https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5373-234X
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ABSTRACT
The limits to press freedom in India are usually surveyed from the top-down, with a focus on government efforts to censor journalists, particularly English-language journalists. In this essay, we instead examine India's restrictive press culture by focusing on the sociological workings of Hindi language news production, studying ways in which everyday journalism practices intersect with freedom of expression. The paper first traces the history of Hindi journalism alongside the development of press freedom. It then analyzes mainstream Hindi media coverage of the recent murder and rape of a “lower caste” woman in rural India. Our analysis reveals how the sociological realities of casteism and patriarchy merged with self-censorship to enable media cover up of the rape case. We then draw on interviews with Hindi journalists to illuminate the reasons behind censorship in such cases and in news media more broadly. We argue that a combination of structural, ideological, and historical conditions has limited the growth of press freedom in India. We further suggest that top-down approaches that focus exclusively on English-language media cannot adequately capture the dynamics of news reporting on the ground, and that contemporary news media can only be holistically understood by studying the “non-global,” Indian language press.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See, for example, Maheshwari and Sparks (Citation2021).
2 Neyazi (Citation2018, p. 8) argued that Hindi news media has ‘the power to influence other media such as the vernacular language press in Bangla, Odiya and Malayalam languages, though they may not change the opinions of editors or a reading public in those states.’
3 Importantly, as Yengde (Citation2019) pointed out, caste is often understood through the prisms of heinous violence, poverty etc., and therefore its role in the everyday domain of public and private life remains largely undiscussed.
4 Dalit (administratively called ‘the Scheduled Caste’) translates to ‘oppressed.’ Numbering over 200 million, Dalits remain at the bottom of the Indian caste order.
5 Legally, Indian courts are yet to conclude that the woman was raped. There is a possibility that such a conclusion may not be drawn for the lack of ‘evidence,’ as it commonly happens in most cases of rape in rural India. Our decision, then, to use the word rape is based on our reading of the case and interviews with Indian journalists as well as on the precedent that scholars such as Gopal Guru (Citation2020) and major media outlets including the New York Times, BBC, and Al Jazeera have termed it as a rape. Notably, the local administration refused for days to officially file a rape case and the medical examination for sexual assault was conducted more than a week after the attack, likely contributing to the loss of evidence (‘Hathras Case,’ Citation2020).
6 As Neyazi (Citation2018) noted, different Hindi publications stood up for or against social issues such as sati.
7 At different times, the colonial government imposed a host of censorship laws such as the Vernacular Press Act (1878–1882), the Press Act of India (1910–1922), and the Sedition Act (1870-present) to curb media freedom. The Sedition Act continues today, selectively applied to stifle dissent. For more information on these Acts, refer to Natarajan (Citation1955).
8 Rajasthan Patrika is published by that name in the states of Rajasthan and Delhi. In nine other states, it is published as Patrika (Ajwani, Citation2014).
9 We suggest this based on our interviews with rural Hindi journalists and media analysts. Vasanti (Citation2009) attributed the importance of Hindi print dailies to their emphasis on local news.
10 According to the Media Ownership Monitor (Citation2019) survey, four media outlets – Jagran, Hindustan, Amar Ujala, and Dainik Bhaskar – capture three out of four readers (76.45% of readership share) within the national Hindi language market.
11 One reason for the relative lack of bylines in leading Hindi newspapers is that editorial boards believe naming journalists could be (and, in some cases, is) used as leverage for ‘improper’ financial and political gains. Hindi newspapers employ a considerable number of part-time journalists, or ‘stringers,’ to report on villages and small towns and for these media professionals, journalism is just one of the many concurrent vocations. Noticeably, the withholding of bylines is also a mechanism through which newspaper managements exercise control over workers.
12 For example, see Maniamkot (Citation2020) and PTI (Citation2020b).
13 As a practice associated with ‘untouchability’ and Dalits, manual scavenging refers to the ‘removal of human excrement from public streets and dry latrines, cleaning septic tanks, gutters and sewers’ (‘India's Manual,’ Citation2020). According to official figures, one manual scavenger died every three days in 2019 on an average. Activists believe that such deaths are officially underreported (Singh, Citation2019).
14 This assertion is based on our ongoing research on the early twentieth century Hindi journalism. A similar argument has also been made by Rajagopal (Citation2001).
15 All interviews were conducted over telephone with each lasting between 35 minutes to three hours. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and translated from Hindi to English for the purpose of this article. Moreover, this essay is informed by insights gained from a larger research project on Indian news media, which includes a series of in-person interviews and ongoing conversations with media professionals (such as journalists and editors), media analysts, and news audiences related to Hindi, Malayalam, and English-language media.
16 The ideological roots of Hindutva can be traced to V.D. Savarkar's Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? published in 1923. He defined the Hindus as the ‘sons of the soil,’ for whom India was both a motherland and a sacred land (Jaffrelot, Citation2017).
17 Refers to Other Backward Class (OBC), an official term to denote castes that are educationally or socially disadvantaged. OBC is traditionally regarded as higher in the caste hierarchy than Dalits.
18 This inter-state comparison of press freedom remains tentative as it is dependent on several political and social factors including the stance of state leaders.
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Notes on contributors
Subin Paul
Subin Paul, an assistant professor at IE University, Spain, specializes in the questions of media, culture, and politics with a focus on South Asia. His work has appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Communication, Digital Journalism, and Modern Asian Studies.
Ruth Palmer
Ruth Palmer is Assistant Professor of Communication at IE University in Segovia, Spain. She is the author of Becoming the News: How Ordinary People Respond to the Media Spotlight (Columbia University Press, 2018). She is currently at work on her second book (also with Columbia University Press), which is about people who avoid news altogether. Her articles have appeared in the academic journals Journalism, Journalism Studies and the International Journal of Communication.