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Intimidation Of The Media -Who Gains?
The Gujarat Police has
slapped sedition charges on The Times of India, Ahmedabad, for
suggesting that Ahmedabad’s new Commissioner of Police, Mr O P Mathur,
had underworld links. If the Commissioner was offended, he was within
his rights to have initiated criminal and civil proceedings of
defamation against the publication and its employees. But
sedition?
In Thane, hoodlums claiming
to represent an outfit known as Shiv Sangram Sanghatana, attacked the
house of Kumar Ketkar, editor of the Marathi daily “Loksatta”, in broad
daylight and subjected him to verbal abuse and terror before the police
arrived a full 40 minutes later. Ketkar’s offence? In a satirical vein,
he had questioned the need for the Maharashtra government to spend Rs
300 crores on erecting a statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea when
Maharashtra’s children are malnourished, have no access to schools and
our farmers are committing suicide.
If an arm of the state can
press so serious a charge as sedition on one of India’s biggest media
groups with such impunity, what could be in store for smaller
publications and individual journalists? Is this not a direct attack on
the freedom of expression and opinion? Are the cops above criticism? Can
criticism of an individual police officer amount to sedition? Is
government policy not subject to democratic debate and
discussion?
As for the Ketkar case, time
and again, mob rule has prevented the slightest whiff of dissent when
the subject matter is even vaguely related to Shivaji. And more often
than not, these mobs have had overt or covert political support: this is
a handy device for silencing opposition to pet causes. If an editor of
Kumar Ketkar’s standing of a mainstream publication can be intimidated
in such a brazen fashion, what hope for other dissenting
journalists?
In fact, this growing lack of
tolerance to any criticism from the media also extends to the judiciary.
In September 2007, three journalists and the publisher of “Midday”, a
New Delhi eveninger, were convicted by the High Court for contempt of
court for arguing that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court may have
had an undeclared conflict of interest while deciding some cases
involving the shutting down of small shops and commercial
establishments. Another senior activist and journalist was pulled up for
even suggesting that a discriminatory system of justice is prevalent in
our courts when granting bail. Remember, the judges have also ruled that
they are not subject to scrutiny under the Right to Information Act nor
are their individual assets a matter for public scrutiny.
A clear trend is now
emerging. On the one hand, various arms of the state are cracking down
on the media whenever unpalatable facts are uncovered. On the other,
bands of ruffians are unleashed on the media, generally with the
patronage of politicians and sections of the administration, to silence
even the mildest criticism. This dangerous trend appears backed by
every political party across the spectrum. Such intimidatory tactics
also have a demonstration effect and are intended to create a climate of
fear. No disquieting questions are to be raised regarding the economic,
political and social fallout of India’s tryst with globalization and
financialisation.
Are mediapersons going to be cowed down by such blatantly intimidatory
ploys? Are we going to be content to play the role of passive
spectators? To ask inconvenient questions is the raison d’etre of
journalism. Are we a mature democracy or are we fast becoming a backdoor
banana republic?
On
Sedition and Freedom of expression – a brief sketch
In 1922,
the British authorities imprisoned Gandhi on charges of sedition
(that is, inciting rebellion).Mahatma
Gandhi spent years in jail for sedition. Sedition was always the
favoured weapon the British used against independence fighters. A
generation later, Joe McCarthy turned sedition laws against the
American left. Among the charges Nelson Mandela also faced was
sedition.
The most
far-reaching of these ordinances, the Emergency Powers Ordinance,
was issued in January 1932, when the government determined to
crack down on the nationalist movement more aggressively. As
described by the British home secretary, the provisions in the
ordinance were “‘a species of Martial Law administered by civil
officers,’” intended to avoid the more frontal imposition that
would result from direct use of the military. Nationalist
organizations affiliated with the Congress were banned throughout
India, and within months tens of thousands of nationalist
activists were arrested and convicted under both ordinary criminal
laws and emergency ordinances. The government also ordered the
preventive detention of approximately 3,500 individuals at one
point or another during the course of the 1930s.
The issue of freedom of
expression in India is subject after judicial interpretation to
"reasonable restrictions" but Sedition v/s Freedom of Expression
has oppressive colonial dimensions.
Echoes of
the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, 1919, popularly known
as the “Rowlatt Act, were found in post-Independent India with the
TADA and POTA. From 1947 to 1975, independent India followed the
same basic pattern established by the British in its use of
emergency and security laws.
The
government also suspended judicial enforcement of rights that may
have been violated under the emergency proclamation. While the
formal ground for invoking the Constitution’s emergency authority
in each instance was war and external aggression, in both cases
the government maintained the state of emergency long after armed
conflict had ceased, echoing efforts by the British to extend into
peacetime the sweeping emergency powers authorized on account of
war. Although the conflict with China was over within days, the
1962 emergency proclamation remained in effect until 1968.
Similarly, the 1971 war with Pakistan ended within weeks, and
relations between India and Pakistan were soon normalized, yet the
1971 emergency proclamation remained in effect, along with a
concurrent state of emergency declared by Indira Gandhi in 1975 in
response to threats allegedly posed by “internal disturbance,”
through 1977.
While
India’s constitution includes an extensive array of fundamental
rights protections, its emergency and security provisions
incorporate a number of the same basic principles found in the
Government of India Act of 1935: extraordinary powers that may be
exercised during declared periods of emergency, but supplemented
by several layers of preventive detention and other security laws
that readily afford the government multiple options to exercise
similar powers even outside of formally declared periods of
emergency.
Under
Article 19(2) of the Constitution, the State was allowed to make
laws with the object of imposing reasonable restrictions on the
exercise of the rights conferred by Article 19(1) in the interests
of the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign
states, public order, decency, or morality or in relation to
contempt of court, defamation on incitement to an offence.
However, in
Chintaman Rao v State of Madhya
Pradesh, the Supreme Court observed that "the
determination by the Legislature of what constitutes a reasonable
restriction is not final or conclusive. It is subject to
supervision by this Court in the matter of fundamental rights the
Supreme Court watches and guards the rights guaranteed by the
Constitution and in exercising its functions, it has the power to
set aside an Act of the Legislature if it is in violation of the
freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution".
Section
124A of the Indian Penal Code defines the offence of sedition as
follows: “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs,
or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to
bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite
disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India,
shall be punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine may be
added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to
which fine may be added, or with fine”. But Explanation 3 says
“Comments expressing disapprobation of the administrative or other
action of the Government without exciting or attempting to excite
hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not constitute an offence
under this section”
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Issued by: Brihanmumbai Union of Journalists, Mumbai Marathi Patrakar
Sangh,
Citizens for Justice and Peace, Communalism Combat, Lokshahi Haaq
Sanghatana, Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Forum
against Oppression of Women, Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Akshara, Women’s
Centre, Awaz-e-Niswaan, Trade Union Solidarity Committee, Trade Union
Centre of India and other organisations
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