A broader scrutiny of the functioning of Indian media, its failures, its successes and limitations would be a relevant exercise at the national level too; but that’s a gigantic task.
In the northeast of India, the media has had a different journey — some of it would not be understood even by those in the so-called mainstream national media.
Generally speaking local newspapers were launched in state capitals like Imphal (Manipur) and Kohima (Nagaland) with different intentions. Some were with mere business-like purpose — local entrepreneurship to tap state government advertisements revenue. The Tag of ‘local editors’ gave you a social prestige and gradually an influence and a possible entry into politics.
In some cases such as Chalie Kevichusa – who was killed by NSCN-IM in Dimapur in 1992 – had run his English weekly paper ‘Ura Mail’ passionately. He was also the last of the ‘idealist’ politicians Nagaland knew.
There have been a few newspapers which backed their respective ethnic/tribal community and also perhaps one or the other faction(s) of militant groups in a subtle way.
From a primordial economy, the region is today a telling picture and plethora of a different world. It is also ‘westernised’ in many respects and use of English is abundant in Nagaland and Meghalaya. A visitor can easily discard the conventional tribal theory of the indigenous people.
In more ways than one, northeast India is also an urban society. In all these, keeping the right balance is a hugely challenging task.
In most cases, the media has failed to do much though it goes without stating ‘mere survival’ in journalism is near impossible and often fatal in the north east. In the nineties, the journalists on receipt of Threat Missives used to call them Love Letters.
But the media should have done more on the basics — which was found wanting.
How? There is an inherent fear of the ‘outsiders’. Media in north east in general did not do much to change this mindset. Therefore, a traditional mindset of ‘reactionary’ resistance to all things that is ‘not local’ persisted.
The new world and the new internet media cannot be kept at bay. But as nothing much was done, the paranoia also persisted. A point therefore need to be emphasised is that the pristine seclusion in the far-flung valleys and hills is no longer a virtue. The new age media and the ‘New India’ as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls for a situation when people of northeast India should know what is happening in Sri Lanka and Ukraine. The people, politicians and other intellectuals and leaders of pressure groups – business chambers and student bodies — need to accommodate themselves to the ‘people’ of the rest of India, the neighbouring countries and the rest of the world.
The journalists in northeast India, one needs to lay emphasis, ought to open up first with their fellow colleagues across the northeast states itself. How much does a journalist in Kohima know about Mizoram and vice versa?
More importantly, how much ‘interest’ he or she takes about what is happening in other states is crucial.
There is yet another important aspect of the functioning of media in the region. Have we so far done enough? Forget politicians and Babus, even social activists and influential student organisations most of the times have been obsessively insecure about admitting failures!
Parochialism has survived and rather encouraged it to flourish. Mufti Mohammed Syed as Union Home Minister under V P Singh had called the apex Naga Students’ Federation a ‘parochial body’. No local or regional media tried to probe into the intricacies involved.
It is perhaps for all student bodies in the northeast. The Khasi Students’ Union of Meghalaya at times came under scrutiny of the fourth estate. But that ought to be attributed to individual bravado.
In this context, one can cite the role of the All Assam Students’ Union in the 1980s. How they let such a vital mass movement — probably first since Independence against foreigner influx – later was allowed to turn into an ‘anti-Bengali’ (Bongali-kheda) stir ?
At the same time about a decade later, it came to light that the ULFA leaders were taking help from Bangladeshi agencies, taking shelter in the neighbouring country and also running hotels and establishing other business units. What was the media doing? Instead, during the peak of anti-ULFA agitation; journalists were alleged to have sympathised with the militant group.
There is another angle. In most cases of alleged human right excesses committed by forces, the army and para military forces get the blame. Media will not hesitate to expose such incidents. But political leadership is seldom criticised. Mizoram capital Aizawl was bombed but Indira Gandhi or Congress party was hardly held accountable.
In 1991-92, in Assam, there was a change in the functioning of the army. While ‘Operation Rhino’ was launched against ULFA; the forces and the leadership understood that counter-insurgency operations were as much a ‘war of information’ as it was fighting with bullets.
But there were exceptions and issues. Guwahati had a news weekly which had adopted an outright ‘pro ULFA’ stance and even justified various demands. Such articles helped the militant group cultivate a Robin Hood image for itself.
This has been a general trend in states like Nagaland and Manipur as well. In Nagaland, a statement from one potent group even questioned a sitting Chief Minister’s lineage and called him ‘Anglo-Naga’. There was no screening, no editing. Many years later of course, Indian liberal media latched onto Rahul Gandhi’s venom about PM Narendra Modi and unhesitatingly called him a ‘chor’.
Someone who was born, studied and worked in the northeast knows about reverse dicrimination faced by non tribals in places like Shillong. The state of Meghalaya once saw the slogan — ‘Khashi by birth and Indian by accident’. Very few journalists showed the courage and intent to expose the hole.
Bengali and Nepali settlers were attacked, and once even a number of Bihari families were burnt alive. Senior journalist Patricia Mukhim wrote in ‘The Hindu’ later — “The culprits were never caught and no one has been indicted in any of the acts of communal carnage that happened in Meghalaya”.
There were other revelations. The book ‘Media, Conflict and Peace in North East India’ pointed out in 2015 — that Kolkata-based ‘The Telegraph’ had sourced 49.1 percent of insurgency-related news to the NSCN militant group itself — seldom entertaining the other version. Rightly goes a refrain – no longer only the state; even the non-state actors are ruling the roost in the media space.
Nagaland’s only Christian Governor M M Thomas (from Kerala) had said: ” You don’t give a second thought to writing against the state (government) fully aware that the state will not retaliate to the extent these anti-national elements would” – as reported in ‘Weekly Journal’, Kohima – Feb 27, 1991.
In Manipur, in 2007, the entire print medium had to stop publication of newspapers on three different occasions because of the diktats of militant groups.
There are a number of instances of state government(s) in Manipur, Nagaland and other states cutting down the advertisement to the local media for being critical of the government and politicians.
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