India press matures
By Philip Mathew Posted Sat, Jan 1 2000
Fifty years ago, fewer than one in four Indians could read or write. Malayala Manorama’s first editorial more than 110 years ago discussed education of the untouchables, the lowest caste, though none of them could read it. The evolution of the press in the world’s largest democracy shows the struggle between rulers and the journalists who cover them.
As much as India’s early leaders respected the press, they took it for granted when writing the Constitution in 1947. It guarantees an enviable amount of freedom of speech and expression, but the legislators seemed to think that it was enough to cover the press, too. Eventually, the courts set laws for freedom of the press, but it took nearly 30 years of struggle.
The honeymoon between the government and the media began to sour a few months after independence was achieved in 1947. If the press largely supported the accession of Kashmir to India and the subsequent war with Pakistan, it attacked Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s referral of the issue back to the United Nations.
Since then the government and the media have had a love-hate relationship. The Indian press has grown since the days reporters swam against swift currents to file copy. Public opinion emerged as a strong current with which the country’s rulers struggle. None recognized it more than Prime Minister Nehru. “Nehru was like a good swimmer,” Prem Bhatia, one of India’s most eminent editors says. “He used to ride the wave of public opinion, but when the tide was against him, like a good swimmer he dipped and allowed the waves to pass over him.”
After having acknowledged freedom of speech and expression in the Consti-tution, India’s leaders sought to curb it in 1951, a year after the country became a republic. The first amendment to the Indian Constitution added further restrictions. It stated that press freedom can be exercised as long as it does not incite violence or affect public order or friendly relations with foreign states.
For the next 25 years, the Indian press grew as the courts interpreted and expanded the scope of press freedom. They even ruled that the press could
criticize totalitarian regimes, despite the first amendment’s restriction on disturbing relations with friendly countries. The courts held that such criticism would lead to formulation of healthier foreign policies.
Good things cannot last forever. When Indira Gandhi tried to suppress opposition during the Emergency of 1975-77, even basic rights were suspended. The Indian press leaders, though, were not concerned with their immediate freedom or in outwitting the government. Their goal during the Emergency was to find long-term solutions. Their rights, and those of the people, had to be established through constitutional law.
Editors like Minoo Masani and Y.D. Lokurkar successfully fought censorship in the courts. The judgments in those cases had a greater impact than disseminating uncensored news. In one landmark judgment, the Bombay High Court said: “Creation of public opinion against the Emergency in a persuasive, peaceful and constructive manner is permissible and perfectly legal.”
Former Solicitor-Gen-eral Soli Sorabjee, who is now attorney general, says, “The immense value [of these judgments] lay in the fine balance achieved between two important social interests, liberty of thought and expression and public safety. The right of dissent is basic, but the preservation of order must go alongside, as it is the basis of civilization.”
The Indian press used this period to establish legal rights for itself. When the Emergency ended, the press was equipped, more than other institutions, to cope with opposition. Accordingly, the post-Emergency period witnessed the massive growth of newspapers and magazines.
Meanwhile, a slow transformation was taking place in the press’s character. If the English-language press dominated during the first decade of freedom, growing literacy and political consciousness provided the fertilizer for the Indian-language press. From 1956 to 1976, newspaper circulation in southern India grew from 550,000 to 2.3 million, more than 400 percent. Growing political consciousness provided the momentum for political opposition to the Congress party, which culminated in the end of the one-party monopoly on power in the states by 1967.
By this time, the Indian-language press had established a friendly connection with the government but did not blindly accept the new establishment. “The political bond that emerged with the setting up of state-level elected governments on the one hand and the newly expanded language press does not mean that the press turned a docile camp-follower of the new political establishment,” said prominent editor Nikhil Chakra-varty. “But the organic bond that had been forged during the freedom struggle came into good use during this period as the language press, by and large, played a crucial role in molding the politics of new rulers.”
The real boom began in the 1980s with the revolution in communications technology. Having outpaced the English press in circulation and local clout, the Indian-language press was faster in making full use of the new computer technologies that linked even the most remote Indian villages. As a result, more and more national and international news found its way across the subcontinent. Some editions of newspapers were sent entirely by facsimile.
These changes were not accomplished at the expense of local news. With increased pages, there was ample space for intensive local coverage as well as extensive national and international reportage in the language newspapers, which were often published from small towns.
Today the Indian-language press makes better use of color printing and simultaneous satellite editions than the English-language press. They switched to daily color editions long before the metropolitan English dailies.
Even the electronic media have not been able to replace the newspaper in catering to the Indian’s basic urge for news, be it local, regional, national or international. Today more than 37,000 newspapers and magazines are published in more than 100 languages and dialects. The circulation of some dailies touches nearly 1 million.
This growth has not happened without a few bumps. Several times, attempts have been made to curb press freedom, but a concerted effort by the press itself defeated such attempts at both the federal and state level. The press today is as much a cornerstone of India’s democracy as are its elected institutions.