Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde is an interesting politician. He presents the picture of an amiable, avuncular kind of fellow, always smiling and ready to be friends with most people. This belies a steely spine and a willingness to take some difficult decisions, such as the hanging of two convicts on death row. That comes from his background in the police.
He is also given to gaffes which would affect the images, if not the careers of other politicians, but that has not stopped a meteoric rise in politics, reaching a level which could, theoretically, make him a contender for the Prime Minister’s chair, should the Congress win and if the party high command decides that the post should go to a non-Gandhi family person. This is not likely to happen, not this time round anyway, but it indicates how seriously he is taken as a politician, despite occasionally saying some outrageous things, such as when he told fellow MP Jaya Bachchan that issues like the Assam violence were not subjects for films. He also named minor rape victims in Parliament, a serious goof-up unworthy of a man heading that kind of post.
Recently, his reported statement that he would “crush” the media caused great offence to journalists. He quickly clarified that his remarks were only directed towards the social media, inviting more ridicule on Twitter. Unsurprisingly, the other political parties have not attacked him for it, since most politicians are wary and suspicious of the media, mainstream and social, and would not particularly disagree with him. Mr Shinde faced flak for a day or so, but any of them could have said this.
Mr Shinde says he was speaking about the manner in which the social media had been misused to create a completely phoney crisis which led to the exodus of students belonging to the Northeast. Wild rumours were given credence and passed around on mobile phones, creating such a sinister atmosphere that the students felt unsafe and thronged the railway stations to get out of cities like Bengaluru and Delhi in August 2012. At the time, the misuse of technology was much remarked upon but no direct action was taken to curb Twitter etc.
We now know of course that the government is setting up a large and complex machinery to monitor all electronic communications in the country. Emails, texts, Facebook posts, tweets and YouTube videos will henceforth be closely watched to check if you and I, ordinary citizens, are saying or doing anything that could potentially be dangerous. Left to the government, dangerous can be defined in any number of ways, from the truly sinister to the mildly offensive. The public at large is quite unaware of the scope and size of this machinery and the outrage industry has not yet latched on to it. Freedom of expression, it seems, is not worthy of getting all heated up over.
Which is why, after a minor hiccup over Mr Shinde’s remarks, the matter died down and the world moved on to other things. There were the cursory protests, but none of those visceral attacks that parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party unleash when they want to go after a Congress politician. Arvind Kejriwal, who in any case has not yet made his position on freedom of expression clear, remained silent as did the BJP, which otherwise demands a minister resign for every little alleged misdemeanour. Mr Shinde’s clarification, which was even more damning than his reported statement, was commented upon on the social media but that was it.
All this portends troubling times ahead. Attacks on the media have been coming from all directions. Mr Kejriwal claims that the media is corrupt, in the hands of the corporates and what is more, is ranged against him and his party.
This, of course, is laughable given that without the media push, neither he nor the AAP would have got national attention. The problem is that the AAP cannot stand being questioned. On television, the AAP representatives try to shout down every one else, constantly declaring, “you are ignorant” to those who profess another point of view. With such an intolerant attitude, it can only be imagined what they would do if they ever got power.
The BJP appears to eschew direct attacks on the media, but other members of the saffron parivar have carried out a systematic campaign against artists, writers and scholars, the latest example being the Wendy Doniger case. The party can well claim it was not involved in the court case against Doniger, but neither has it supported her. This is a convenient policy, of using fellow travellers and sundry sympathetic organisations to do the dirty work, while the party itself maintains a hands-off attitude.
As for the regional satraps, who wield immense power in their own home states, each one is known to arm-twist the local media. Some do it with blandishments, others with threats, still others by holding out sops. Their full commitment to freedom of expression remains suspect. None of the future dispensations therefore can be trusted with playing fair and according to democratic norms. The media hasn’t helped its case by often appearing partisan, biased or worse, controlled. Anyone who has closely watched the social media for even a day or two will be appalled at the tone many a troll uses. Subverting them therefore looks not just tempting but positively useful.
That is the price of democracy. Freedom of expression cannot be freedom to say only certain things. The media will be critical, the social media will be noisy and chaotic, the trolls will often be abusive; there are laws to tackle that. But when a Union home minister, who ought to know better and who has the country’s law and order machinery under his control, speaks of “crushing” the media, (and there is barely a whimper against it) it is time to get very worried indeed.
