It speaks of the change that has come over India that anyone should use the expression “patriotic press” in a pejorative sense. Patriotism has not quite become a dirty word yet. But it could well be on the way to becoming one.
The “patriotic press” in India cannot be a euphemism for a pro-government press for the simple reason that nothing like a coherent body like the government exists or has existed – since independence. Thus, during the Nehru era, it paid a journalist to praise the Prime Minister and denounce his senior cabinet and party colleagues as reactionaries, communalists and corrupt. And it also paid a journalist to criticise Nehru and curry favour with his ministers and chief ministers.
On the face of it, the situation changed under Indira Gandhi. The widespread belief is that during her tenure of office as Prime Minister, it became difficult for her critics to receive official favours. But in reality her detractors too could depend on the patronage of any number of her critics in the government, both among the ministers and in the secretariat. A political culture does not change with the ruler. India’s favours fragmentation and anarchism.
As Individuals
So if anything like a “patriotic press” exists, it can have nothing to do with its being pro-government or anti-government. We Indians do not function that way, whether we are in the government or out of it. We function as individuals or at best (or at worst) as cliques. This raises two issues. Do journalists exist who can legitimately be said to place the national interest above all else, including the demands of their own profession? And how do they differ from the others?
In order to avoid misunderstanding, it is necessary to underscore certain points. First, every journalist is by definition a professional which fact imposes certain obligations on him. Second, if some journalists see themselves as upholders of the national interest, it does not and cannot follow that those who differ with them are not guided by similarly laudable motives. Third, the difference is essentially one of perspective and emphasis.
As I see it, the opposite of what can be called the “patriotic” perspective is the “liberty-public morality” perspective. While the adherents of the first tend to emphasise the threat to the country’s security, unity, stability and orderly growth, the proponents of the second tend to draw attention to the threat to individual (and group) rights and liberties from the state apparatus which is often arbitrary, capricious and corrupt.
The former will not deny that the ordinary citizen suffers greatly as a result of the malfunctioning of the state apparatus and the latter will not claim that the country does not face enemies without and disrupters within. Even so the difference in the perspectives and therefore in the emphasis of the two is real and significant.
The lines are not firmly drawn. Some of those who are primarily concerned with the quality of the government apparatus have, for instance, been greatly exercised over the activities of the Sikh terrorists and the support for them from within the land and without. But this concern somehow gets pushed into the background under the pressure of the dominant liberty-morality concerns.
Similarly, while many of those who are anxious about the threat to the country’s security, unity and internal order would readily admit that indifference to the health of institutions on the part of those in power must account at least partly for the perils India faces, they are more willing to put up with the ineptitude and moral weaknesses of the rulers than the other group. They are more pragmatic and less hopeful of the possibility of a change (for the better) than their rivals.
Generation Gap
To an extent, the generation gap accounts for the difference in the perspectives of the two groups. Most of those who have come into journalism after 1971, when Pakistan broke into two, have tended to occupy the libertarian-moralistic platform and to ignore the dangers to the nation’s security, integrity and stability. The generation gap theory should, however, not be pushed too far. For, while there is no dearth of the morality-liberty ideologues among the older journalists, there are some younger journalists who are quick to see a threat to the country’s security and unity. That draws attention to another explanation, though it is as partial as the previous one.
It appears that among the older journalists, those, who grew up under British editors in British-owned newspapers tend to de-emphasise dangers to the nation and over-emphasise other concerns and that, among the younger journalists, those from prosperous urban professional middle class families and Christian missionary schools and colleges tend to follow them. And so do those who belong to the new left.
The country’s troubled past does not worry them if they are aware of it at all. The future beckons them and their view of the desirable future is shaped almost exclusively by their perception of the way American democracy functions. Europe, including Britain, have ceased to offer models worthy of emulation. I for one find it interesting that there is not one person among the well-known friends of America in India who does not want the government to reduce the defence expenditure and does not believe that New Delhi’s “intransigence” is almost wholly responsible for the absence of friendly relations with Pakistan and of late China as well. Evidently the prescription is totally divorced from history. Partition, the attack on Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 itself, the claim to that state since and armed infiltration in 1965 do not matter in respect of Pakistan. Similarly, China’s occupation of Tibet, attack on India in Ladakh and Arunachal in 1962 and claims to chunks of territory below the Himalayan crest do not matter in their assessment of Beijing.
This indifference to history would have caused less anxiety if it was wilful. But it is not. Indifference to history is natural to most Indians, regardless of their educational status. We are oblivious of history precisely because history has been so cruel to us. But while the response is understandable in that the human mind must seek an escape from harsh realities which is best done by denying their relevance, if not their existence, it is hardly necessary to underline its dangerous consequences.
Another Fact
I have widened the scope of the discussion in order to establish beyond reasonable doubt the sources that have gone into the making of the morality-liberty platform of which “new” journalism is only one expression. The issue is extremely important and deserves careful and extensive discussion. That is why I am tempted to widen the scope of the discussion still further and say that our nationalism itself is intrinsically weak and that abstract pronouncements flow naturally out of weak nationalism. The weak always argue for principles in terms of principles.
Clearly it is not possible for me to discuss this issue meaningfully in this article. So I shall content myself with a couple of observations. First, our nationalism is weak because it is the product of western-educated Indians who were alienated in varying degrees from the larger society and its traditions by virtue of their very education and who, on the same count, could not help being uncreatively imitative. Second, to the extent our nationalism is rooted, it is rooted in a denuded soil since the Hindu society has been anything but vibrant for a whole millennium. Thus it was not an accident that the most westernised of our leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru, should have emerged as the chief spokesman of independent India and that Mahatma Gandhi should never have insisted on the Congress accepting his socio-economic programme.
There is another aspect which deserves attention – the power of anarchist thought in India. Three of the greatest figures of modern India – Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi – were anarchists. As exponents and upholders of the traditional Hindu view of life, they could not but be anarchists. For the concept of dharma, the transcendent moral law, was meant for society; it was never meant for a state. In fact, it must be disruptive of the state because there can be no need for a state so long as dharma prevails. Traditional India thought of government as subordinate to the divine creations of society and dharma. Indeed, the issue is even more complicated. The absolute distinction between power and authority, and between their representatives, king and Brahmin, in traditional Indian thought involved a fundamental contradiction which India has not been able to resolve a thousand years after the overthrow of the old Hindu order. This should serve as a grim reminder that our past pushes us inexorably towards anarchy and that we would inevitably land into anarchy if we are not sufficiently vigilant. The disturbing past appears in guises.
The Times of India, 2 December 1987