MEDIA

United in struggle

PRAVEEN SWAMI
in New Delhi

ANU PUSHKARNA

Kuldip Nayar and H.K. Dua with other journalists at a demonstration in Delhi.

"IT is everybody's responsibility," Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said on November 11, "to abide by the Lakshman Rekha."

Vajpayee's laconic comment on the Tamil Nadu Assembly's assault on The Hindu and Murasoli can, of course, be read in a variety of ways: as a demand for the State to respect the freedom of the press, as a call for restraint by both the media and politicians, or for the need to observe legal and constitutional obligations. Given the massive and extraordinarily unified national condemnation of the Assembly's decision to imprison editors and journalists from the newspapers, however, it could also have a fourth layer of meaning. What has become clear is that the Assembly Speaker's course of action violated unstated, undefined rules of conduct that constitute the core essence of Indian democracy: an act of violation that united a wide spectrum of civil society and political leaders of all hues.

It is significant that many top politicians who condemned the Assembly's action have, at one point or the other, been the subjects of investigation and legitimate criticism by The Hindu. Both The Hindu and Frontline have on occasion been critical of Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani's political positions, and of the Bharatiya Janata Party's experiments with communal politics. Nonetheless, the normally taciturn Advani said just a day after the Assembly Speaker issued arrest warrants that "such a development pains one and you feel upset". He made no effort to balance the statement with a call for media restraint - a sign that the politician has not taken legitimate political criticism as a personal affront. Similarly, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had no personal reason to jump to the defence of The Hindu. Her husband, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi faced criticism during his term in office in the pages of The Hindu. Indeed, the Rajiv Gandhi regime came to have a deeply adversarial relationship with the national media as a whole. This past history, however, did nothing to cloud the Congress president's judgment of the issue; she clearly understood the centrality of media freedoms to the integrity of Indian democratic institutions. "Such high-handed action by the State legislature is a threat to our democracy," she said. "I hope that the matter is resolved amicably and expeditiously. Those of us in public life must respect the right of the press to express independent views and opinion."

Many State-level leaders who pitched in with their support, similarly, acted out of sense of principle. Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna, speaking at the 125th Anniversary celebrations of The Hindu in Bangalore noted that "pernicious tendencies are now creeping into the body politic. Every effort should be made to stop such developments in the interest of a better upkeep of democracy." His Andhra Pradesh counterpart, N. Chandrababu Naidu, expressed strong disapproval of events, and promised support for the newspaper. So too did Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and Madhya Pradesh's Digvijay Singh. It is worth noting that The Hindu has a relatively small presence in these two northern states - ruling out the prospect that their comments were made with the motive of earning goodwill.

Several politicians and eminent public figures joined in the condemnation. Former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral called up the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu to express his solidarity early during the crisis. Haryana Opposition leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda held an unprovoked press conference on November 9, where he asserted that "no-one, however powerful he or she might be, should interfere in the freedom of the press". Maninderjit Singh Bitta, a tireless campaigner against terrorist atrocities everywhere, held a demonstration against the Tamil Nadu Assembly. Former Lok Sabha Speaker Rabi Ray, long out of the public eye, came out in support of The Hindu, noting that "when a Speaker of a State like the one in Tamil Nadu would try to browbeat the print media to blindly follow the Chief Minister's dictates then there is bound to be resistance". Constitutional lawyer P.P. Rao, who has represented Tamil Nadu in court, demanded that the "legislature should reconsider its decision in the interest of democracy and withdraw the warrants forthwith."

PERHAPS even more extraordinary was the pan-Indian mobilisation of the media community, which several observers have argued, has been increasingly docile in defending its own rights in recent years. Protest broke out in the most unlikely places, apparently with little organisation. Journalists in Jalandhar chose to wear black badges to work; their counterparts in Amritsar held a spontaneous protest march; their colleagues in Dhankenal took out a well-attended procession. Although the growing influence of contract-based employment in media organisations has weakened the influence of the traditional trade union system, alternative modes of communication, like mobile-phone messaging and the Internet, helped small groups of journalists tap into the plans of their counterparts in major cities.

For sheer geographical scale, no other issue has provoked this kind of media response in recent years. New Delhi served as a fulcrum for pan-Indian media protest. On November 8, journalists gathered at the Press Club to protest the Tamil Nadu Assembly's action, the first action of its kind outside Chennai. Led by the club president Prakash Patra and Delhi Union of Journalists president S.K. Pande, journalists blocked traffic on the city's central Raisina Road and burnt an effigy of Jayalalithaa. Interestingly, the demonstration was held at very short notice, leaving little time for press releases and invitations to be sent out. Many participants simply showed up at the Press Club on their own, expecting some kind of media outrage to be voiced in the course of the day. After the demonstration, an impromptu vote led to a decision to hold a second march to the offices of the Resident Commissioner of Tamil Nadu in New Delhi two days later, to hand in a petition.

Several veterans of the media community were present at the first Press Club protest, including former Rajya Sabha member Kuldip Nayar, The Tribune editor H.K. Dua, S. Nihal Singh, K.K. Katyal and Mrinal Pande - representatives of a wide shade of opinion. Nayar arrived at the meeting after filing a petition challenging the conviction of The Hindu and Murasoli staff, along with former Delhi High Court Chief Justice Rajinder Sachar.

M. MOORTHY

At the Chennai Press Club, a demonstration by journalists on hunger strike, on November 9.

Nayar stressed the need to codify the privileges enjoyed by MLAs and MPs. "We will have to think of some amendments in the Constitution because the right to the freedom of speech and expression is being violated again and again," Nayar told the assembled journalists. "We must stand up against the onslaught on the press, on our liberty and on our whole being," he said. Dua in turn reminded the audience that, "to send the police to the newspaper office and look for editors in their cabins to arrest them is more draconian than the Defamation Bill." People speaking for major institutional organs of the media all joined in the condemnation.

Justice K. Jayachandra Reddy of the Press Council of India appealed "to the legislature and the Speaker of the Tamil Nadu Assembly to revoke its verdict." Justice Reddy also demanded a debate on the powers of the legislature even though the Assembly was, he accepted, "supreme in its own right".

The President of the Editors Guild of India Hari Jaisingh, termed the action "anti-democratic and reminiscent of the days of Emergency". Privileges, he noted, were "not absolute for the media, and not absolute for legislatures either." As Editor of the Chandigarh-based The Tribune, Jaisingh had himself been summoned by the Himachal Pradesh Assembly for contempt. On that occasion, however, the Speaker of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly accepted the reasoned written argument offered by Jaisingh in response, and dropped proceedings against the newspaper.

Most in the media - and, national reaction suggests, many in political life- believe debate is now necessary to avoid outrages of the kind seen in Chennai. Several issues to emerge in the course of the past weeks transcend the immediate provocation itself. Journalists have, for the past several years, faced a growing number of court and legislature contempt proceedings, and have thus had to grapple with the problems created by privileges no one has clearly defined or codified. Others have struggled with defamation cases, filed in several instances with no other motive than to harass honest reporters by dragging them through an endless and expensive process of litigation. Worst of all, attacks on small media organisations and individual states have been mounting.

Voicing the sentiments of Haryana journalists, Haryana Journalists' Union president Virender Chauhan noted the growth of "despotism" in several States. Interestingly, several television journalists - visible targets for irate mobs or angry political workers - joined the protests, a new development in the medium-divided media community. "Television journalists are as much part of the media fraternity as anyone else," notes New Delhi Television's Vikram Chandra, "issues that affect the press are bound to affect us too."

"Jayalalithaa, is upset with you," Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee told presspersons at New Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport, just before flying to Moscow for a state visit. "We are angry with her," someone shot back.

This November has been an extraordinary month for those two traditional adversaries, the politicians and the press: for once, most of them some on the same side. Hopefully, that unity will lead to seem meaningful progress in enshrining the media's rights and freedoms.

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