Roundtable
Censorship, information and understanding

Mani Shankar Aiyar

Having been a government servant in the external publicity area where I was given the task of, a) protecting the blameless Indian mind from nasty propaganda, and, b) revealing the naked truth to the other side, I found this whole exercise of trying to either defend our own minds from the other side or inflict our point of view on the other side so naïve. It assumed that you could very easily change what the other person’s perception was or get your own perceptions so easily changed. The attempt to use intelligence information or the media for propaganda purposes is doomed to failure, especially in our countries. I was myself very deeply involved in trying to see how we could use radio as an instrument of propaganda before television got so widespread. I had just come back from Pakistan and was Joint Secretary, External Publicity. I was pulled into a group whose idea was to use All India Radio (AIR) to spread our message, and the message was always against Pakistan. In Pakistan I had met a lot of people who were extremely pleasant. I suggested that the most effective way would be to use AIR to tell the Indians what nice people the Pakistanis were. When the Pakistanis discovered that we are saying nice things about them, at least their hostility towards us would get reduced. Thus, we could more effectively change the situation in the Subcontinent than by attacking them. But the suggestions were obviously dismissed out of hand.

The attempt to use the media as an instrument of state policy in relatively open societies is doomed to failure and it is best for us to advocate against it. If you want to resolve any India-Pakistan issue, the Indians must get to know what the Pakistani point of view is. And reciprocally, the Pakistanis must get to know what is the Indian point of view, so that you get not an India-Pakistan divide but a viewpoint on this side which has some sympathy in Pakistan and a viewpoint on that side which has some sympathy for India. From that a rational solution may come. To put it very simply, the answer is to have a cricket team where we have five Indians and five Pakistanis and get a Kashmiri to be the captain.

There is precedent of how just the flow of information can change perceptions. In the Vietnam War, which began on a major scale from about 1965, the Americans were absolutely delighted that technology had reached the point where a large number of American camera-men, academics and print media journalists could go into South Vietnam. Special arrangements were made for them to travel along with the heroic army that was going to defeat the reds. The stories came into the US in such a way that initially there was a huge upsurge of support for the American cause in Vietnam. But in time this same lot of media people started telling other bits of the story, which would otherwise never have reached America. And at the end of the day, two schools had developed, for and against fighting the communists in Vietnam. Over a period of time there was such a huge amount of information that had spread that many people had more information than either only their conclusion or their prejudices justified. So they began to see that the other side could hold a completely different opinion. A process of getting this kind of information across, which is usually blocked, will eventually weaken the idea that this is a fight between India and Pakistan and perhaps legitimise the idea that this is really a struggle between the preservation of human decencies and their violation. And the violation is done by both sides, as much as the preservations up to a point are by both sides. And that is why I am against this censorship. Any attempt at using the media as an instrument of state policy or preventing the other side from using their media as an instrument of state policy is ultimately self-defeating to the state which propagates or indulges in censorship. We should really try to see whether the media community of the two countries cannot make a greater contribution, simply by dedicating themselves to their respective versions of the truth, being allowed to function as much as possible and being heard on the other side of the border.

What struck me when I was in Pakistan was how much the Pakistanis have to say which makes sense in terms of their perceptions, their realities, their national requirements. Therefore, we need to listen in India. This is where the media could play an important role, since Indian diplomats in Pakistan spend all their time reporting to Delhi what Delhi wants to hear instead of reporting back to Delhi what Delhi does not know. I am sure that applies reciprocally. Which is why I feel that the truth, as seen by Pakistan, should come to India, and the truth as seen by India, should go to Pakistan. Then we may arrive, over a period of time, at a common understanding of what is the truth.