By S.N. Sahu
On November 26, 1947, a little over three months after India’s independence, Mahatma Gandhi presciently cautioned that use of media by a ruling party for its own propaganda and image building would usher in dictatorship. He said this while dealing with a complaint that the Congress party was employing radio for broadcasting information about itself and its activities. “If the Congress uses the radio, etc., like this for its own propaganda, it is bound to bring about dictatorship in the end,” he warned.
Media and Emergency, then and now
During the 19 months of Emergency imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from 1975 to 1977, the media was controlled by her government for propaganda and image building. There was censorship and newspapers faced coercive action for not following government diktats. These measures were taken using emergency powers enshrined in the Constitution. L.K. Advani, then part of Jan Sangh (now BJP), famously said that when media was asked to bend, it crawled.
During the 11 years of Modi’s regime, there has been no official proclamation of emergency, yet the status of media is worse than during the Emergency period of 1975-77. The essence of Mahatma Gandhi’s warning – that if the ruling party used media for propaganda it would lead to dictatorship – is being played out more viciously during Modi’s tenure, with adverse consequences for democracy and the Constitution.
The ruling dispensation now ruthlessly uses media for propaganda without ifs and buts. Applying Gandhi’s yardstick to ascertain the advent of dictatorship, it can be said emphatically that Modi’s regime has made Gandhi’s apprehensions a dreadful reality.
Modi and management of media
When Modi as Gujarat Chief Minister was asked by the BBC about lessons learnt while dealing with the bloody riots that killed many Muslims in 2002, he did not say how more lives should have been saved. Rather, he said emphatically that he should have better managed the media – which had reported about the riots and his leadership during those communal conflagrations.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
