THE TRAVAILS OF PRESSMEN
(By Subbaram Danda)
India was under a State of Emergency from June 25, 1975 until it was withdrawn on March 21, 1977. The then Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, got the emergency declared by the President, Mr. Fakruddin Ali Ahmed, in view of "internal disturbances." A major fallout was that the Press was censored. Forty years have gone by since its declaration. I look back at those times.
The days of Emergency are still sordidly green in my memory. I was a Senior Staff Reporter in "The Indian Express." All newspapers were subjected to censorship. My newspaper was particularly targeted because its owner Ramnath Goenka was a staunch supporter of Jan Sangh, which was the arch rival of the ruling Congress party. Also the newspaper was known for its forthright news and views.
In those days we did not have computers and news items had to be composed on Lino machines. Work on “making” pages would start early in the night and would go on till the deadline for each edition.
The days of Emergency are still sordidly green in my memory. I was a Senior Staff Reporter in "The Indian Express." All newspapers were subjected to censorship. My newspaper was particularly targeted because its owner Ramnath Goenka was a staunch supporter of Jan Sangh, which was the arch rival of the ruling Congress party. Also the newspaper was known for its forthright news and views.
In those days we did not have computers and news items had to be composed on Lino machines. Work on “making” pages would start early in the night and would go on till the deadline for each edition.
During
the Emergency, every page had to be cleared by the censor, which was the Press
Information Bureau (PIB) of the Government of India located at the Shastri
Bhavan in Chennai. On night shifts I had
to go to PIB for its clearance and I know what it all meant. At the same time, it should be said that PIB
officers were very friendly to us as they had always been, though they had to
do an unpleasant job. They would not, however,
take any risk. They would cut out mercilessly any
news item that was “objectionable” and approve only the rest of the
contents.
The consequence of such deletions
would be a major headache back at the newspaper office as those pages had to be
redone. One way of getting over the
problem was to remove the “objectionable” items and leave blank space there. From the point of view of the newspaper, it
served a good purpose too. Readers would
know that news items there had been censored.
My newspaper had several blank spaces every day.
Some
smart guy in the Central Government wanted to plug this “loophole.” Censor rules were changed overnight and fresh
orders were issued that the newspapers should not leave any blank spaces when
distributed to the public. This meant additional
time-consuming work for the newspaper and getting fresh clearance from the
censor. The net result of it all was
that newspapers would be printed late and the distribution mechanism would be
thrown out of gear.
That was
the state of Freedom of the Press during the days of Emergency. I cannot forget those days. Later I moved over to “The Financial Express”
to be its Chief of News Bureau.
(Ends)
July 02, 2015
