Experiments with truth, Part 6: Gandhi on how to read— and boycott— newspapers

"If you must read a newspaper," M.K. Gandhi remarked, "Take care to choose those which are published to serve the interest of the country and call upon Hindus and Muslims to live in amity."

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A few weeks before the 154th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the whole world witnessed the spectacle of G-20 leaders paying homage to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat and came to know about the denial of an opportunity to US President Joe Biden, one of the key leaders of the G-20, to hold a press conference in New Delhi after his meeting with Prime Minister Modi.

It sent a jarring message to the rest of the world. It was jarring because Gandhi was one of the finest examples of a communicator who would have been appalled to see that communication through the press is not being facilitated to none other than the US President, a visiting dignitary. Later, Biden visited Vietnam, a country ruled by a communist regime, and addressed the press there.

Prime Minister Modi, who projects India as the mother of democracy, has the unenviable distinction of not addressing a single press conference after he assumed the office of the Prime Minister in 2014.

Now, most of the mainstream media is aligned with the Modi government in complete negation of the guidelines of the Second Press Commission that media should have only cordial relations with the political regimes of the day.

It is also extremely tragic that hate-filled news is spread through print and electronic media aligned with the government to promote the majoritarian agenda and the polarisation process so assiduously pursued by the powers that be to divide people based on their faith.

The sinister objective behind such a diabolical process is to garner electoral dividends by consolidating the voters based on their faiths and appealing to their communal passions.

I.N.D.I.A. alliance partners call for the boycott of 14 anchors

So, as the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi is being celebrated, it would be instructive to revisit his seminal ideas on the role of the media and locate them in the present perilous context marked by the decision of I.N.D.I.A. alliance partners not to send their spokespersons to participate in debates and discussions hosted by 14 anchors of some of the television channels.

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The concerted action of the alliance partners to do so has arisen out of their persuasive and compelling understanding that those anchors are primarily responsible for generating newsrooms filled with hate narratives by targeting minorities, especially Muslims, and their faiths.

Such anchors brazenly peddling the polarising agenda of the ruling regime at the Centre through their programmes on television channels have spread highly dangerous communal toxins which have resulted in the lynching of Muslims based on the food they eat, the dress they put on and other attributes which bring out their immediate religious identity.

As a result, there are alarming levels of insecurity confronted by a vast section of our citizenry on account of the faith they pursue by following the constitutional guaranteed fundamental rights.

Gandhi's description of the newspaperman as a walking plague

It is against such continually menacing developments that we need to explore the ideas of Gandhi and learn lessons from his worldview. Consider the provocative line, "The newspaperman has become a walking plague."

Gandhi penned it in his article 'Shraddhanand Ji— The Martyr', which was published in Young India on December 30, 1926. He wrote that line with deep pain after ascertaining that one Abdul Rashid killed Swami Shraddhanand because his mind was riddled with hatred spread by newspapers for fomenting communal division and enmity among people on the basis of their faiths.

On April 18, 1946, in the context of the Partition-related communal conflagration, Gandhi, while addressing a prayer meeting, uttered the same sentence again and referred to two newspaper reports.

He said that while one report spread panic among people after it predicted that riots would take place because all the sticks and knives in Delhi were sold out, the other newspaper reported the occurrence of riots in some places and blamed the police for taking sides with the Hindus in one place and the Muslims in another.

He proceeded to add that such reporting disturbed the atmosphere and adversely affected the psyche of people who often got caught in communal conflict and bloodshed.

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Therefore, he described the newspaperman as a walking plague, and he did exactly the same thing in 1926. He appealed to people not to be stricken by fear to deal with the explosive and volatile situation that arose after the country suffered partition and the orgy of violence, murder and migration from India to Pakistan and vice versa.

Communal hatred spread by newspapers during 1946–47

Eight days after that address, Gandhi delivered another speech in a prayer meeting on April 26, 1946, and referred to a maulana who told him that "newspapers were fanning the flames of communal hatred day after day and week after week."

Stating that "they are the real culprits", he went on to charge that incitement to murder was as bad if not worse than the murder itself.

"The actual murderer," Gandhi asserted, "Is very often an ignorant tool, a victim of mischievous propaganda."

He added, "But even such propaganda could take effect only in a vitiated atmosphere. In a healthy atmosphere, it would be sterilised."

A healthy atmosphere does not prevail right now. Therefore, all those words uttered by Gandhi seventy-seven years before India attained independence sound so contemporary in the context of the vicious spread of hate by many newspapers and television channels, which are described, very justifiably as 'godi media' for their role in acting as a propaganda medium of the ruling regime at the centre.

Those 14 anchors charged by I.N.D.I.A. alliance partners for spreading hatred in the name of religion remind us of two examples of Gandhi's indicting remarks on newspapers, one of 1926 and the other of 1946, for creating a hate-filled ambience through their reports, which caused communal divide and killings in the name of faith.

It is tragic that  television channels and those 14 anchors spread hate by aligning themselves with the powers that be, and what they do now has some approval from those who wield power. Possibly, that was not the case in the context of newspapers of pre-independent India.

In another prayer meeting organised in Muriyam on January 27, 1947, Gandhi, in his address, regretted that poison was being administered to the public by some newspapers and reminded them of the duty of the newspapermen to give nothing but facts to their readers.

On April 12, 1947, in his speech delivered at a prayer meeting in Delhi, he suggested throwing away such useless newspapers and claimed that nothing would be lost by not reading them.

"If you must read a newspaper," Gandhi remarked, "Take care to choose those which are published to serve the interest of the country and call upon Hindus and Muslims to live in amity."

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Seven weeks after India attained independence from British rule, Gandhi, while speaking at a prayer meeting on October 8, 1947, in New Delhi, uttered some words which assume significance for the public to keep away from media and television channels poisoning the minds of people by their toxic communal narratives.

Observing that "when a country becomes independent, the press becomes all the more powerful," he stated that freedom enjoyed by the press could not be restricted in publishing reports and the news. 

"But public opinion," Gandhi said, "Can be very useful … when the newspapers do dirty propaganda or publish unfounded reports or incite people."

"Today, when we have become independent," he forcefully stated, "It is the duty of the public not to read dirty papers but to throw them away."

He then added that when nobody bought those papers, they would automatically follow the right path. What Gandhi said in 1947 in his appeal to the public not to buy those dirty papers amounted to a call for boycotting them. He also did so in 1926 in the context of the aforementioned killing of Swami Shraddhanand by one Abdul Rashid.

It is illuminating to note that Gandhi, in a resolution moved on December 26, 1926, at the Gauhati session of the Indian National Congress, while expressing "horror and indignation at the cowardly and treacherous murder of Swami Shraddhanand" issued an appeal for "purging the atmosphere of mutual hatred and calumny," by "boycotting papers which foment hatred and spread misrepresentation."

The resolution claimed that "India would lose nothing if 90 percent of the papers were to cease today." 

Gandhi's words resonate

The call of Gandhi in 1926 and during 1946 and 1947 to reject newspapers and boycott them on the ground that those were spreading hatred in the name of faith offers valuable lessons for keeping away from godi media and upholding the invaluable legacy of journalism to interrogate those in power and hold the mirror to society.

What Gandhi did is echoed in the decision of the I.N.D.I.A. alliance partners not to send their representatives to participate in discussions hosted by 14 anchors.