Daily Times

It has been 40 years since Indira Gandhi, India’s then prime minister, imposed a strict censorship on the press as a part of her abrupt turn towards authoritarianism on June 28, 1975. Brutal assaults, large-scale arrests and a constant fear of greater repercussions if anyone dared publish a narrative of dissent still haunt those who had struggled against that suspension of fundamental freedoms. In what appears to be a rejuvenated reincarnation of press censorship, India’s Information and Broadcasting Ministry recently decided to take NDTV off the air for a day on November 9, 2016, as a penalty for its alleged transmission of sensitive information during its coverage of the Pathankot airbase attack in January.

The news channel has repeatedly argued that its telecast neither disclosed anything out of the ordinary nor carried out its broadcast in an irresponsible manner. However, the inter-ministerial committee still remains adamant in penalising NDTV for the alleged disclosure of details that could have been used by the terrorists to cause “massive harm” to both military officials and unarmed civilians in the area. Even if the Indian government did believe that the channel had violated certain protocols during its live coverage of a terrorist operation, such a penalty is probably not the best approach to dealing with an irresponsible act. In lieu of announcing a penalty, which is being condemned by journalists around the world as a violation of media freedom, the government could have formed an independent commission to investigate the veracity of these accusations against NDTV.

Even though India takes significant pride in functioning as the world’s largest democracy, this glory seems to be getting a hit as there are increasingly curbs against the freedom of expression guaranteed by the country’s constitution. In October, the government had barred a daily in Kashmir from publication on the allegations of inciting violence in public. Previously, as a protest against government’s ban on the BBC documentary about the brutal Delhi gang rape of Jyoti Singh in December 2012, NDTV had run a blank screen with a flickering lamp during the one hour-long slot reserved for the film.

In other less obvious cases, press censorship is established by media houses and affluent politicians who compel journalists to set forth changes in reporting. These oxymoronic bans — direct or internal — continue to invoke an increasing presence of state censorships, which should not be allowed to thrive in a country being governed by such a vibrant and secular democracy.

As the Editors Guild of India has already demanded, the government must realise that “imposing a ban without resorting to judicial intervention or oversight [would] violate the fundamental principles of freedom and justice.” An NDTV Friday broadcast by Ravish Kumar, the iconic anchor of NDTV Hindi, utilised an unconventional way to protest against this latest suppression of media freedom: Kumar used mime artists in order to highlight the governmental curb on journalistic freedom of expression.

Only November 9 can tell whether Narendra’s Modi’s government would pay heed to the severe reverberations of its blanket ban on not only a temperate and rational member of an otherwise frenzied news culture but even more detrimentally against the fabric of secularism and freedom of expression that holds India together, India that prides itself on its pluralism and diversity. Allowing the watchdog agencies and politicians to thrive on curtailed media’s independence and dismissal of the societal right to question authorities, as audaciously noted by a Union Minister, would not help India remain the vibrant liberal democracy that it claims to be. *