By Sardar Khan Niazi
The media’s business is to enlighten the public, and the public never see suppression of the media in a positive light. Whenever a state machinery harasses the media right after it has revealed information that the government feels apprehensive of, the people never see it as being a coincidence.
The Indian income tax department’s sudden raids at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai drew extensive denunciation against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These raids not only shocked journalists, activists, and opposition politicians alike but also were taken as a direct threat to freedom of the press.
Such a high-handed action against one of the global broadcasting networks understandably not only caused concern and discomfort in Western capitals but also further corroded the Indian state’s credibility in the eyes of the public.
Regrettably, the misuse of state power to harass the media has been increasing in India. It is something that has caused concern among all those who believe in the values of a democratic society.
The raids, which the income tax officials have described as surveys, followed the controversy over the BBC’s showing of a two-part investigative documentary, titled India: The Modi Question, which for the first time revealed a confidential investigation by the British government into the 2002 Gujarat riots that left more than a thousand Muslims dead.
The investigation report concluded that the violence had all the hallmarks of genocide and found Modi directly responsible for not stopping the killings of Muslims.
The BBC aired the documentary in the UK only and did not explain the reasons for such restricted dissemination. However, that did not help the agency to shield itself from the wrath of the government of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Indian opposition leaders were quick to protest the raids. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh questioned the government hounding the BBC. Leaders of Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, and other regional parties also condemned the raids and called them an act of desperation.
Rights group Amnesty International, which was forced to stop its operation in India following its accounts being frozen by another government agency, said that overbroad powers of the Income Tax Department are repeatedly being weaponized to silence dissent.
What was more disturbing was the seizure of laptops and mobile phones of journalists working there. People continued to express their concerns and anger on social media platforms. The Washington Post termed seizing journalists’ phones as stunning and apparently retaliatory.
The Indian government argued that the sudden raids on the BBC’s offices by the Indian tax authorities have no relationship with the news agency’s airing of the documentary, but the media persons have become quite used to this phenomenon.
Whenever the media publishes something that the government does not approve of, the government resorts to tactics of harassment – whether through legal, financial, or other threats. Moreover, these events are never coincidences.
The government may feel aggrieved by certain media coverage. In addition, it may also be because the coverage was inaccurate, in which case the fault could lie with the media. However, the right way to go about addressing this is by providing accurate counter information.
If there were any flaws within the BBC’s documentary, the correct way to expose those mistakes would have been for the Indian authorities to provide counter facts. The government, when it is unsatisfied with media content, has the right to challenge it by pointing out flaws and factual errors.
However, using the might of the state machinery to harass the media should never be acceptable in any democratic society. Moreover, such pressure – whether it be legal, financial, or otherwise – never works to achieve the end goal.
