Comment
Speaking in tongues
Hindi newspapers wield overwhelming influence in Indian society, but this power is gravely misused to promote the interests of only one community.
These are exciting times for those engaged in 'language journalism' in India – that branch of the press which speaks to the masses rather than to the English-speaking classes. New dailies, weeklies and monthlies have mushroomed, competing with each other in technical competence, presentation and sensational news coverage. Many have emerged as crucial kingmakers on the political scene, deciding the fate of all manner of politicians and political parties.
The first ever National Readership Survey of 1995 demonstrated the reach and power of the language press. It revealed that the most widely read newspaper in the country is the Hindi daily Punjab Kesari with a readership of 3.7 million, followed closely by the Tamil newspaper Daily Thanti with a readership of 3.6 million. The Hindi daily Navbharat Times was third with 3.4 million. Among magazines, India Today (English) topped the list, followed by Hindi periodicals Grihashobha and Manohar Kahaniyan.
It turns out that most of the top 10 Indian newspapers and magazines are in Hindi. Which was probably why, while releasing the results of the survey, P Chidambaram, the then commerce minister and current finance minister, said, "If I had any higher political ambitions, I would have to extinguish them immediately for I neither speak nor read Hindi." Mr Chidambaram hails from Tamil Nadu.
According to the 1994 Annual Report of the Registrar of Newspapers for India, there are newspapers published in as many as 96 languages/dialects in the country. No other country, or for that matter, no other continent in the world has 'language journalism' and related industry as complex as India's. Numbering 12,596, Hindi newspapers constitute the largest group in the country. English is next, with 5316 newspapers, followed by Urdu (2224), Bengali (2036), Marathi (1561) and Tamil (1460). In circulation, too, Hindi newspapers lead the list with 27.9 million copies sold every day. The largest number of newspapers, 5131, is published in Hindi-speaking Uttar Pradesh state.
The growth of readership, especially in Hindi, has gone hand in hand with rising political consciousness and activism, the spread of literacy, and an increase in purchasing power of tens of millions of middle-class families. Significant sociopolitical movements and even economic milestones like the Green Revolution have contributed to this trend. The reach of newspapers has also increased with the introduction of new technology, improved systems of communication, production and distribution, and better transportation throughout.
Numerous new newspapers have started in the Hindi-speaking states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, while established dailies like Punjab Kesari have launched new editions. The three major Hindi dailies of Uttar Pradesh – Aaj, Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran – are now published from 14 centres instead of the original three.
Threshold of acceptability
Historically, the development of the Indian language press was marked by a commitment towards nationalism and the values of the freedom struggle. M Chalapati Rau, a noted journalist who has researched the growth of the Indian language press says, "The Indian language press caused concern and uneasiness to the (British) government." By 1870, there were about 62 'language newspapers' in Bombay, about 60 in the Northwest Provinces, Oudh and the Central Provinces, some 22 in Bengal and about 19 in Madras.
In contrast, English-language newspapers were left untouched because they were written, said Ashley Eden, then Lt Governor of Bengal, "by a class of writers for a class of readers whose education and interests would make them naturally intolerant of sedition".
Among the many Gandhian-era Hindi newspapers which picked up the banner against British rule were Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi's Pratap from Kanpur, Madan Mohan Malviya's Abhyudaya, Shivaprasad Gupta's Aaj from Benaras, and Vishwamitra from Calcutta. The language press became so threatening to the colonial government that it enacted the Vernacular Press Act, which distinguished between the English and Indian language newspapers and empowered any magistrate or commissioner of police to prevent printers from publishing a newspaper in the vernacular (which, with its roots in the Latin vernaculus – belonging to a household slave – has a pejorative connotation) and to confiscate any printed matter, leaving no recourse to a court of law. In contrast, English-language newspapers were left untouched because they were written, said Ashley Eden, then Lt Governor of Bengal, "by a class of writers for a class of readers whose education and interests would make them naturally intolerant of sedition".
The nationalist agenda emphasised by the Hindi-language press, geared to oppose colonial rule, was naturally de-emphasised after the departure of the British. Thereafter, the language press has been on the lookout for another cause célèbre, which it seems to have found many years later in the rightward swing of the middle-class Hindu readership. The demography of readership has determined this rightward swing, as the low-caste, non-Hindu readers are still not adequately newspaper literate. As a result, the influence and power of the media is for the moment monopolised by the middle class and its ideology.
Over the course of the past decade, the conservative Hindu leadership has propagated the idea of India as a 'Hindu' nation, and in so doing built a typology of prejudices regarding Muslims. It has tried to homogenise the Hindu population, erasing the multiple identities, and stereotyping communities – both Hindu and non-Hindu. There is a constant attempt to make the Hindu majority feel insecure and unsafe, as if it were threatened by other religions and cultures.
'Hindutva', as an ideological formation, draws a great deal of its power from stereotypes and symbols. Because the media is the primary carrier of those stereotypes and symbols, a symbiotic relationship has developed between the Hindu right and the Hindi press. Communalism has become part of the grammar of the Hindi press, which has deliberately as well as subconsciously, in complex and subtle ways, defined, constructed and sustained the Hindutva ideology.
The Hindi press and its commentators provided the stamp of respect to communalism. The fact that certain things can now be openly said and advocated has legitimised their public expression and widened the threshold of public acceptability of communalism.
Ayodhya days
The intense and widespread support for Hindutva in the press in the last few years is unprecedented. Since the early 1980s, the daily newspapers in India have witnessed the growth and strengthening of conservative tendencies, and a simultaneous fall in the standards of objective journalism. This can be observed in the reporting of events, in ideological writings and debates, and in the editorials.
This period has seen the entry of big business houses into news organisations and the growth of a corporate culture that centralises the internal workings of the profession. This corporate centralisation has promoted the tendency to portray the ideals and interests of dominant groups in society. Newspapers are more glossy by the year, and in tandem, the press is increasingly aligned with the consumerist culture which is generally more concerned with the superficial and sensational. News is increasingly being reduced to small, easily digestible bites.
Even while the national and regional publishers enthusiastically appropriate modern technology for newspaper production, they have opted for local stringers. This has led to continuous biased or misreporting of complex events, for the underpaid stringers generally lack expertise. Besides, these non-professional journalists have a social backgrounds that make them sympathetic to the Hindutva mobilisation – they tend to be contractors, shopkeepers, lawyers or petty local traders. Even mahants (priests) are said to have served as newspaper stringers during the darkest days of the Babri Masjid crisis.
It was during the 1975-77 Emergency period in India, that the rightist forces, particularly the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), realised the importance of making direct interventions in media. In the early 1980s, the Sangh initiated an organised attempt to infiltrate the media, especially the Hindi press, and capture top positions. Its effort has paid rich dividends, as is clear from the coverage in the language press.
The Hindutva agenda, many social scientists agree, is to try and channelise material and cultural elements into a new legitimising ideology suitable to the caste/class interests of the Hindu middle- class intelligentsia. The language press naturally has a role to play because its writers and editors represent similar caste/class interests as those of the Hindutva proponents. With their upper caste/class Brahmanical orientation, the Hindi newspapers help in diverting the attention of the middle class from its own 'location' and role in upholding a deeply non-egalitarian and inhuman order, instead transforming them into wronged 'victims'.
Even a casual survey of some of the prominent Hindi newspapers of North India throughout the 1980s reveals their intensifying 'Hinduisation'. It was Rajendra Mathur, then editor of Navbharat Times, who wrote with some exasperation in September 1985: "We cannot escape the fact that the people behind the fervour of nationalism are 80 percent Hindus. Thus, no nationalist issue can be created or tackled without taking into account this vast majority." According to Mr Mathur, the recent advance made by Hinduism in India can only be welcomed.
Jansatta, the influential paper based in Delhi, achieved its own shrill apogee when in September 1987 it openly supported a self-immolation by a widow in the town of Deorala, Rajasthan. Lauding the act of sati, it stated: "Only one among lakhs of widows is determined enough to become a sati and it is only natural that she will become a centre of reverence."
However, it was during the 'Ayodhya days', particularly the period of the rath yatra (ritual chariot procession) led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Lai Krishna Advani in 1990 and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, that the Hindi language press came around full circle to serve as the unacknowledged arm of politicised Hinduism. This deviation in the language press proved positively lethal to society, because it succeeded in subverting the entire discourse of mainstream media to suit communal propaganda.
'The Muslim' and the news
Those who write for and edit the Hindi papers, by and large, assume that their readership is Hindu, and that Muslims do not form the audience, or at least are not worth catering to. Even though there is no sharp class/caste-religious division of consumers of the Hindi press, the assumption is made that the medium's audience is only comprised of Hindus. Indeed, the underlying belief among Hindi journalists is that India is a Hindu country, whose growth and development is blocked by a 'problem population' of Muslims. The editors, columnists and reporters simply take it for granted that the Muslims constitute a social threat.
Two of the most insidious myths propagated by the Hindi press are the threat posed by Muslim fanaticism, and the alleged rapid rise in Muslim population due to the disregard for family planning. In fact, Muslims cannot outstrip Hindus numerically for another 200 years at their present growth rate of population, and studies have shown that Muslims are in fact less polygamous than Hindus. Muslims are also unlikely to be excessively militant because communal riots have always taken a higher toll on Muslim lives and property. Regardless of the facts, however, most Hindi newspapers continue to perpetrate such myths, creating xenophobic fears based on a supposed Muslim aggression towards Hindu society in India.
The reports of Mr Advani's rath yatra and those printed later emphasised the violent and aggressive mood in Muslim neighbourhoods and among Muslim leaders. The days preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid had seen the Muslims of Ayodhya, fearful for their lives, vacate their homes. Yet, a headline in Jansatta reported the reverse, that it was the Ayodhya Hindus who lived in fear. This point of view was repeated across a range of Hindi dailies.
It was almost with glee that the papers reported how mandirs were being torched and demolished in Bangladesh and Pakistan, knowing that this would lead to a backlash in India. Interestingly, the BJP began justifying the 6 December 1992 demolition of the Babri mosque by retroactively citing the destruction of temples in Pakistan and Bangladesh on 8 and 9 December, taking full advantage of the prominence the Hindi media gave to such news from across the borders.
When temples were destroyed they remained temples, but when mosques were demolished, in the preferred terminology of the BJP stalwarts, they became "disputed structures" (vivadaspad dhancha) or merely "religious places" (dharmic sthal). Almost all the newspapers referred to the Babri mosque as a vivadaspad dhancha. In the reporting of the communal riots that followed the passage of Mr Advani's rath, a close relationship emerged between journalists' anticipation of the unfolding events and what actually happened. An assumption was that the readers would associate Muslims with 'threat', and reporters and editors under deadline pressure and space constraints would simply treat the news about the riots in a way which conformed to that definition.
Newspapers are more glossy by the year, and in tandem, the press is increasingly aligned with the consumerist culture which is generally more concerned with the superficial and sensational. News is increasingly being reduced to small, easily digestible bites.
The Hindi press painted a picture of Muslim aggression and Hindu victimhood, whereas the casualties in the riots were overwhelmingly Muslim. The editors went along with the fundamental requirement of the Hindutva ideology, that violence by Hindus against Muslims be legitimised by giving it the gloss of counter-aggression. The middle class/upper caste perception of Muslims is what is carried in the news. The printed media, due to its close alliance with the power structure, has become a voice of those dominant groups who would like to believe that all Hindus have similar perceptions.
Perpetrator as victim
But the facts on the ground were starkly different. In 1990, there were riots wherever Mr Advani's motorised rath yatra travelled, accompanied as it was by full-throated cries of "Jab jab Hindu jaga hai, tab tab katua bhaga hai, Whenever the Hindu rises, the circumcised have to run" and "Babarki auladen bhago, Pakistan ya Kabristan, Run, Babar's descendants, to Pakistan or to your graves." A vessel full of blood was donated to Advani at Jaitpur, and everywhere he was presented with swords, spears and bows and arrows, to carry out the 'fight' for the temple at Ayodhya.
The Hindi newspapers invariably presented the victims as the perpetrators of the carnage. Riots started in Gonda on 30 September 1990 after the rath had passed, but Jansatta reported on 2 October: "When a Durga procession was passing near an orphanage, which is located in a Muslim area, the procession was attacked by the nearby people." The paper further dramatised the event the next day: "Violence broke out when the Durga Puja procession reached near a slaughter house. It was attacked by bombs and stones. Some shots were also fired." Not only does the venue shift from an orphanage to a slaughter house (with attendant Muslim associations), but bombs and pistols also make an appearance, and an attempt was made to show that the attack was organised by Muslims. Meanwhile, Mr Advani's rath was already far away.
The demolition of the Babri Masjid also provoked riots in the Seelampur area of Delhi. Once again, the Hindi reports identified Muslims as the aggressors. The Navbharat Times on 12 December 1992 stated: "Some people from Welcome Colony in the area started shouting slogans like 'Pakistan Zindabad' and 'Hindustan Murdabad'. When some people opposed this, trouble started." Then followed what turned out to be a fabricated report, quoting police sources, that seven Pakistani citizens who had instigated the locals to riot were arrested from the colony.
Separate reports by the People's Union for Civil Liberties and the Sampradayakta Virodhi Andolan (Anti-Communal Movement) provided a detailed list of the victims in Seelampur, and almost all were Muslim. Surely, said the two groups, if they intended to provoke riots, the Muslims would have been better prepared and armed so as not to face so many casualties.
There has been a shift lately in the position of the RSS and its allies, whose earlier strategy was to represent all riots as being the handiwork of Muslims. Now, a certain degree of consent has been built in for the Hindu recourse to violence and rioting. 'Teaching Muslims a lesson' has acquired an air of legitimacy with a substantial section of the Hindu intelligentsia. Together with its mentors, the Hindi language press, too, has made the editorial shift.
On 31 October 1990, the Navbharat Times argued that what had happened to the Muslims during riots in Muzaffarnagar and Shyamli was "well deserved" and "correct". This kind of editorialising and the constant mixing of fact and fiction are directed at feeding palatable news to the conservative Hindu readership. Subjective reporting of this kind in the Navbharat Times and other Hindi papers acted as a kind of ideological arsenal to be used by the Hindu right against Muslims.
The language press, thus, looks at the violence against Muslims as a 'natural' reaction of 'patient' and 'long-suffering' Hindus who can no longer 'tolerate' the injustices perpetrated upon them by history and 'the enemy within'. The quality press (the established, respectable papers) has given a stamp of respect to such self-serving cultural stereotyping. Dichotomies of good and evil, law-abiding and criminal are easily upheld in such a scenario.
Language of discourse
Language and ideology are not the same. But language is the principal medium in which different ideological discourses are articulated, worked on, transformed and elaborated. Language not only reflects reality, but creates it as well. Words, style and rhetoric do matter, and are capable of making history.
The journalists of the Hindi press have, by and large, limited their vocabulary and made it one-dimensional, in the process legitimising the rhetoric of the Hindu right. They readily adopt the jargon and slogans of non-secular parties, and use the efficiently put-out press releases of the BJP – serving well-organised, pre-cooked news – as their source.
Undisguised communalism is obvious in the reporting of names, for example. A Navbharat Times report on the Bijnore riots of November 1990 stated: "Some prominent people arrested in Bijnore for the riots are Palika President Zaved Aftab, his two brothers and karamchari leader Ishrat Hussain Bharti." Hindus had been arrested, but their names were not provided. This formula is inversed when reporting on victims of riots, when Hindus acquire specific identities while Muslims remain nameless.
Jansatta, the influential paper based in Delhi, achieved its own shrill apogee when in September 1987 it openly supported a self-immolation by a widow in the town of Deorala, Rajasthan. Lauding the act of sati, it stated: "Only one among lakhs of widows is determined enough to become a sati and it is only natural that she will become a centre of reverence."
Certain terms and words have been repeated so often that they have gained not only currency, but respectability. Although those who participated in the rath yatra and the demolition of Babri Masjid were overwhelmingly activists of the Hindu right, they were all sympathetically portrayed as kar sevaks ('religious service volunteers', according to one translation). Many papers called these demolition experts 'Ram bhakts, the devotees of Ram', and some went as far as to refer to them as sadhus. "Ram devotees… provoked… for a do-or-die battle", screamed the Jansatta of 2 November 1992.
Newspaper columnists and scholars alike unquestioningly use the term Sangh Parivar (family) when referring to the 'RSS combine'. In the subconscious, the term 'parivar' evokes the image of the safe and protective world of the family. While it might be an apt term for use within the conservative Hindu fold, the term is accepted in public discourse as well due to the currency given to it by the media.
Communal bias, subconscious or deliberate, is seen in the way BJP members consistently use the term 'infiltrators' to describe Bangladeshi Muslim migrants. By contrast, Hindu migrants are always referred to as 'refugees'. The print media has easily accepted such distorted use of language, and this acceptance reflects a lack of awareness and sensitivity, which has far-reaching implications for society.
Communal consensus
No medium is monolithic and, certainly, there are instances of objective, 'secular' and truthful reporting in the Hindi press. However, these are far outweighed by the sheer intensity and duration of favourable coverage accorded to the Hindutva ideology and its supporters, particularly the BJP. So intense has this support been that the ground of debate itself has shifted, and much more outrightly communal copy is now acceptable in the public domain than ever before. This process of enhanced acceptability could be observed during the period of Mr Advani's rath yatra.
As the rath progressed from Madhya Pradesh through Uttar Pradesh, the column inches devoted to it in the papers increased and, more importantly, the tone of the reports became more frenzied and emotional. Amar Ujala, the daily from Meerut, added pages to provide full yatra coverage. Terms like 'awestruck crowds' and 'spell-bound Ram-bhakts' were bandied about. One 6 October report in Jansatta concluded with "Mr Advani's rath yatra in Madhya Pradesh will give a strong base to the party and will create an atmosphere of reverence for Ram, leading to support for Ramjanmabhoomi (birthplace of Ram)."
For five days, from 14 to 18 January 1993, Jansatta carried a series of front page reports titled 'Impact of Ayodhya Happenings'. The newspaper claimed to have interviewed people in far-flung Hindi-speaking areas of India to gauge the reaction to the demolition of the mosque. The public was unequivocally on the side of the BJP, the paper reported: "The Hindu population has decided to vote for the BJP and the distinction between castes has also vanished in this scenario."
Editorialising its conclusion, Jansatta wrote: "In the rural areas of India, there is no national shame regarding the incidents of 6 December." Subsequent elections proved these claims to be incorrect, but the editors were obviously not spending any sleepless nights regarding their role in igniting social discord.
Together with the editors of Jansatta, the rest of the Hindi media managed to manufacture a communal consensus in which there was no latitude in opinions and attitudes. Thus, the Hindi papers emerged from the 'Ayodhya days' as nothing more than propaganda organs of the Hindu right, actively contributing to the construction of a dominant ideology and seeking a broader consensus for it.
Propaganda and myth
Between 1990 and 1992, the Hindi papers were not found wanting in making use of 'the Pakistani hand' to support their incendiary coverage of the inter-communal problems in India. Again and again, during the Hindu-Muslim tensions, the bogey of the ubiquitous 'Pakistani hand' was raised, with the threat of an Indo-Pak war added for good measure.
A 15 October 1990 report on the rath yatra appearing in Vir Arjun stated: "According to sources, as soon as Advani is arrested, riots will break out all over the country. Under the guise of Islam, the military rulers of Pakistan can then invade India." The 'Pakistani hand' was there in 1992 as well. One report in Navbharat Times on 5 December, stated, "Disguised as kar sevaks, agents of the Pakistani secret service have also reached Ayodhya." As was later proven, there was no source or basis for such a report.
A shameful low had been achieved earlier, on 31 October 1990, when all papers reported a large number of Hindu deaths from police firing in Ayodhya. The number of victims varied from 20 to 500 in the different papers, but as the days progressed, the reported toll kept rising. After having said on the first day that five kar sevaks had died, Jansatta later increased the number to 40. The Agra edition of the daily Aaj said 100 had died, the Kanpur edition said 200, while the editors in Bareilly went for the figure of 500. Another paper, Swatantra Chetna, banner headlined on 1 November that 115 had been killed. But the body of the report did not corroborate the figure. Later, it was discovered that the editor had added a '1' to the number 15 on the photo plate just before going to press.
Newspaper columnists and scholars alike unquestioningly use the term Sangh Parivar (family) when referring to the 'RSS combine'…. The term 'parivar' evokes the image of the safe and protective world of the family. While it might be an apt term for use within the conservative Hindu fold, the term is accepted in public discourse as well due to the currency given it by the media.
The absurdity of these figures flaunted so easily by the language media can be gauged from the then Prime Minister V P Singh's challenge in Parliament on 4 January 1991. If the opposition claimed that more than 16 people had been killed in the entire Ayodhya episode, he said, then it would have to prove it. The BJP did release a list of victims, but 90 percent of the names could not be corroborated. However, the Hindi press had no space for this information in its columns.
Other voices
How the Hindi press reported the incidents of 1990 and 1992 reveals the distance it has travelled from the secular goals of earlier times, which championed self-government and sovereignty for all of India's communities. It is paradoxical that even as the language press becomes more established and prosperous, it becomes less independent and moves farther to the right to emerge as an active ideological partner in the campaign to change the face of India.
Looking into the future, there is no doubt that regional and local Hindi newspapers will continue to grow rapidly, and that their coverage will increasingly be shaped by advertising revenue and the public's appetite for politics. This is not necessarily a healthy trend, for it is already clear that the alliance of the press with the consumerist and corporate players leads it up the path of rightwing jingoism.
The Hindi press is both an instrument for, as well as a product of, the dominant forces operating in Indian society today. For the moment, the purchasing power of the Hindu middle class dictates what the editors ultimately print. However, over time, the changing caste and class configurations in the Hindi heartland, especially the emergence of Dalit power and its political expression, is bound to change the nature of the Hindi language press as well.
Without anyone noticing it, the demography of Hindi newspaper readership is changing with the spread of education and increased access to economic opportunities. As time goes on, the publishers, editors and reporters will have to become more sensitive to the other 'voices' which make up the Indian populace. The pressures of Dalit and 'backward class' politics in society are already generating their own dynamics, which is bound to have an impact on what the print media carries as well. They will have to respond, perhaps reluctantly at first, to these pressures.
The coming times will witness an intensification of a political struggle that has already begun. On the one hand is the BJP with its communalist interpretation of Hinduism, which wants to maintain the momentum it has achieved since 1990 and press for a thoroughgoing political and cultural transformation of the country. On the other hand, the challenge to Hindutva is also on an increase from a myriad of forces, some of whom have kept quiet in the face of overwhelming threat, and others who are just gaining their voice 50 full years after independence.
The Hindi press will certainly respond to the new demands that will be put on it. It will be asked to be the flag-bearer for one side or the other, but it will also have to consistently provide objective news and analyses based on fact. That the Hindi press is capable of responding to demands for a more secular space can be seen from how, after receiving strong reactions from readers, activists and politicians, it has in the recent past tempered its shrill pro-Hindutva tone.
What this ever-so-slight move towards moderation proves is that secular space in the Hindi press cannot be protected by journalists alone. It has to be a joint endeavour.
***
~C Gupta is Associate Professor of History at Delhi University. She has published papers on gender, media, Dalits, sexuality, fundamentalism and nationalism in a variety of journals. Currently, she is working on a book titled The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print.
~M Sharma is a Delhi-based independent scholar and journalist. He was a special correspondent in Navbharat Times and has received several awards for his environmental, rural and human rights journalism. His most recent book is Green and Saffron: Hindu Nationalism and Indian Environmental Politics (2011).