How the media learned to love the Emergency

The press in India came under censorship today for the first time since Independence...

SO ran a small report in The Indian Express of June 27, 1975. How did a supposedly mighty institution, which had even on occasion defied the gag orders of the British Raj, do that almost Titanic nosedive? This is an anniversary question, of course, one that pops up with unfailing regularity every last week of June. But somehow there’s never been a convincing answer to it, even as history has moved on and a new generation of editors has replaced the pilots of the front pages in those tenuous times.

There were three distinct phases in this gag exercise: the initial crackdown, administration of the silence and its long term management. The coup began with the electricity supply to the newspapers of the Capital being cut off — a decision that was taken late on June 25, 1975, a moment which has come to be known as the night of the long knives. The idea of cutting off electricity, according to Katherine Frank in her biography on Indira Gandhi, was masterminded by Sanjay Gandhi and R.K. Dhawan. Frank believes while Indira endorsed censorship, she let her son and personal secretary impose it.

Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the then chief minister of West Bengal, who lent his formidable legal acumen to the operation, was around that night. But even he was shocked when he learnt about the electricity plan. Ray is believed to have protested to the then minister of state for home Om Mehta, ‘‘This is absurd. This is not what we discussed. This is not on.’’ He is then believed to have demanded to talk to Indira who had retired for the night. Ray, or so he told Frank, believed the prime minister was ‘‘shocked’’ when she heard about the plan. She asked Ray to wait and went to consult Sanjay, who then apparently rang up Bansi Lal in Haryana and told him about Ray’s objections. Bansi Lal’s response was, ‘‘Throw him out, he is spoiling the game. He thinks too much of himself as a lawyer although he knows next to nothing.’’

Indira then seems to have fallen in line, although she told Ray,‘‘It’s alright; there will be electricity.’’ The power was cut and most of Delhi’s newspapers did not appear that day. Frank states that only The Statesman and The Hindustan Times appeared that day, while Raj Thapar in her memoirs, All These Years, puts it this way: ‘‘We burned away without electricity that first morning, except for one hour in which The Hindustan Times and Motherland rushed to print a few sheets which were confiscated by the police.’’

Indira Gandhi’s address to the nation over All India Radio on the morning of June 26 began with the now legendary observation, ‘‘There is nothing to panic about’’. She revealed the press had to be restrained because of its ‘‘irresponsible writing’’ in a period of grave disturbances. ‘‘The purpose of censorship is to restore a climate of trust,’’ she said. Most newspapers very quickly learnt that lesson in trust.

The next phase — the managing of silence — required the services of that spineless tribe known as the babu in the backroom. It was his job to ensure the Defence of India rules were observed to the last letter. Under the rules, ‘‘All printers, publishers and editors of newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and other documents,’’ should submit for scrutiny all material before it appears in the public domain. The PIB even issued guidelines which stated that there was an overwhelming need in this situation of national emergency for ‘‘extreme caution and circumspection in the handling and surveying of news and comments. The press required to be advised to guard against publication of unauthorised, irresponsible or demoralising news items, conjectures and rumours.’’

Friendly notes from the censor landed on the tables of editors: ‘‘Censor says that news items relating to Pakistani embassy functions in Delhi today at which the president is being invited have to be played in low key’’. Or: ‘‘You would appreciate that with the widespread monsoons in the country after a distressing lull for about a month, there is no need to apprehend continued price rise. I shall be grateful if you would extend ready co-operation in the endeavour of government to sustain the confidence of the consumer.’’

Though the media soon fell in line — with the exception of a flourishing underground press — the government was paranoid enough to promulgate three executive ordinances in December 1975 in the wake of the high courts of Bombay and Gujarat striking down censor orders. They gave authorities special powers to ban the public of ‘‘objectionable material’’ and provided ‘‘for action against publications which are likely to excite disaffection against the constitutionally established Government, incite interference with production, supply or distribution of essential commodities or services, create disharmony among different sections of society and promote indecent, scurrilous or obscene writing.’’

It may be useful to read the Far Eastern Economic Review of February 20, 1976, where its India correspondent Lawrence Lifschultz described how he was told to leave the country at a week’s notice. He had wondered aloud whether a report he had just written on The Indian Express had anything to do it.

Lifschultz’s report, entitled ‘Rolling the presses Indira’s way’, in the issue dated January 16, ‘76, described the attempt of the authorities of the day to take over and eliminate the Indian Express group of newspapers. Lifschultz reported how ‘‘the ‘agent’ chosen for this task’’ was none other than K.K. Birla, proprietor of the The Hindustan Times. ‘‘The affair began in late July, one month after the Emergency was declared. The Goenka family was approached by Rajni Patel, who is now a Congress party leader in Bombay and a close confidant of Mrs Gandhi. Patel reportedly informed the Goenkas that some members of their family would soon be arrested under MISA because of the Indian Express group’s pre-Emergency attitudes.’’

On August 30, B.D. Goenka was called to Bombay by Rajni Patel, where he met D.K. Barooah, Congress party president and V.C. Shukla, the new minister for information. He was told that running the newspaper would be made impossible by IT authorities and the government, unless the Goenkas agreed to part with the newspapers.

‘‘In September and October that year, K.K. Birla entered the negotiations, according to Lifschultz: ‘‘The government at this stage appears to have changed its position from staging an outright takeover of the newspaper, it shifted to a less expensive but equally effective ploy — gaining total control of the board of directors’’. The Goenkas were asked to sack S. Mulgaonkar, editor-in-chief of the Indian Express group and Kuldip Nayar, the paper’s editor, who was arrested in July until the High Court had ordered his release.

By mid-December, Lifschultz reported, ‘‘after four months of ‘negotiations’’, a compromise was reached. The Goenkas lost control of the Indian Express, but was granted the right to reject certain board nominees whom he found absolutely unacceptable due to their ‘irregular’ political reputations. The final solution allowed him five loyal board members against six selected by Information Minister V.C. Shukla.’’ Lifschultz saw this ‘‘backroom takeover’’ as the ‘‘first direct intervention by the ruling party in the management and political direction of a major Indian daily’’. He sought an interview with Shukla on his version on this issue. That just about cooked his goose: his marching orders came soon after.

Many of the events of the emergency are now forgotten, or live on only in private narrations. But they are as relevant today as ever, because the shadow of the wielders of power, ever impatient about any scrutiny of their actions, and the babus in the backroom, ever willing to oblige the former lot, continues to fall on the media and the citizen. It’s important then to remember a time when, says Raj Thapar, ‘‘it seemed as if everyone had left his voice at home under his bed or where it was impossible to find.’’

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