By Ranjona Banerji
The last days of 2023 have seen the collapse of democracy in India in more ways than one.
On December 13, a group of young people broke into Parliament. They wanted Parliamentarians to focus on joblessness. Instead, our TV people first made the incident into a giant joke over a canister of gas, as they made a spectacle of themselves grabbing it back and forth.
Then the media concocted a giant drama around the break-in, mainly by looking for connections to opposition (as in non-BJP) parties, attacking freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh who inspired the whole incident and then presented massive invented scenarios of potential danger to the potentate.
What they did not know is question, meekly or rigorously, the BJP MP who signed the group in, they ignored the fact that the BJP has been presenting Bhagat Singh as one of their own to make up for their lack of historical participation in India’s historic freedom struggle, and the media definitely did not focus on the reason for the break-in: the desperate unemployment situation in India.
Now the December 13 incident has been pushed on to the backburner.
And another, far more serious assault on Parliament and democracy is being covered up over a minor laughable incident of “disrespect”.
Over the course of the week, 146 Members of Parliament were suspended from Parliament. All opposition MPs. All for using their voices to demand justice. All on wafer-thin reasons. The Vice-President of India wept paroxysms of grief over being made fun of outside Parliament. This “disrespect” became reason enough to justify elected representatives of the people of India from one of the three main organs of democracy – the Legislature.
The ruling BJP then passed important bills without any discussion.
And without being questioned by the media.
In fact, most of the Indian mainstream media presented this as one more masterstroke by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his regime. If you look through most newspapers, you will find that they have asked others, non-BJP, to discuss the collapse of democracy – Hamid Ansari, Sonia Gandhi, Manoj Kumar Jha, or their own columnists.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/winter-session-of-lok-sabha-mass-suspension-of-opposition-mps-smoke-bomb-attack-and-passage-of-landmark-laws/articleshow/106183249.cms?from=mdr
Note the use of the word “significant” in the first sentence. This is prime “playing it safe” syndrome. The word could mean anything and no one can catch you out on it. Another word for its use under the circumstances would be “cowardice”.
Once, you would have had campaigns by the media to restore democracy. Now if they respond at all, it is from someone else’s shoulders. And as for television, they only react the way they are instructed to by the government and the party.
The fact that our criminal laws have been changed and this will have tremendous impact on our futures, the fact that democracy was destroyed in the passing of these bills, the fact that this was one more assault on the future of our republic as we know it – not the yellow smoke escapade – will be glossed over by TV. Instead, it will rant and outrage at the opposition, at supposed insults at office-bearers and cheer at the cleverness of a regime which has so neatly sidestepped the essence of our Constitution.
People assume a “reckoning” will happen one day. If it does, the role of the bulk of the media in applauding and encouraging this reich will not be forgotten. Or so they hope.
The immense confidence which the BJP has gathered for itself, thanks in no small part to the mainstream media’s amplification of its propaganda, is clear in the brazenness with which it has dealt with the charges of sexual assault made by award-winning athletes.
The BJP MP Brij Bhushan Singh has withstood all accusations of sexual assault by India’s women wrestlers, thanks to the support of his party and the media. Like the BJP MP who allowed protestors into Parliament, there is no question of accountability from the BJP as far as the media is concerned.
India’s Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik retired from wrestling yesterday because Singh’s own man has taken over from him as Wrestling Federation of India’s president.
https://thebridge.in/wrestling/sakshi-malik-retires-wrestling-45270
The media, as made clear in this cartoon by Satish Acharya, is not on the side of the woman wrestler but on that of the BJP and the assaulter.
What reckoning are you hoping for?
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Her views here are personal