These days it seems journalists are finding it hard speak out their minds. They have to be careful with words, least they draw the attention of those charged with maintaining law and order. On October 8, the News Editor of the Tamil daily Dinamalar, B. Lenin, was arrested, under Section 4 of the Tamil Nadu Women Harassment (prevention) act, on a complaint filed by the General Secretary of the South Indian Film Artistes Association. He was released on bail two days later. Earlier in October, according to the International Press Institute (IPI), the police in Tamil Nadu arrested another editor for publishing an article allegedly insulting an actor. The IPI, based in Vienna, Austria, meanwhile has condemned the arrest of AS Mani, editor of a Tamil magazine Naveena Netrikan, on the critical charge of defamation. “The arrest of AS Mani shows the extent to which criminal defamation can effectively silence the media’s ability to report on issues of public concern”, IPI Director David Dadge has been quoted as saying.
In a statement Mr Dadge said: “If journalists fear for their liberty whenever exposing corruption, they will naturally seek to avoid the subject. As a result, India-through its legal system-is maintaining a form of indirect censorship that inhibits one of the most powerful instruments in the fight against corruption”. Defamation is a criminal offence in India, but it is non-cognizable and bailable. Mr Mani was remanded to judicial custody in Madurai. His arrest followed a complaint made by a local contractor about an allegedly defamatory article published in his magazine. The police not only charged Mr Mani with criminal defamation under Section 502 of the Indian Penal Code (printing and distributing defamatory material) but also with more serious offences like promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religious, race, place of birth etc.
Even as the IPI made its point, in Delhi, the Editors Guild of India also condemned Mr Mani’s arrest reiterating its position that arrest and imprisonment of editors and journalists on complaints of defamation amounted to intimidation of the media and was an affront to the freedom of the Press. According to The Hindu (October 30) the Guild said that the Section on criminal defamation was a hangover of the British Raj when editors and journalists were thrown into prison on the pretext that they had committed criminal defamation. The Guild in its statement added: “The British authorities used this draconisn provision to terrorise the newspapers”. Besides asking for the immediate release of Mr Mani, the Guild has urged the government to take steps to remove the criminal defamation provision from the Indian Penal Code. And one can fully agree with it.
One does not know the nature of the so-called defamation because no media has reproduced the article that appeared in Naveena Netrikan. Any paper which reproduces it may then get into trouble. So how is the public to make its own judgement on the nature of the alleged defamation? In such matters shouldn’t the public have a say in the matter? One would have imagined that defamation is a ‘civil’ and not a ‘criminal’ issue. Sadly, not many newspapers in the country seem to have taken up the matter. What is the media afraid of?
One feels sad to report that Rajan Bala, one of the doyens of sports writers passed away on October 7. The Times of India (October 10) took note of it in a commendable obituary. He had been ill for some time and had been hospitalised and ‘observed’ his 63rd birthday while in hospital bed. Were he in good health he would have launched his seventh book entitled Days Well Spent the very day he died. I can’t claim to have known Bala well, but we had met on several occasions and he was always pleasant to talk to. I never realised that he had studied at the London School of Economics because he never spoke about himself. And his conversation was never cricket-specific. The Times of India obit says: “A voracious reader of every topic under the sun, his all-round ability extended off the newsroom too. He was always the life of a party where once he had tired talking cricket, his ability to sing in English, Bengali and Tamil, all in proper tune and accent, kept the gathering enthralled”. I wasn’t aware of these qualities either, he discussed cricket while I listened and sometimes we discussed politics and he listened though he had his own views. He was a First Division and University level player and his views were respected. As the obituary states: “He was the sort who wrote about cricket, not cricketers. He wasn’t bothered about what the cricketers did off the field although in many cases he was part of their private lives. Being a worshipper of the game, he was able to maintain a distance between himself and the players whom he would have to comment on in his widely read columns”.
And now the Ultimate Umpire has declared him out. For all one knows he might be teaching the angles how to sing in Tamil and Bengali and give them a tip or two on how to watch cricket. As the obit says, a legend has passed away. One suspects that politics is no longer based on ideologies but on family connections and money power. Think of such leaders as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, C Rajagopalachari, BG Kher and a host of others who distinguished themselves in public life. None of their children ever entered politics. Indeed, they stayed away from it, to their eternal credit. They didn’t even attempt to put to use their parental heritage.
Today, it is the done thing for sons and daughters of well-known politicians to bask in their parents’ ‘glory’. As the Hitavada put it, during the last elections in Maharashtra, “vying for a spot in the sun, the victorious (politicians’ sons and daughters) candidates from across the political spectrum won from their pocket boroughs of their family in the state”. And names were named. Even more than family connections, today politics is run by businessmen who want to dictate terms to their party leaders. Again, it is not party ideology that counts, but business funds. No one dares to tell off business leaders to stick to their business and leave politics alone. And the party suffers on that count as a columnist has pointed out in the Indian Express (October 30). A Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge once told the then Karnataka Chief Minister Devraj Urs to give a party ticket to a friend of his. Urs was clear. He told Kharge: “Never field a businessman. If he wins he tries to protect his business interest. People are irrelevant to him”. And that said it all.
