have known the answer which is that the Tamil Nadu bill did not cause much concern outside the state precisely because the state government is not a Congress (I) one and therefore its action, though highly deplorable, did not arouse the fear that it would serve as a trend setter for the other states or even the Centre to follow. In the event, the journalist fraternity has turned out to be wrong. The Bihar chief minister has taken his cue from the Tamil Nadu legislation or at least he finds it convenient to quote it. But surely Mrs. Gandhi could not have been interested in rubbing in this point. The Bihar bill is in fact much worse than the Tamil Nadu one. But we are not on that issue right now. The point we wish to make is that Mrs. Gandhi’s statement of last Wednesday, justified tor unjustified in itself, does not measure up to the requirements of the present situation which calls for an effort to reduce the feeling of alienation among the journalists and avoid confrontation between them and the government. In plain terms, Mrs. Gandhi should not only have the shameful legislation returned to Dr. Mishra but make it known publicly that she finds it totally repugnant.