The Constitution of India guarantees freedom of expression but places certain restrictions on content, with a view towards maintaining communal and religious harmony. According to the Information Technology Rules 2011, objectionable content includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.”
In January 2016, NDTV aired footage of strategically sensitive details during the deadly attack on the Pathankot Airbase, allegedly carried out by the Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed group. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting hence charged the channel with sharing such delicate details to the enemy. The official announcement of a ban was made on November 2nd following which a lot of unrest, online and offline, was seen. Many people thought this was the right decision, as NDTV had often given out such details, if not of such extreme and biased news on their broadcast. On the other hand, the Editors Guild of India and opposition politicians condemned the ban, saying it was an infringement on press freedom and demanded the decision be reversed immediately.
But the ban, which was supposed to be implemented from 00:01 hours of November 9th to 00:01 hours of November 10th, has been put on hold for now. Four of the top NDTV officials, including the co-founder Prannoy Roy, met Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting M. Venkaiah Naidu along with I&B Secretary Ajay Mittal and Press Information Bureau Director General Frank Noronha. The co-founder pleaded their case to the minister and presented reports stating that the said information had already been leaked via other sources and NDTV had infact presented a “well-balanced” news on the issue.
Although the ban is at bay for now, criticism about it has breached up everywhere with Rahul Gandhi commenting that the freedom of speech and press might be looking at dark days ahead. When asked about it, Venkiah Naidu said, “It is like the devil quoting the scriptures. Congress has no moral right to rake up the issue of democratic principles. It is they who imposed Emergency and used Article 356 (to impose central rule in states) umpteen times… you silenced opposition, you devalued institutions.”
These kind of bans and their counter appeals actually call into question how effective is the censorship in India. Firstly, are we censoring the right kind of content? Congress had imposed bans all through its regime on one show or channel or daily, content that wasn’t really breaching nation’s security or gaining unrest. On the flip side, almost any forward thinking thought is censored to its bare bones in this nation. And while we are trying to break free of that and restrict only where required, issues like the NDTV ban make us think if we are making any progress.
Secondly, even if bans are imposed on the right topics, how effective are they? Does the one day broadcast ban help restrain or even rectify the long standing chaos that is the channel? In its effect, the ban does stand true under Rule 6(1)(p) of the Cable TV Network (Regulation) Act, which says – no programme should be carried in the cable service which contains live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation by security forces, wherein media coverage shall be restricted to periodic briefing by an officer designated by the appropriate government, till such operation concludes. So it is based on facts and not fascism as many might be misled to believe.
But at this point, the censorship is more used as a tool to restrict the information that public can be made privy to rather than to contain callous thoughts. We as a country need to realize whether the threat is real or just redesigned.
