The Right To Bigotry

Article 19 clause 1 sub-clause (a) of the Constitution of India (a fine document which can never be read enough) tells us that all citizens have the right to Freedom of Expression, the cornerstone of democracy.

If, having read that, you choose not to move on but look at the footnotes, the following paragraph might interest you:



"Nothing in sub-clause (a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the State from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence."



Right then, you have the right to say and publish and film and broadcast what you want as long as government and courts and police and diplomats and moralists approve of it (incidentally, the bit about "sovereignty and integrity" was added in 1963, after Nehru's disastrous war against China).



The Editors Guild of India appointed a three-man fact finding mission to go to Gujarat and probe allegations that there had been bias in the media.

Its mandate very broadly was, then, to find out whether this right to freedom of expression had been abused by its champions.



The team comprised of Dileep Padgaonkar, executive managing editor of the Times of India and B G Verghese, former editor of the Hindustan Times and adviser to Indira Gandhi, apart from myself.



I went to Gujarat as a strong believer in absolute freedom of expression including -- these things are discussed at the Guild often -- the freedom to name communities involved in rioting as perpetrators or victims.

Journalists are responsible, right? People have a conscience -- when they're told what thugs are doing in their name, they will protest, governments will act.

Armed with this belief and my notepad, I sat at the Guild team's meeting with Mr Falgun Patel, owner-editor of Sandesh, the state's second-largest selling paper (ABC circulation 705,000).

"A vicious cycle began," Mr Patel said, after the Times of India reported an incident naming the victims, making it clear which community was involved. Following which, he explained, previously restrained newspapers (amongst which he presumably included his own) abandoned their no-naming policy.

"Nobody showed any norms or ethics after this," Mr Patel said.

"The English papers sided with the minorities" (a word I particularly dislike: the only majority in a republic is a democratic one) while "Gujarati papers backed Hinduism."

The use of this word I found quite strange, because it assumed that English papers were anti-Hinduism, and that to side against fanatics was the same as being against their faith.

He said that the paper editorialised its news pages and had a policy of not carrying clarifications.

Hindus never start anything on their own, Mr Patel said, it was always the Muslims who caused trouble. After this he took off.

Verghese, Padgaonkar and I asked questions and were taking down notes as he spoke.

"Hinduism ke naam per hum kuch bhi karenge," after "the way these Muslims have behaved." Even Hindu women felt that this time, "theek hai, saalon ko maro."

"The hell with everything -- principles of newspapers and all," he said, when asked what of restraint.

What about the innocents who would die because of such aggression?, we asked. His reply was so atrocious that I looked up from my notes to see if he was aware that we were writing his statements. He was.

"When you target innocents, the message goes to the others to behave."

Mr Patel's paper reflected his bigotry.

One day's lead story screamed that women at Godhra were raped and their breasts had been cut off. This was not true, chief minister Narendra Modi told us and a note had been issued in clarification.

Carrying this, of course, was against Sandesh's policy.

In its Bhavnagar edition, Sandesh said in a headline "Hindus were burnt alive in Godhra and Bhavnagar's cowardly leaders did not even throw a stone".

Sandesh was not the only paper to hold and publish such views. Far from it. The number one paper, Gujarat Samachar (ABC 810,000), ran front page articles on the phenomenon of the Hulladio Hanuman (riotous Hanuman), whose idols had been installed on razed mosques and dargahs.

A paper in Anand, Madhyantar, ran an eight-column front page commentary headlined: "Muslims will have to prove they are full Indians".

What was the effect of this poison on the state?

Narendra Modi, who told us that they felt the papers had gone overboard, sent a letter to Falgun Patel thanking him on the balanced and responsible coverage in Sandesh. He sent this letter to most papers in Gujarat, except one edited by a Muslim. The guilty papers were congratulated for the viciousness of their propaganda.

All the collectors and senior police officers we met told us that this recklessness to sweep up readers was severely damaging. Indeed, some of them said that violence that had been quelled with great difficulty, burst again into fire immediately after such articles.

Communities should NOT be named in articles, they said time and again, begging us to tell our fellow editors this.

If it is true, and I believe it to be true, that news reports inflame us to violence, the makers and menders of the constitution may well be justified in surreptitiously denying us the freedom of expression that is the right of all those who participate in democracy.

We are, simply put, unfit to have this freedom because we will misuse it. For murder.

Anybody have an opposing view?