FIFTY YEARS OF EMERGENCY: MEDIA OR DICTATORSHIP BLINDFOLDED

FIFTY YEARS OF EMERGENCY: MEDIA OR DICTATORSHIP BLINDFOLDED

2-AUG-ENG 21

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

ARA-----------------------------One of the main signs of Indira Gandhi's emergency regime, which is now completing 50 years, was undoubtedly the suppression of the press and the taking away of its freedom during those infamous twenty-one months. Especially when we remember the initial phase of the emergency, we remember the pages of newspapers and magazines painted black at various places, in which the censor system had used scissors on many parts of the published material. Probably for the first time in the history of independent India and till now also for the last time, a proper censorship system was set up, whose job was to check every printed word before printing, so that all the published material could be ensured to be in accordance with the wishes of the government. Remember that this was the time when the scope of mass media was limited to newspapers and magazines only. Radio had certainly become an important medium by then, but it was completely under the control of the government and so was TV in its very early stages. Cinema was of course another free medium and everyone knows that during the Emergency, every effort was made to control it as well. All this, especially in its methods, was completely unknown to the country till then.

Anyway, the picture we have shown here is a picture of the dictatorial regime's treatment of the press during the Emergency. But, it would not be right to think that this was a representative picture of what the press was doing during the Emergency. Of course, there was a severe attack on the freedom of the press during the Emergency. During the Emergency, of course, what could be published in newspapers and magazines was being censored. But, the need for imposing censorship from outside was in itself proof that the story of the press during the Emergency was not just the story of this oppression of the regime. In fact, the image of blackened pages that easily emerges in the visual memory of the initial period of the Emergency is a story that brings out the other side of the coin of this story, the story of resistance. The words/sentences/paragraphs cut out by censorship being left blank or blacked out told a wonderful story of resistance. As a more blatant part of this, many newspapers and magazines left whole pages blank or blacked out in the early days.

Of course, no one is saying that the entire press had a uniform reaction to the emergency regime. Not at all. The reaction also reflected the great diversity of the Indian press. And it cannot be claimed that the kind of reaction that was seen in the press in the beginning to the emergency regime remained the same throughout the period of the emergency.

It is obvious that the kind of 'shock' that was caused in the initial period by the emergency regime and above all by its censorship arrangements, its effect had reduced with time and to some extent the emergency had also become normalized or the tendency to consider it the new normal was increasing. Nevertheless, it can be said with certainty that the press was generally against the Emergency. The Emergency and its arrangements were generally treated as an abnormal situation, from which recovery was eagerly awaited.

It is difficult to say how much this generally 'opposing' stance of the press may have helped in the massive defeat of the Emergency and its enforcer Indira Gandhi in the elections held in early 1977. But it is certain that the absence of the press as a medium to convey the voice of the people to the government probably played a major role in the Indira Gandhi regime not being able to foresee this defeat. Indira Gandhi's Emergency was a victim of the same syndrome that dictatorial systems generally suffer from - disassociation from the will of the people or blindness towards it. Mrs Gandhi kept hoping to win the election, even as the public was so determined to reject her that when the election results came in, the Congress was reduced to just two Lok Sabha seats in the whole of northern India.

As noted by the well-known journalist Manini Chatterjee, the ruling party suffered a similar unexpected defeat again in the 2004 general election. However, Manini points out that there was a fundamental difference in the element of 'unpredictability' in the ruling party's defeats in 1977 and 2004. The defeat of 1977 was unexpected for the ruling party because it did not have access to public opinion in the form of press, while its defeat in the 2004 election was unexpected because the electronic media, which had by then taken over the mainstream of mass communication, although was mostly with the ruling party, was still unable to give it correct feedback about the opinion of the common people. In the fifty years that have passed since the Emergency and the two decades that have passed since the unexpected result of 2004, it is obvious that there have been huge changes in the media scenario in our country. In this too, these changes have taken place even more rapidly in the last decade. There are three main elements in these changes. First, the electronic media has established tremendous dominance over the traditional media i.e. newspapers and magazines. Secondly, the entire media landscape is dominated by monopoly capitalists and these monopoly capitalists are almost completely aligned with the current rulers. In this situation, there is almost no place left for independent media, except for social media as an exception.

Thirdly, the current government has also made a mockery of the media. To tie the media to its peg, all the weapons of force, coercion and discrimination have been used openly. In front of all this, the censorship rule of the Emergency seems like a child's play. The restrictions of the Emergency were mostly negative, which tried to filter and stop the criticism of the government. The current siege of the media is aggressive, which makes the media a weapon of attack from the ruling party. In these ten years, the media has received a very apt introductory name - Godi Media. But, in fact, to reflect the current state of the media, even the noun of Godi Media seems inadequate. The main reason for this is that the aggressive service to the ruling party has now become the common identity of this Godi Media, the noun of Godi Media is unable to fully express it. It is not surprising that despite the almost complete control of the ruling group on the media, in the 2024 general elections, 2004 was almost saved from repeating itself. The ruling party, which had raised the slogan of crossing 400, stopped short of 250 seats and lost its own majority in the Lok Sabha. Obviously, this was a big blow for the ruling party and its top leader. Yet, if this blow could not be as decisive as 2004 or 1977, then apart from many other reasons, one reason for this could be the huge change in the character of the media during this period. We have already mentioned how, after the 'independent media', which meant to be free from the control of the monopolies sitting in the pockets of power, was pushed out, the lapdog media has become dominant, which not only sits in the lap of the master, but is also the media that barks and bites at the command of the master. And this barking and biting is not only against the political opposition. This barking and biting is against all democratic and secular values, institutions and demands, and against all human values. Its proof is found in the mainstream media's attitude towards the Israeli-American attack on Gaza and Iran, which is colored in the color of majority communalism. This is what makes the media a weapon of the Hindutva agenda of not only the ruling party in general, but the Sangh-BJP duo in particular. This is the big change that has come in the fifty years since the Emergency. While during the Emergency the media was not generally with it but was mostly against it, today, despite being thousands of times more powerful than then, the mainstream media remains a big, active tool for the ruling group to serve its agenda. That was the media of dictatorship and this is one step above it, the media of neo-fascism.