7 Nov 2024 | India, News and features, Volume 53.03 Autumn 2024
The four editors of Assam’s English daily, The Drongo Express, meet in person once or twice a month. They sit hunched over their laptops and notebooks – either at parks or in someone’s house in Diphu, where the paper is headquartered – figuring out how to keep their newspaper afloat.
One of them, Helvellyn Timungpi, from the tribal district of Karbi Anglong, told Index: “Last year, our publisher decided to walk away from the newspaper. We who were on the editorial board came together and signed the partnership deed and got a transfer of ownership. We didn’t have any other employment, and we wanted to stop this newspaper from going down the drain.”
Like many newspapers in North East India – which is made up of eight states including Assam – The Drongo Express relies heavily on advertisements placed by government departments. “We haven’t received a single penny since last October,” said Timungpi.
“If we were receiving our bills regularly, we would be OK.”
Home to about 140 notified Scheduled Tribes [indigenous groups], the region remains poorly covered by the mainstream media. Most Delhi-based media houses continue to employ just one reporter in the region. Others send journalists to cover only stories of extreme violence – for instance, the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur or the botched security operation in Nagaland that led to several civilian deaths. Local news channels, newspapers and websites have played a significant role in filling this gap.
Karma Paljor, a former news anchor and founder of EastMojo – the first and only independent digital news outlet that primarily covers the North East – said media ownership was a big problem.
“Anyone with a reasonable amount of money, including contractors, lobbyists and politicians can start a media organisation,” he said. “There are very few newspapers here that stand for balanced news.”
The demographic complexity of the region also plays a part.
“On account of the region’s layered contemporary history as well as ethnic and linguistic faultlines, most local publications do tend to be nativist and, in many cases, unabashedly take sides on polarising topics such as immigration,” explained Tora Agarwala, an independent journalist based in Assam.
Media organisations in the region are often faced with a lack of revenue and resources. Kenter Joya, the managing editor of the Arunachal Pradesh-based Eastern Sentinel, said: “The cost of printing papers is 15 rupees, and we are selling it at three rupees. Vendors take 50% of this money … we try to make it up through advertisements from state government, which constitute 65% of advertisements placed, and corporate advertisements.
“Annually, bi-annually, we receive only 50-60% of what we are owed for the advertisements.”
She said she wondered if payment was being withheld as a form of punishment.
Meanwhile, repeated calls for subscriptions, especially by independent outlets such as EastMojo, haven’t yielded many results.
“The people of the North East are not aware of the power of media, hence they aren’t able to fathom why they should support us,” Paljor said.
“I don’t know who to blame,” said an exasperated Timungpi. “No matter how penniless I become, I want to cling to this profession. But it pains me when my three children have nothing to eat.”
17 Oct 2024 | Canada, India, News and features, Volume 53.01 Spring 2024
This article was first published in the Spring 2024 issue of Index on Censorship. We are republishing it here after Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau accused India of making a “horrific mistake” in violating Canadian sovereignty at an inquiry into the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
Last June, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a 45-year-old Sikh activist campaigning for Khalistan, a separate homeland for his co-religionists, was shot dead in British Columbia, Canada.
The murder happened in a car park, and a video emerged of his body collapsed over the steering wheel. Three months later, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed there were “credible allegations” that the Indian government was involved in the murder. India reacted angrily, terming Trudeau’s charge “absurd”. India removed diplomats from Canada, asked Canada to reduce its diplomatic presence in India, and significantly delayed Canadian visa applications. The USA, Canada’s closest ally, expressed concern but did not say more.
In recent years, India’s strategic importance has increased for three reasons: its growing economy, its outwardly democratic credentials and its potential emergence as the counterweight to China – not only in Asia but on the international stage.
Western governments have been queuing up to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit their countries and rolling out the red carpet for him, or they’ve been visiting India and announcing investment deals – even if actual inflows may be puny compared with the bombastic claims.
Sikhs and India
Sikhs form about 2% of India’s population, and most of them live in the fertile and prosperous state of Punjab along with Hindus, Muslims and others. In the early-1970s, the Shiromani Akali Dal, a political party representing Sikh and Punjabi interests, passed a resolution seeking greater autonomy. By the late 1970s, a militant movement emerged, seeking an independent homeland called Khalistan, carved out of India.
Extremists representing Khalistani interests attacked government targets and terrorised civilians. Many militants garrisoned themselves in the holiest Sikh shrine, Amritsar’s Golden Temple, and in June 1984 then prime minister Indira Gandhi sent troops into the temple to eliminate the threat.
Hundreds died in what became known as Operation Bluestar. Four months later, on 31 October, Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards – both Sikh. In the retaliatory violence that followed, thousands of Sikhs were killed in northern India.
Indian security forces pursued the militants ruthlessly, and the Khalistan movement subsided. It survives among Sikhs abroad who dream of an independent Sikh nation, but in India there is little support for Sikh separatism.
However, Sikhs overseas and in India remember the attack on the Golden Temple, the pogrom of Sikhs in 1984 and the lack of justice. While Indian leaders have since expressed regret over the violence, and a Sikh economist – Manmohan Singh – was India’s prime minister from 2004 until 2014, the wounds have not healed. That accounts for the nostalgic longing for an independent homeland among some Sikhs abroad.
Nijjar’s killing would have remained largely forgotten, but in November the USA charged an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, with attempting to hire an assassin to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist leader who is the general counsel for Sikhs for Justice and who lives in the USA. Gupta, the USA alleged, was acting under the directions of an Indian government official and had offered $100,000 to a potential assassin.
He did not know that the man he was trying to hire was, in fact, a US agent, and Gupta is now in a Czech jail, awaiting extradition to the USA.
While the Indian government denied any role, its response to the US charge was more muted and less full of bluster than its response to Trudeau. US President Joe Biden was invited as the guest of honour to India’s day of pomp and glory – the Republic Day parade – in January this year. Biden did not make the trip and while he did not give any specific reason, diplomatic circles believe it was meant as a snub to India, which has elections later this year. The incumbent Modi would have loved the footage of Biden by his side, watching the might of India’s defence forces marching by.
There is no evidence of India’s role in either Nijjar’s murder or the plot against Pannun, and they could just as easily have been rogue operations. But the US charge-sheet is fairly detailed, and India’s subdued response raises questions. India’s current government has long admired the long reach of Israel’s Mossad, which has a record of carrying out spectacular attacks against those Israel considers its enemies.
Could some Indian officials have been tempted to imitate Israel as a form of flattery?
Transnational repression
Carrying out violent acts against individuals or organisations that a government considers hostile to its interests in a friendly country is an extreme form of transnational repression. But India has practised many other subtler forms of preventing contact between Indian dissidents seeking a global platform and foreign researchers or journalists wishing to report on India. It has expelled journalists, prevented academics from entering the country, stopped its own journalists or human rights activists from travel and got Indian embassies to complain loudly against foreign reporting of India.
Most recently, Vanessa Dougnac, who had been the longest-staying foreign correspondent in India, said she would leave the country after India revoked her status as an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI). (She is married to an Indian national, and so qualifies for such a status.) The title is misleading: OCI does not grant any citizenship rights such as the right to vote, but it grants the individual a permanent, long-stay visa and the ability to work (except in certain sectors). Dougnac was told her reporting for various French publications created a “biased, negative” perception of India. She wrote a heartfelt lament while leaving the country she considers her own, saying the government’s onerous conditions made it impossible for her to work there.
Earlier, the overseas citizenship of Ashok Swain, who teaches peace and conflict studies at Uppsala University in Sweden, was revoked. In November 2020, Swain was informed his OCI would be revoked because of his “inflammatory speeches” and “anti-India activities”. Swain asked for specific instances and requested for the decision to be overturned so he could visit his unwell mother back in India. His request was denied.
Swain sued the government, and in July 2023 the court ruled in his favour, saying the government needed to provide proper reasons. Later that month, the Indian embassy in Stockholm sent him another note, long on rhetoric and short on specifics, saying he was “hurting religious sentiments”, “destabilising” India’s social fabric and “spreading hate propaganda”. Swain was tweeting too much and too critically about India, the order said, hurting the country’s image abroad. Swain’s case will be heard in May.
The OCI status was created not as a right but as a privilege or an entitlement, because people of Indian origin who lived abroad had been clamouring for dual nationality, which Indian laws don’t permit. It was created in 2005 under the 1955 Citizenship Act, which allows foreign citizens of Indian origin or foreigners married to Indian citizens to enter the country without a visa and reside, work and hold property there, among other benefits.
But lately the government is wary of OCI journalists and academics visiting or living in the country, especially if the government does not like their reporting or investigations. In March 2021, India required OCIs to seek a permit to conduct research, for mountaineering, for missionary, journalistic or Tablighi (a Muslim sect) activities, or to visit any area of India deemed as “protected”.
According to the human rights and law-focused web portal Article 14, which has examined the issue in great detail, more than 4.5 million people around the world are OCIs, and data released by the government in response to an inquiry under India’s Right to Information Act, showed that the Modi administration had cancelled at least 102 OCI cards between 2014 and May 2023. In theory, those whose OCIs are cancelled can apply for a regular visa to visit India, but the government reserves the right to blacklist them which would, in effect, bar them forever from entering the country.
In November 2022, 82-year-old UK-based activist Amrit Wilson received a letter that tore to shreds her official ties with India. The letter, from the Indian high commission, blamed her for “anti-India activities” and for making “detrimental propaganda” which was “inimical” to India’s sovereignty and integrity. There was, of course, no evidence – but she was asked to provide reasons within a fortnight why her status should not be revoked. Wilson sent a detailed response, but several months later the government replied that her response wasn’t “plausible”, and cancelled her status. She is now appealing through the Indian court system. In its response, the government pointed out some of her tweets for being critical of the government and an article that opposed the revoking of the special status granted to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The government claims it can cancel the status of those who have shown “disaffection to the constitution” or “assisted an enemy during war”, or done anything that it believes is against the interests of “sovereignty, integrity and security” of India.
Chetan Ahimsa (Kumar), a leading actor in Kannada films, had his status revoked briefly, too. Ahimsa is a US citizen. He was arrested in India after he criticised a ban on Muslim students wearing the hijab in schools in the southern state of Karnataka. In court, the government said India could expel people who were “undesirable” and foreigners did not have the right to free speech in India. The court stayed the cancellation.
More famously, in 2019, the USA-based writer Aatish Taseer, whose mother is the Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and whose father is the slain Pakistani politician Salman Taseer, had his overseas citizenship cancelled after he wrote a cover story in Time magazine asking if India could survive another five years of Modi.
In Taseer’s case, the government claimed his status was revoked because he had “concealed” the fact that his father was a Pakistani national. Earlier, in 2014, Christine Mehta, a researcher at Amnesty International, had her OCI revoked after she studied India’s human rights record in Jammu and Kashmir.
A gigantic conspiracy?
A web-based portal called Disinfo Lab has, according to a report in The Washington Post, been compiling information of critics overseas, Indian or not, and blaming them for undermining India. The portal establishes links between the critics and the philanthropic billionaire George Soros, sometimes by connecting disconnected dots, to present an image of a gigantic conspiracy.
At the same time, foreign-based web portals critical of India are being taken offline inside the country. The latest to suffer such erasure is Hindutva Watch, which compiled human rights violations by Hindu fundamentalists. India has escalated demands on X, formerly Twitter, and many accounts critical of the government have been “withheld” recently, including those operated by foreigners who live abroad. X has complied, but issued a statement expressing disapproval of the government’s action. Clearly, X’s owner Elon Musk, who claims to champion free speech, has a different standard for different countries, and in the Indian case, he has meekly complied with many requests.
Academics are also being turned away. Within weeks of Modi’s election in 2014, Penny Vera-Sanso, of Birkbeck University in London, who had been visiting India since 1990 and writes about gender, was denied entry. In 2022, Lindsay Bremner, who teaches architecture at the University of Westminster, had a valid research visa when she arrived in India, but was told at the airport that she could not enter. Earlier that year, Flippo Osella, who teaches anthropology at the University of Sussex, was sent back. He is an expert on Kerala and has been visiting India for 30 years. The government claimed his research on caste was deemed “sensitive”. Osella understands Malayalam and has studied the Ezhava community. He has written about Mamootty, a popular actor in Kerala, and was working with local institutions on predicting weather. His research was supported by the UK government, but he was treated brusquely and not allowed to contact friends in India.
India has also barred writers and academics who have tourist visas but who might conduct research, which would technically violate Indian rules. In 2018, Kathryn Hummel, an Australian poet, was turned away at Bangalore airport and Pakistani researcher Annie Zaman was similarly sent back and prevented from attending a conference in Delhi. When I sought out some of the academics denied entry, none of them wanted to speak, on or off the record, because they did not wish to jeopardise their visas in the future. Some American journalists, Indian origin or otherwise, too have had visa requests delayed or denied.
When graduate students and academics at several US universities organised a three-day conference in 2021 called Dismantling Global Hindutva, which examined the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and its effects on Indian society, several academics and potential speakers were warned off from participating, and a few backed out, so as not to jeopardise future visits to India. Indian residents in the USA who support the Indian government wrote to faculty heads and university administrators complaining against those academics. Academics in the USA who are of Indian origin and are critical of India have frequently been targeted by concerted efforts from pro-government overseas Indians, calling for their dismissal or for them to be disciplined.
Several journalists and human rights activists living in India find themselves mired in legal cases, which means they must have clearance from courts or other appropriate authorities before leaving the country. This has prevented several writers and human rights activists from participating at events overseas.
Others with clean records also find that they are suspect. Sanna Irshad Mattoo, a Kashmiri photojournalist whose photographs earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 2022, was prevented from leaving for Paris to launch a book featuring her work, even though she had a valid French visa.
India is erecting a barrier between scholars and their subjects, reporters and their stories, and closing off doors and windows, narrowing Indian minds and hardening outlooks.
And it flexes its muscles abroad, shouting at critics, preventing their travel and access, and – if the Canadian and US accusations are true – attempting to eliminate those it disagrees with.
But it will hold elections in a few months, and encomiums praising the world’s largest democracy will follow. Naturally.
28 Aug 2024 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
On 1 April, less than a month before India went to the polls, a young YouTuber named Dhruv Rathee released a video calling India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister a dictator. Speaking in a loud, declamatory style, Rathee delivered fact after fact, laying out how Narendra Modi had tried to throttle Indian democracy. The video ended with an appeal to vote against the Prime Minister.
At the time of writing, Rathee’s harangue had garnered an incredible 37 million views on YouTube. This number does not capture the fact that many Indians would have viewed this video as a “forward” on WhatsApp. With an incredible 24.6 million subscribers, Rathee is the person Indians increasingly turn to when they want to consume current affairs. And he’s not the only one. Ravish Kumar, one of India’s most well-known journalists, now broadcasts on YouTube with nearly 12 million subscribers. These one-person YouTube channels frequently garner more views and subscribers than corporate-funded mainstream media channels.
For a decade now, India’s mainstream media has stopped doing the job it’s meant to do – holding the powerful to account. Using a mixture of carrot and stick, Modi has ensured his government has little to fear from traditional broadcasters or newspapers. The result: Indians are now increasingly turning to the internet for news and opinion. This trend is so significant that Modi is making increasingly desperate attempts to control what takes place online.
Throttling the press
As a wave of autocratic strongmen sweeps the world, arguably Modi leads the pack. The power he commands in India and the ideological changes he has made to the country have few parallels either globally or in India’s own history. The tactical keystone of this politics? Control over the country’s media.
In 2014, India’s Congress-led liberal coalition crashed to a defeat, bringing Modi to power. This loss was portended by loud television debates bashing the government over corruption, women’s safety and, most of all, so-called Muslim appeasement. Once he came to power, Modi had digested that hard political lesson and was determined to ensure that it would not happen to him.
This was relatively easy to do given the Indian media’s structure. Owned by large corporations who looked to curry favour with the government, India’s powerful national television channels bent over backwards for Modi. In 2022, NDTV, India’s last news network not seen to be pro-Modi was acquired: a billionaire who is not only seen as Modi’s close ally but one whose remarkable rise has been facilitated by his government. The change of NDTV’s ownership was like flipping a switch: the network simply stopped doing any critical reporting, leading to an exodus of its top journalists.
If not directly controlled through a proprietor, the Modi government can also influence media houses through ad spending. Oddly enough, the main source of advertising income for legacy media houses in India is the government. Previously, the Modi government has withheld ads from media houses seen as being critical of the government.
Carrot to stick
What happens if a media house does not bend to Modi? In that case, Indian law provides massive powers to the federal government to regulate and even ban television networks. In 2022 the Modi government peremptorily shut down a Malayalam-language news channel, MediaOne, citing “national security” as a reason. While the ban was later reversed by the Supreme Court, the action had a chilling effect on news networks, which simply cannot afford to be yanked off air overnight.
Starting in 2020, the Modi government employed even harsher provisions against a small, left-wing website called NewsClick. First, India’s severe money-laundering laws were deployed against the media outlet. Not satisfied, the government then charged it under India’s draconian terror legislation, which provides for long prison terms even before a court pronounces on the guilt of the accused. Newsclick’s founder, Prabir Purkayastha, found himself spending more than seven months in jail before the Supreme Court granted him bail.
Modi has not been shy of using similar tactics against the BBC. In 2023, the government launched income tax raids against the British broadcaster’s offices in Delhi after the network aired a documentary that was critical of Modi’s role as chief minister in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.
All this creates a climate where outright violence against journalists is common. Since Modi took power 28 journalists have been killed. Reporters without Borders calls India “one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media”.
Broadcast Bill
With the traditional media subdued, Modi is now swivelling his guns towards the internet. In 2023, the government released a new Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill looking to regulate television and OTT internet broadcasters. However, in 2024 a new draft significantly expanded the bill’s scope to include internet content creators, apparently driven by the critical role social media had played in the 2024 general election where Modi sustained considerable losses.Copies of this bill were circulated privately by the Modi government and then, just as abruptly, withdrawn.
Even as the exact status of the bill remains unclear – is this truly a withdrawal or a tactical retreat before the final charge? – the provisions in the 2024 draft version are a good pointer as to the scope of Modi’s ambitions when it comes to controlling India’s internet.
The 2024 draft bill, for example, demanded that content creators subject themselves to a draconian regulatory regime designed expressly to stifle free expression. The bill called for content creators to set up “content evaluation committees” which would need to approve the majority of content before it was broadcast (certain programmes such as news and current affairs programmes were exempt), appoint a grievance officer and join a government-approved “self-regulatory organisation” to address grievances as well as ensure compliance with the relevant codes that would be drafted by the government alone. A new Broadcast Advisory Council would have been created by the Indian government which would, in turn, sit above, these self-regulatory organisations.
The entire edifice is a marvel of Orwellian “red tape-ism”, not only bringing content creators under government regulation but making them pay for it themselves. This is significant since adherence to the relevant provisions in the bill would represent a significant, even crippling, cost for small outfits or individual content creators.
How successful has Modi been in his desire to curb free expression in India? While he has achieved a substantial number of his goals, it is credit to India’s democratic traditions that the country’s media has not bent in its entirety. While major media houses are unlikely to play their role as watchdog, independent media and even individual content creators have stepped in to do the job. In fact, the fierce criticism Modi faced when he released the draft of the Broadcast Bill is a fine example of how India’s democratic traditions are trying to push back against curbs to free speech. It is not insignificant that Modi withdrew the draft bill and has gone back to the drawing board on trying to control the internet.
12 Jun 2024 | Asia and Pacific, India, News and features
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi readies for his third term, he formally took the oath of office on Sunday, casting a shadow over the nation’s landscape of free speech and press freedom. With each successive term, Modi’s administration has faced criticism for tightening control over the media and curbing dissenting voices, with instances of journalists and activists facing harassment, intimidation, and even legal action for criticisng the government or expressing views contrary to the official narrative.
India’s extensive six-week election period concluded with a tally of 640 million votes on 4 June. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) secured an outright majority by winning 292 seats out of the 543 seats, surpassing the 272 seats required for a clear majority in India’s lower house of Parliament.
Meer Faisal, a 23-year-old journalist and the founder of The Observer Post, an online news portal based in Delhi, holds little optimism regarding Modi’s government when it comes to censorship and freedom of expression in India. He has faced significant censorship in the past during Modi’s tenure for his coverage on atrocities against Muslims in India. In October last year, his Twitter account faced restrictions in India due to his reporting.
“As a journalist, especially being a Muslim, it invites more censorship and trouble. The Modi government aims to silence every voice that speaks against them. They want to build a narrative in the country and label everyone who criticises government policies as anti-national,” said Faisal.
Faisal is among many in India who express fear concerning Modi’s third term, citing concerns beyond censorship to include threats to freedom of speech.
Since August 2019, the Modi government has also barred many Kashmiri journalists from travelling abroad, offering no explanation for restricting their fundamental rights.
“In Modi’s third term, I fear that there will be more harsh policies against journalists and more tactics will be employed to intimidate us. This will directly impact our reporting abilities and help authorities in curbing the voice of people,” said Faisal.
In the 2024 edition of the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, India is ranked 159th out of the 180 nations considered. “With violence against journalists, highly concentrated media ownership, and political alignment, press freedom is in crisis in “the world’s largest democracy”, ruled since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and embodiment of the Hindu nationalist right,” RSF stated while releasing the data.
Asif Mujtaba, 34, an advocate for people’s rights and director of the Miles2smile Foundation—which works with survivors of mob lynching, communal violence, and selective communal demolition—believes that the space for dissent has significantly decreased since Modi came to power, and public participation in protests has also diminished.
“It’s become a tough task for social and political activists, regardless of any religion, to work for people’s rights under Modi’s regime. The government can use any stringent law to frame you and silence your voice,” saidMujtaba.
According to Mujtaba, many people in India are apprehensive about openly criticising Modi because they are aware of the potential repercussions. A significant number of individuals who were once vocal against the regime have now become quiet..
“Modi’s administration is aware of the escalating dissent and the potential for increased protests against their policies in the third term. The growing public dissent will force Modi to resort to heavy-handed tactics to silence the people,” said Mujtaba.
In the first four months of 2024, India has experienced at least 134 instances of free speech violation, impacting journalists, academics, YouTubers, and students, according to a report published by the Free Speech Collective in early May. The organisation tracks and categorises free speech violations and offers support to those affected.
Niranjan K S, 22, a fourth-year law student at Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, and a member of the All India Revolutionary Students Organisation (AIRSO), argues that the suppression of dissent is driven by the corporate-Hindutva fascist nexus, which aims to transform the country into a fascist dictatorship. As a result, free speech will be stifled, and only those who support the ruling forces will retain their right to free expression.
“The surge in the enforcement of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the uptick in political detentions, particularly aimed at students and activists like Sharjeel Imam and Umar Khalid, who were involved in the anti-CAA protests of 2019, demonstrate a systematic use of these draconian laws to quash all forms of dissent,” said Niranjan.
During the protests, students played an active role in amplifying the voices of the oppressed within the country. However, the BJP regime labeled these students as “anti-national” and “terrorists,” attempting to delegitimise their activism and dissent.
Niranjan emphasised that secularism and communal harmony are already under significant threat due to the Hindutva ideology of the current regime, which could further hinder free speech. “In this third term of the Modi government, the non-state elements of fascism will be more utilised to advance their offensive than the state elements,” said Niranjan.
Index on Censorship sought a response from a BJP spokesperson regarding censorship as Modi embarks on his historic third term. Answer came there none.
