Not even for a pandemic
On the afternoon of April 10, speeding in an SUV for more than 400 miles, a posse of the Uttar Pradesh police descended on the Delhi home of Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of the digital journal The Wire, summoning him to face criminal charges in the city of Ayodhya.
That well-known temple town lies about 40 miles east of UP’s capital, Lucknow.
The editor’s crime? A story in The Wire that “Yogi” Adityanath (as much of the Indian media describes UP’s chief minister) and several others had taken part in a public ceremony in Ayodhya after the announcement of a national lockdown, and that a religious leader present at the event had said that “Lord Ram would protect devotees from the coronavirus”.
An earlier version of the story had erroneously attributed the last sentence to Chief Minister Adityanath, but The Wire was swift to catch and correct the mistake. In addition, Varadarajan posted the correction on social media.
Yes, journalists should be careful, accurate, and willing to publish corrections, as The Wire promptly did. And government functionaries, whether uniformed or not, should demonstrate distancing rules. Policemen who pack themselves inside a vehicle may be violating a norm they are supposed to enforce.
More importantly, the purpose of the long drive from Ayodhya to Delhi was deeply troubling. For The Wire is one of a handful of media outlets left in India where the government’s policies can be frontally questioned, its actions clearly criticized.
I know Siddharth Varadarajan, though I knew his late father better. Siddharth’s brother, Tunku Varadarajan, who writes in the Wall Street Journal, tells us there (Apr 12) that Siddharth was served the summons on his 55th birthday.
Because of his standing over the years, including as editor of The Hindu, because of the range, depth and quality of The Wire’s stories, and because the “drive” targeting Siddharth was so flagrantly extraordinary, thousands of India’s reporters, columnists, editors, writers and scholars have signed statements against the harassment.
As Siddharth, his fellow editors at The Wire, and others on the journal’s remarkable team would be among the first to say, hundreds of other reporters in India daily face hostility from the authorities, and from powerful non-governmental bosses.
Journalists who probe are nowhere welcomed by everyone. An India turning increasingly authoritarian seems to be harassing them more and more.
In the past, India often saw independent judges supporting probing journalists, and an independent media praising courageous judges.
What the Indian Supreme Court did on March 31 seemed to send a confusing signal. It passed a directive that news outlets must carry the government’s official version on any news related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
During a pandemic, even a sweeping directive of this kind may find acceptance. But questions have arisen because the Court’s language followed a particular argument advanced before it by the Indian government. The government claimed that “fake news” had caused the exodus of hundreds of thousands from big cities to their distant rural homes, an exodus that shocked India and the world.
This was an amazing claim for the government to make. For it was instinct, not any media story, that told “migrants” from the countryside that they had to return to their villages once the sudden lockdown, expected to be lengthy, eliminated their daily jobs.
On the plus side, the Supreme Court added that it did “not intend to interfere with the free discussion about the pandemic”.
The vast majority of India’s people have responded most impressively to the pandemic, which appears to be true for the world as a whole. By and large India’s central and state governments too have shown their competence.
But the giving up of a free media, or of an independent judiciary, is too much even for a pandemic to demand.
This blog stands squarely with Siddharth Varadarajan and The Wire in their protest against harassment.
