Putting NDTV India ban on hold shows Modi sarkar's panic over a thoughtless decision

The information and broadcasting ministry's hurried move to put on hold the one-day ban on NDTV India reflects the government's panic over a thoughtless and careless decision.

With the Supreme Court deciding to hear the NDTV's appeal on Tuesday and the growing tide of public opinion against the ban, the government was compelled to revisit its ill-conceived plan.

The government will have egg on its face if the Supreme Court interprets the decision on the ban as a move to restrain the press from discharging its duty.

Prima facie there is nothing to show that NDTV Hindi in any manner compromised the safety and security of the people by transgressing its responsibility as a news organization during coverage of the Pathankot airbase attack.

No government welcomes criticism that dents its image of self-love, few show courage to put up with dissent and even fewer wish to provide enabling atmosphere for free press to work independently.

This is a lesson that independent press must keep in mind. It must always be on guard to put up fight to protect its hard-won freedom.

The Narendra Modi government must also take a lesson from the past. And the section of the media that has jumped on the Modi bandwagon and turned against its own fraternity working independently must also draw a lesson from the past

Whenever the fundamental right to freedom of press has come under threat, the media, civil soceity and even poltical parties have stood together to confront the government that sought to musszle the press.

Governments in the past have tried to stifle the freedom of the press and they had had to bite the dust.

At least on two occasions the entire press and civil society came together and stood like rock to defeat governments' plan to control then media.

The Rajiv Gandhi government passed a Defamation Bill in the Lok Sabha in 1988 on the pretext of checking "defamatory" reporting by the press.

But he had to withdraw the bill before it was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in the face of countrywide protests.

On another occasion, the press and opposition parties forced the Bihar government to withdraw a press bill against "scurrilous" reporting in 1982. Why that is sort of will to fight the government's clamp down on freedom of press lacking within the media and the country today?

It's because the press itself is badly divided.

When journalists marched in Delhi to protest the violence against them in the Patiala House courts last February, representatives of two major channels stayed away. Those channels have been taking stridently pro-government positions.

The differences over a series of events surrounding the contentious issues of nationalism and intolerance had been playing out in television news studios since the BJP government took office in 2014.

It boiled over to the street when journalists covering the Kanhaiya Kumar case were assaulted in the court premises.

Those differences have grown bigger. And they are over much more serious issues, the issues that are more germane to the matters of press freedom than one instance of assault on journalists on duty in Delhi.

Journalists and media houses have never been as bitterly divided as they are now, be it over the NDTV case or over the government's stances.

For instance, Zee TV proprietor Subhas Chandra has fired a salvo against the NDTV, without bothering to worry about its long-term consequences.

In a series of tweets on Sunday, Chandra called for a "life" ban on NDTV for "playing against national security."

Then he tweeted to say there can’t be two opinions about national security and therefore he totally supports the ban.

The Zee TV owner, who is also a member of the Rajya Sabha, appeared to be angry at what he said was an attempt to ban his network during UPA rule. He attacked NDTV, “so-called intellectuals” and the Editor’s Guild of India for having kept mum then.

The open support to the government's order to take NDTV India off air and demand that the channel be banned for ever by a rival media house owner is unique and unprecedented.

Chandra's tweets reflect the total breakdown of consensus that governs our political system and larger soceity.

The consensus that binds us and our system is democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights including freedom of speech and press.

However, the Modi government and its cohorts, the BJP and its mother orgnaisation - the RSS - have been increasingly seen to be imposing their own vesions of nationalism on the media and the people.

A section of the media has got openly alinged with the government in propagating and pushing its agenda, completely giving up media's own basic ehtics and responsibility.

The division in the press and the polity has been created on highly emotional issues of nationalism and patriotism. Soldiers' deaths on the border have been made an issue. War mongering is being made an issue.

The press that questions the rationale of war mongering, that analyses and presents an alternative view of nationalism, that dares to dissent is straight away defined as anti-national.

Information and broadcasting minister M Venkaiah Naidu's defence of proposed one-day ban on NDTV India tells what government thinks is absolutely sacrosanct.

His arguments that if UPA government ordered to take channels off air on grounds of showing 'obscenities' and adult films in late night how can one fault Modi regime from banning NDTV for revealing secrets of national security is specious.

The argument doesn't hold because the government has not proved beyond doubt how NDTV India compromised national security that other channels didn't. If media and freedom-loving people don't see the warning signs and fail to unite, they might well say good-bye to freedom of press. And democracy.

Also read: NDTV India ban: This will hurt Modi