Time to drop our guard, friends

In 1969, Indira Gandhi split the Congress, withdrew privy purses of princes, nationalised banks, leaned heavily on the likes of the Left-leaning Mohan Kumaramanglam. The Cold War at this stage was precariously poised. Indeed, the last American was clambering on to the helicopter taking off from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia had Marxist regimes. Berlinguer was knocking at the gates in Rome. Marchais in France and Corrilo in Spain were not negligible forces. Strategists like Kissinger were predicting a Marxist Western Europe in 15 years. Then began the Reagan counter-offensive. In other words there was a global and a national context in which an offensive mounted by the right caused Indira Gandhi to lose nerve and declare the Emergency.

RSS leader Nanaji Deshmukh’s friendship with media baron Ramnath Goenka came in handy. The two forged an RSS-Socialist alliance around the persona of Jayaprakash Narayan. This was the Bihar movement leading, through a series of events, to the Emergency. In 1977, the Janata Party — a coalition of the Syndicate (cast away by Indira Gandhi during the 1969 split), Jana Sangh (today’s BJP), Socialists and various Kulak formations, routed Indira Gandhi. The media, having opposed the Emergency, saw the Janata Party as its very own own government. Circumstances had compromised the media’s adversarial stance. When India’s first national coalition fell apart and Indira Gandhi bounced back in 1980, the media found itself flat-footed.

Practical sense persuaded Goenka to seek accommodation with Indira Gandhi. Goenka was persuaded that it was not possible for the media to survive in implacable hostility with a leader as powerful as Indira Gandhi. Some journalists were distraught. Romesh Thapar’s plea with Goenka was revealing: “You and Arun Shourie are the two-man opposition the country has.” The media, in other words, was playing the role of the Opposition and this role was being abandoned, according to Thapar. The media, for a variety of reasons, had lost its way. An important principle had been forgotten. What was this principle? That independent media must be adversarial. True, but this stance dictates “critical support to the establishment”, not perpetual opposition. In a democracy the people bring into being a government. The media’s job is to respect the people’s verdict. And, in their watchdog role, accord critical support — criticise (or support) the government on issues.

Indira Gandhi’s violent end brought Rajiv Gandhi and later P.V. Narasimha Rao to power. Some balance was restored to the media but caste conflict pitted the largely upper caste media on one side. The limited balance began to be dissipated. The demolition of the Babri Masjid ruptured the social fabric. Social and regional fragmentation was reflected in the media as well.

In 1999, the objective political reality was as follows: The Left was confined to West Bengal and Kerala; regional parties held sway in the South; growing egalitarianism had brought to power lower caste leaders in the Hindi belt; the Congress was in irretrievable retreat (or so it seemed) and the spaces vacated by the Congress were being filled by the BJP.

What came across as political instability was actually sociological upheaval. But, happily, all of this was happening against a reform induced economic growth. Here again the global backdrop must not be lost sight of. Just as Indira Gandhi’s emergency coincided with the intensification of the Cold War, economic reforms in India followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The almost fawning support the NDA received from the media was partly because the Left, lower caste parties and a retreating Congress were not seen as options. Hence the unwillingness to dwell long on Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s negatives, including his acquiescence (against his own judgement) in Narendra Modi’s unspeakable excesses. But then Vajpayee’s statesmanship towards Pakistan must invite universal applause. The new government has therefore inherited remarkable internal stability.

Sonia Gandhi was the underdog when the election campaign began. She has stunned the nation on two counts: First, having singlehandedly pulled up the party and, secondly, that act of renunciation to keep the nation from divisiveness. Vacillating from opposition to acquiescence, the media now has a government with the sort of balance which could enable it to get back on the classical formula of critical support: Neither opposition nor adoration.