Inconvenient messages

Political intimidation of media has become a norm

Indian politicians are fond of expressing their pride in the country’s status as the world’s largest democracy. Few of them, however, appear willing to accept the basic values that go into sustaining a democratic culture. Freedom of the press is at the forefront of them and it is with good reason that it was backed by well-established constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech. In an evolving and complex polity like India, the ability to speak truth to power should be nurtured as a valued privilege. Last week’s arrest of G Bala, a cartoonist, in Tamil Nadu showed, however, that for a steadily growing number of politicians the belief in democracy does not extend beyond the ballot box.

Mr Bala’s case was especially worrying because it demonstrated the extremes to which aggrieved politicians can go to retaliate against unfavourable comment. His cartoon, which went viral on social media, was based on the news of the suicide of an indebted farmer family that was being harassed by loan-sharks, despite multiple appeals to the district collector. It parodied, in admittedly cruel terms, the collective indifference of the state administration – the collector, the police commissioners and the chief minister – to the plight of its citizens. The complaint against Mr Bala was lodged by the collector on the flimsiest of charges. It was on this basis that the embattled chief minister, E Palanisami, ordered his arrest and incarceration on terms that entirely violated court-mandated guidelines. When a local bureaucrat is empowered by his political bosses to suborn free speech in this extra-judicial manner, it is surely time to worry. It is unclear why none of the state actors concerned took recourse to the process of judicial appeal if their sentiments were so hurt.

This incident is part of a steadily lengthening list of examples of politicians suborning the state apparatus to suppress critical comment. In Karnataka, two journalists were sentenced by the Speaker of the Assembly for writing allegedly defamatory articles. In Rajasthan, the government passed an ordinance to bar the media from reporting without its sanction accusations against civil servants, judges and magistrates. A television channel chose to drop the telecast of the talented comedian, Shyam Rangila, mimicking Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The episode, which predictably went viral on social media soon after, was about as harmless as you can get, yet fears of displeasing a regime that has demonstrated an extraordinary degree of sensitivity to the mildest of criticism are high enough for the media to begin a rigorous process of self-censorship. In June, a comedian was arrested by the Mumbai police for an equally harmless meme on the prime minister. In Gujarat, a lower court passed an extraordinary order restraining a website from publishing a report on Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, who had filed a defamation suit against it for an earlier article. The unpunished intimidation and hate speech are not limited to media alone. On Thursday, a fringe group in Rajasthan called the Karni Sena threatened actor Deepika Padukone with physical harm, escalating its protests against the film Padmavati, which features the actor in the title role. Indian politicians urgently need to emulate their peers in developed western democracies where neither royalty nor heads of states are spared the satire of writer and cartoonist. Those democracies are the stronger for their free press. India would be, too.