dna edit: Political impudence

Minister for information and broadcasting Prakash Javadekar came up with an ingenuous and sheepish explanation that if private television news channels could telecast live the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s speech at the organisation’s Dussehra rally in Nagpur on Friday, it is unreasonable to prevent Doordarshan News from doing the same. He did not dare to admit that the BJP-led NDA government or Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the I&B ministry itself, had issued directions to the DD to do so. Javadekar had also tried to use the fig-leaf of the autonomy of Prasar Bharati, which includes the DD and the AIR, and he had tried to give the impression that the decision to telecast the RSS chief’s speech was an independent editorial decision made in the newsrooms of the public broadcaster. 

The BJP and the RSS, Modi and Javadekar might feel that they have cocked a snook at critics because technically they did not violate any law, and as to norms they are always elastic which can be stretched and twisted to suit one’s own ulterior motives. What they seem to forget is that this is where the corrosion of credibility begins, and that parliamentary majority cannot save the party and the government from public scrutiny and opprobrium, that the people will remember these acts of brazenness at the time of the next election. When Indira Gandhi and the Congress manipulated the official media before and during the Emergency of 1975-77, they were contemptuous of norms and decencies, of criticism and public outrage. But the people spoke at election time in 1977.

The RSS occupies the no-man’s land where it claims to be a cultural organisation but it engages in political activities, serving as an extended arm of the BJP. Some BJP insiders even argue that it is the BJP which is an extended arm of the RSS. Whatever the truth about the confused and indeterminate identity of the RSS and whichever way the BJP and the RSS choose to interpret it, it is clear to an independent observer that the RSS is the ideological and propaganda wing of the BJP. Any time given to the RSS on the public broadcaster is nothing more than propaganda time given to the BJP. It is not our concern whether the RSS is secular or communal, though the organisation is viewed by the minorities — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jain and Parsis — with apprehension and suspicion. The RSS is a controversial organisation. The RSS is newsworthy because it is both the mentor and the mouthpiece of the BJP but it cannot be given the same kind of prime coverage which is given to the Prime Minister. Modi can use the official media to speak his mind and put forward his ideas. It will not be adequate if Javadekar offers a weak rationalisation, and Modi lauds Bhagwat’s speech, that RSS should get prime coverage on the public broadcaster. RSS lacks the legal and constitutional legitimacy that Modi enjoys. 

Even if one were to accept on face value the RSS claim to be a cultural organisation, Bhagwat’s speech belies that. His speech was an endorsement of Modi’s successful trip to the United States and the performance of the Modi government. This is political propaganda, pure and simple. Private news channels which turn themselves to be propaganda vehicles of political parties lose their credibility and consequently their commercial viability. If the DD is seen as a propaganda channel of BJP-RSS, then it will lose the little credence it has. The Prasar Bharati is meant to be autonomous and independent but it has never lived up to the ideal. The Modi government can spurn criticism at the moment, but that is not what is expected of an elected government.