New Delhi: Most days are not good days for Indian filmmakers. But the abolition of the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) – a statutory body addressing filmmakers aggrieved by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) decisions – has made bad days worse. Indian film certification comprises three bodies: the Examining Committee, the Revising Committee, and the FCAT. If a director is dissatisfied with the Examining Committee, then she approaches the Revising Committee. If she disagrees with the Revising Committee, then her final recourse is the FCAT – followed by the courts. But the FCAT abolition has removed a crucial link in the process, compelling the filmmakers to approach the judiciary, an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Sure, the FCAT wasn’t perfect. Ask Meera Chaudhary, the co-director of the documentary En Dino Muzaffarnagar. In August 2014, the FCAT upheld the CBFC’s order, refusing to certify the film, saying the documentary had “grave potential of creating communal disharmony”. En Dino Muzaffarnagar never released. But in several cases, the FCAT did champion freedom of expression. It cleared several recent films, including Great Grand Masti; Shaheb, Bibi, Golaam; Haraamkhor; Lipstick Under My Burkha; and Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, with an “A” certificate, overturning the CBFC’s unreasonable objections and inordinate cuts. The FCAT, in fact, also saved one of the most controversial Indian films, Bandit Queen. The Tribunal head, in that remarkable decision, suggested that the censor board representative “take a trip to Khajuraho” to “understand the difference between nakedness, nudity, and obscenity”. So, the filmmakers quite rightly considered the FCAT a reliable bulwark against the CBFC’s (often) draconian orders. The FCAT even rescued the former CBFC chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, from the clutches of the censor board, reducing the number of cuts in his 2018 film, Rangeela Raja, from 20 to three. Former CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani. Photo: Facebook/Pahlaj Nihalani The FCAT has been historically more progressive than the CBFC. But the filmmakers also liked it for a different reason: It dispended quick judgments, allowing the producers to release their films on time, saving them from financial loss. It was also a sweet spot between the censor board and the courts, as the FCAT members at times also included people from the film fraternity, who knew how to judge a movie in the right context. The FCAT abolition will also overburden the courts, exacerbating their post-COVID-19 lockdown backlog. In 2018 and 2019, for instance, 53 filmmakers approached the FCAT: that is, in the present scenario, a case every two weeks. This decision then doesn’t seem friendly for either the filmmakers or the courts. Whom does it benefit then? The Central government, of course. Every ruling party, irrespective of its ideology, has tried controlling the filmmaking narrative in this country. But the level of censorship over the last seven years has been quite unprecedented. Less than six weeks ago, the government issued guidelines for the OTT platforms, wanting to exercise greater control over channels that don’t come under the purview of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting whose legality was questioned by a parliamentary panel. This also seems like a disjointed decision, because it contradicts the recommendations of the 2013 Justice Mudgal report and the 2016 Shyam Benegal report. If the Mudgal committee wanted to expand the ambit of the FCAT, then the Benegal team wanted the Tribunal to be “empowered to cover all grievances under the lines of Broadcasting Content Complaints Council”. The filmmakers are understandably disappointed, as this decision humiliates them further. Vishal Bhardwaj called it a “sad day for cinema”. Hansal Mehta considered the abolition “arbitrary” and “restrictive”. Anurag Kashyap, familiar with censorship troubles, said that the producers would “become scared to get caught in the loop of the high court” and that it’d “discourage filmmakers to make movies on stronger themes”. The Narendra Modi government has never enjoyed a healthy relationship with the film fraternity. Before it targeted the JNU students, it tried to control the Film and Television Institute of India by appointing Gajendra Chauhan, a forgotten side actor and a BJP member, as its chairman. That sparked a huge protest, culminating in dozens of filmmakers and writers returning their National Awards. But the government and the prime minister continued to court a select few from the industry, clicking selfies with them, showering them with prestigious awards. It is quite clear that, when it comes to filmmaking expression in this country, the ruling party is the real director, reducing filmmakers to props, making them dance to arbitrary tunes.
New Delhi: Most days are not good days for Indian filmmakers. But the abolition of the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) – a statutory body addressing filmmakers aggrieved by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) decisions – has made bad days worse. Indian film certification comprises three bodies: the Examining Committee, the Revising Committee, and the FCAT. If a director is dissatisfied with the Examining Committee, then she approaches the Revising Committee. If she disagrees with the Revising Committee, then her final recourse is the FCAT – followed by the courts. But the FCAT abolition has removed a crucial link in the process, compelling the filmmakers to approach the judiciary, an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Sure, the FCAT wasn’t perfect. Ask Meera Chaudhary, the co-director of the documentary En Dino Muzaffarnagar. In August 2014, the FCAT upheld the CBFC’s order, refusing to certify the film, saying the documentary had “grave potential of creating communal disharmony”. En Dino Muzaffarnagar never released. But in several cases, the FCAT did champion freedom of expression. It cleared several recent films, including Great Grand Masti; Shaheb, Bibi, Golaam; Haraamkhor; Lipstick Under My Burkha; and Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, with an “A” certificate, overturning the CBFC’s unreasonable objections and inordinate cuts. The FCAT, in fact, also saved one of the most controversial Indian films, Bandit Queen. The Tribunal head, in that remarkable decision, suggested that the censor board representative “take a trip to Khajuraho” to “understand the difference between nakedness, nudity, and obscenity”. So, the filmmakers quite rightly considered the FCAT a reliable bulwark against the CBFC’s (often) draconian orders. The FCAT even rescued the former CBFC chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, from the clutches of the censor board, reducing the number of cuts in his 2018 film, Rangeela Raja, from 20 to three. Former CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani. Photo: Facebook/Pahlaj Nihalani The FCAT has been historically more progressive than the CBFC. But the filmmakers also liked it for a different reason: It dispended quick judgments, allowing the producers to release their films on time, saving them from financial loss. It was also a sweet spot between the censor board and the courts, as the FCAT members at times also included people from the film fraternity, who knew how to judge a movie in the right context. The FCAT abolition will also overburden the courts, exacerbating their post-COVID-19 lockdown backlog. In 2018 and 2019, for instance, 53 filmmakers approached the FCAT: that is, in the present scenario, a case every two weeks. This decision then doesn’t seem friendly for either the filmmakers or the courts. Whom does it benefit then? The Central government, of course. Every ruling party, irrespective of its ideology, has tried controlling the filmmaking narrative in this country. But the level of censorship over the last seven years has been quite unprecedented. Less than six weeks ago, the government issued guidelines for the OTT platforms, wanting to exercise greater control over channels that don’t come under the purview of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting whose legality was questioned by a parliamentary panel. This also seems like a disjointed decision, because it contradicts the recommendations of the 2013 Justice Mudgal report and the 2016 Shyam Benegal report. If the Mudgal committee wanted to expand the ambit of the FCAT, then the Benegal team wanted the Tribunal to be “empowered to cover all grievances under the lines of Broadcasting Content Complaints Council”. The filmmakers are understandably disappointed, as this decision humiliates them further. Vishal Bhardwaj called it a “sad day for cinema”. Hansal Mehta considered the abolition “arbitrary” and “restrictive”. Anurag Kashyap, familiar with censorship troubles, said that the producers would “become scared to get caught in the loop of the high court” and that it’d “discourage filmmakers to make movies on stronger themes”. The Narendra Modi government has never enjoyed a healthy relationship with the film fraternity. Before it targeted the JNU students, it tried to control the Film and Television Institute of India by appointing Gajendra Chauhan, a forgotten side actor and a BJP member, as its chairman. That sparked a huge protest, culminating in dozens of filmmakers and writers returning their National Awards. But the government and the prime minister continued to court a select few from the industry, clicking selfies with them, showering them with prestigious awards. It is quite clear that, when it comes to filmmaking expression in this country, the ruling party is the real director, reducing filmmakers to props, making them dance to arbitrary tunes.
··

With Abolition of Film Certificate Tribunal, Bad Days for Filmmakers Will Become Worse

April 9, 2021

New Delhi: Most days are not good days for Indian filmmakers. But the abolition of the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) – a statutory body addressing filmmakers aggrieved by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) decisions – has made bad days worse. Indian film certification comprises three bodies: the Examining Committee, the Revising Committee, and the FCAT. If a director is dissatisfied with the Examining Committee, then she approaches the Revising Committee. If she disagrees with the Revising Committee, then her final recourse is the FCAT – followed by the courts. But the FCAT abolition has removed a crucial link in the process, compelling the filmmakers to approach the judiciary, an expensive and time-consuming procedure.
Sure, the FCAT wasn’t perfect. Ask Meera Chaudhary, the co-director of the documentary En Dino Muzaffarnagar. In August 2014, the FCAT upheld the CBFC’s order, refusing to certify the film, saying the documentary had “grave potential of creating communal disharmony”. En Dino Muzaffarnagar never released. But in several cases, the FCAT did champion freedom of expression. It cleared several recent films, including Great Grand Masti; Shaheb, Bibi, Golaam; Haraamkhor; Lipstick Under My Burkha; and Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, with an “A” certificate, overturning the CBFC’s unreasonable objections and inordinate cuts.

The FCAT, in fact, also saved one of the most controversial Indian films, Bandit Queen. The Tribunal head, in that remarkable decision, suggested that the censor board representative “take a trip to Khajuraho” to “understand the difference between nakedness, nudity, and obscenity”. So, the filmmakers quite rightly considered the FCAT a reliable bulwark against the CBFC’s (often) draconian orders. The FCAT even rescued the former CBFC chief, Pahlaj Nihalani, from the clutches of the censor board, reducing the number of cuts in his 2018 film, Rangeela Raja, from 20 to three.

Former CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani. Photo: Facebook/Pahlaj Nihalani

The FCAT has been historically more progressive than the CBFC. But the filmmakers also liked it for a different reason: It dispended quick judgments, allowing the producers to release their films on time, saving them from financial loss. It was also a sweet spot between the censor board and the courts, as the FCAT members at times also included people from the film fraternity, who knew how to judge a movie in the right context. The FCAT abolition will also overburden the courts, exacerbating their post-COVID-19 lockdown backlog. In 2018 and 2019, for instance, 53 filmmakers approached the FCAT: that is, in the present scenario, a case every two weeks. This decision then doesn’t seem friendly for either the filmmakers or the courts.

Whom does it benefit then? The Central government, of course. Every ruling party, irrespective of its ideology, has tried controlling the filmmaking narrative in this country. But the level of censorship over the last seven years has been quite unprecedented. Less than six weeks ago, the government issued guidelines for the OTT platforms, wanting to exercise greater control over channels that don’t come under the purview of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting whose legality was questioned by a parliamentary panel. This also seems like a disjointed decision, because it contradicts the recommendations of the 2013 Justice Mudgal report and the 2016 Shyam Benegal report. If the Mudgal committee wanted to expand the ambit of the FCAT, then the Benegal team wanted the Tribunal to be “empowered to cover all grievances under the lines of Broadcasting Content Complaints Council”.

The filmmakers are understandably disappointed, as this decision humiliates them further. Vishal Bhardwaj called it a “sad day for cinema”. Hansal Mehta considered the abolition “arbitrary” and “restrictive”. Anurag Kashyap, familiar with censorship troubles, said that the producers would “become scared to get caught in the loop of the high court” and that it’d “discourage filmmakers to make movies on stronger themes”.
The Narendra Modi government has never enjoyed a healthy relationship with the film fraternity. Before it targeted the JNU students, it tried to control the Film and Television Institute of India by appointing Gajendra Chauhan, a forgotten side actor, and a BJP member, as its chairman. That sparked a huge protest, culminating in dozens of filmmakers and writers returning their National Awards. But the government and the prime minister continued to court a select few from the industry, clicking selfies with them, showering them with prestigious awards. It is quite clear that, when it comes to filmmaking expression in this country, the ruling party is the real director, reducing filmmakers to props, making them dance to arbitrary tunes.

Nidae Kashmir

A best news channel which publishes latest videos from Jammu and Kashmir which includes Politics, Public Grievances, Current affairs, Off-beat stories, Religion, etc. and We want to combine literature and journalism on one platform.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Banner

Add
You don’t get to lead a democracy, let alone get re-elected by a landslide, without a mandate to save your country. What distinguishes the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, is that he is a cult salvationist – yet, after seven years leading the world’s biggest democracy, he has little to show beyond the accumulation of votes. As an outsider distilling the avalanche of controversy, hagiography and verbiage, I am struck most by Modi’s congenital ambivalence. This is a thoroughly 21st-century party leader beamed as a 3D hologram into thousands of election meetings and rallies, fiercely partisan and constantly accusing his opponents of disloyalty to India. Yet he is also a man who decamps to a cave mid-campaign (cameras in tow) to contemplate the meaning of life and impart spiritual wisdom. While earning rapt adoration, of course. This ethereal hologram – brutal modern politician as prophet and guru – has won two successive election landslides across a vast, extraordinarily diverse country of 1.3 billion people. But who is the real Modi? In trying to find out, I kept coming back to three key questions. Which country does he see himself as leading: India or Hindu India? Is he saving Indian democracy or is he subverting it? And is he, as he insists, a true economic moderniser – or a fanatical religious nationalist for whom modernisation is a tool to assert supremacy, with reforms proposed, chopped and changed for sectarian advantage? I have come to the view that these questions can’t be resolved, unless he lurches to extremity thereafter, because chronic ambiguity is Narendra Modi. A fervent Hindu militant in his teens, he now operates within a quasi-western political framework he half accepts and half rejects but has not sought – or at least has not yet been able – to fundamentally change. Also read: The Modi Cult Relies on an Edifice of Virtual Realities Ambiguity is in India’s DNA. Since its refoundation as an independent state in 1947, its prime ministers have been a mix of “strong men” – plus one strong woman – and weak caretakers. They have ruled a just-about democracy characterised by multi-party elections and formal constitutional liberalism but equally by extreme instability and endemic political violence – including regular assassinations – all flowing from two bitter centuries of British imperialism. Modi’s western admirers call him the Thatcher of India, and claim he is reversing 70 years of state regulation. This is risible given his paltry and contradictory economic record, starting in 2016 with the chaos of a botched demonetisation: removing 86% of cash from the economy overnight, for no good reason. He also claims to be founding a “second republic,” replacing the one forged by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Yet while Modi has defeated the latest gilded Gandhi – Rahul – twice, and may have ended the family’s political ambitions, I am struck by his resemblance to Rahul’s grandmother Indira. Prime minister for most of the two decades (1966-1984) between Modi’s formative 16th and 34th years, Indira was similarly contradictory on both democracy and reform. She lurched in crisis to an “emergency” dictatorship in 1975-1977, then drew back and ultimately sustained her father Jawaharlal Nehru’s democratic edifice. In his mid-20s, Modi was an underground runner in the resistance to her “Emergency.” Ironically, his rule since 2014 has itself been called an “undeclared Emergency.” This is inaccurate: he hasn’t resorted to the draconian repression and mass imprisonment of opponents of Indira’s 21-month dictatorship. But the constitution has been pushed to the limit and manipulated, as under Indira and her son Rajiv, from the blocking of social media to the arrest of journalists and even a comedian, through to localised violence with a nod and a wink from Modi’s minions, and the suborning of the Supreme Court, the state media and the Electoral Commission. Then there are Modi’s peremptory “modernisations,” accompanied by alternating aggression and retreat: the latest is an increasingly botched “big bang” deregulation of agriculture, India’s largest industry. Again this is eerily reminiscent of Indira, whose pièce de résistance was a mass forced sterilisation campaign spearheaded by her other son, Sanjay, carried out in the name of modernisation. Modi’s India, like Indira’s, is in many ways a continuation of the republic founded by Nehru 74 years ago. It has all the tensions and contradictions embodied in Nehru himself, a Harrow- and Cambridge-educated barrister turned freedom fighter and authoritarian ruler. This republic is in parts socialist, elitist, democratic, secular and Hindu, nurturing a dynamic and sophisticated middle class, yet perpetuating massive inequality and divisions. But in defining himself against what came before, Modi offers two populist twists – abandoning the inclusive language of secularism to rally the religious majority against India’s huge minorities, and rallying anyone feeling downtrodden against the old elite, and most especially the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Breaking from hereditary rule sounds like progress, but whether it turns out to be will depend on how Modi organises his eventual succession, and whether he hands over to one of the more extreme Hindu nationalists in his political “family,” like his right-hand rottweiler Amit Shah, home affairs minister. File photo of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi. Photo: PTI On the spectrum of contemporary populists, Modi is more proletarian, professional and indeed popular than Erdoğan of Turkey and Bolsonaro of Brazil, and leagues more so than Trump. He is a vigorous 70-year-old whose tenure has no end in sight. Rahul Gandhi resigned the leadership of the opposition Congress party 20 months ago with many of its members, nationally and in state assemblies, having in effect defected to Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Modi’s brand of populism is described by Arvind Rajagopal of New York University as a simulacrum: “a media artefact regarded as more true than any amount of information and, in fact, capable of correcting that information. Modi is the leader who will drag the country out of its trouble and propel it to greatness: accepting this basic premise amounts to political realism today.” Or as Neelanjan Sircar of Ashoka University puts it: “The murkier the data, the easier it is for him to control the narrative.” But three artefacts of the Modi phenomenon are truly solid. First, his journey from poverty to power. His rise from the bottom half of Indian society is unique in a country historically ruled by moguls, princes and – for the first half-century of independence – largely through one family. In India’s labyrinthine caste gradations, Modi is an OBC (“Other Backward Caste”): a sort of lower middle class. His dad was a chaiwala (tea vendor) with a stall on the station platform in small-town Vadnagar, sustaining a family of eight in a three-room house without windows or running water but able to get his children a decent education. In Indian terms, Modi’s background is similar to Joe Biden’s, another son of a struggling lower middle-class small-town salesman (of cars). At school both had a love of debating, argumentation and, say contemporaries, a propelling stubbornness. Also read: Why Do We Fuss Over Humble Beginnings? Secondly, Modi’s mission is power, not money or dynasty. Although he courts and is courted by the Hindu mega-rich who fund his party at home and abroad, especially in Britain and the US, he does not enrich himself or his relatives. “I am single: who will I be corrupt for?” is one of his lines. An arranged marriage was effectively dissolved by him, unconsummated, when the ascetic teenager abruptly departed Vadnagar, aged 17, on the first of several nomadic nationwide quests. He has been celibate ever since. As monk-leader, implacable yet worldly-wise, he reminds me of both Archbishop Makarios, priest-founder of independent Cyprus, and Lee Kuan Yew, authoritarian guru-founder of Singapore. “Dynasty or democracy,” one of his 2014 slogans, successfully branded Rahul Gandhi a “prince” (shahzada). Another saying of his was “I am proud I sold tea, I never sold the nation,” which struck home. Thirdly, Modi has an electoral Midas touch. No one else in history has won a total of nearly half a billion votes in fairly free multi-party elections – and he isn’t done yet. His BJP is the world’s largest political party, claiming 100 million members: twice the size of the Chinese Communist Party. Two huge national victories since 2014 followed three equally sweeping elections as chief minister of his native Gujarat, a state bigger than England on India’s northwest coast. In 2014, he nearly trebled the BJP’s tally in the directly elected Lok Sabha (lower house) of the Indian parliament, giving the party, which everyone had assumed was fated to remain a perpetually minority party, its first ever overall majority. It was also the first single-party government of any party in India since the 1980s. The BJP has now become Modi’s party in the way that New Labour was Blair’s and Germany’s CDU became Merkel’s – only much more so. But it is important to understand that Modi is not a De Gaulle or even a Macron who summoned his own political force into being: his rise came through a movement which had deep historic and cultural roots, even if he has transformed its appeal. Like so many of the world’s election winners, Modi has been a professional politician since his twenties. He started as an apprentice in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a religious nationalist movement which believes in the essential Hinduness of India – an ideology known as “Hindutva” – and went on to join the BJP, founded as the movement’s modern political wing in 1980. He started in the army of RSS volunteers before becoming an organiser, after which he was drafted to become chief minister of Gujarat amid a leadership crisis in the local BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Facebook/Narendra Modi Modi knows India, socially and geographically, better than perhaps any other Indian alive, and from the bottom up. He has mastered modern democratic arts and his ubiquitous social media presence includes a Modi app, flashing up every speech, event and opinion to millions with a professionalism that leaves Trump in the gutter. “India saved itself with a timely lockdown, travel restrictions, shows recent study. Read more here!” runs the latest notification on my phone, the fourth of today. “Speaking in Hindi, Modi is the finest speaker I have ever heard; his oratory is mesmerising,” one opponent who does not wish to be named tells me. To my surprise, given his dictatorial reputation, he is a considerable parliamentarian, capable of graceful tributes to opponents, albeit only when they are retiring or have been defeated. “We stand for those who trusted us and also those whose trust we have to win over,” he declared after his 2019 landslide. His bitterest political critics typically pay tribute to his skill and crave his attention even as they attack him. Each day features another socially distanced mass Modi event, typically in a different state. Whether launching a toy festival in Delhi or a railway scheme in West Bengal, the white-bearded sage declaims an impassioned homily combining a political message with spiritual guidance and lifestyle advice. Addressing newly graduating doctors, after thanking them for their efforts in the pandemic, he urges them to “keep a sense of humour, do yoga, meditation, running, cycling and some fitness regime that helps your own wellbeing,” and invokes Hindu saint Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa’s mantra that “serving people is the same as serving God.” “In your long careers, grow professionally and at the same time, never forget your own growth. Rise above self-interest. Doing so will make you fearless,” he preaches. Also read: Interview: ‘Many Differences but Also Similarities Between Now and Emergency in 1975’ “Modernisation not westernisation” is another Modi slogan – he has a slogan for everything – yet his political packaging, including that hologram, is done with the help of slick BJP professionals trained in Britain and the US. He plays the west, using the right language and commandeering the wealthy and influential Hindu diaspora like an army. Britain’s populist Home Secretary Priti Patel, a fellow Gujarati, jokes with her friend “Narendra” in Gujarati. He calls virtually every western leader “my friend,” and they reciprocate. Whatever their concerns about sectarianism, western leaders desperately want the Indian leader onside. After his inauguration, Biden called Modi before Xi Jinping: escalating crises in Myanmar, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea give the prime minister leverage, which he shrewdly exploits. But is Modi within or beyond the pale? In his personal language generally within—although under his rule an anti-Muslim and anti-secular culture war has been stoked, amplified by Amit Shah and BJP activists. Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu priest cloaked in saffron robes and the BJP chief minister of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, infamously proclaimed: “If Muslims kill one Hindu man, then we will kill 100 Muslim men.” Modi himself doesn’t go there: modernisation and Hindu ancestor worship are his public rhetoric, and he rarely attacks opponents for much more than being divisive and unpatriotic, which is pretty much what British Tories have been doing for two centuries. And yet, in front of parliament in February, Modi called the farmers encamped in Delhi protesting the new laws “people who cannot live without protests,” and—more chillingly—“parasites.” The BJP culture war is increasingly vicious, seeking to erase India’s Mughal past and repress Muslims in the present by renaming towns and cities, rewriting and “saffronising” Indian history, and asserting cultural, religious and legal ascendancy, including through beef and alcohol bans. In the Hindutva mind, “their” India has been invaded twice, by the Muslims and then by the British, and both invasions need to be repelled. A defining event was the BJP-inspired 1992 attack on the Mughal-era Babri mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Demonstrators razed it to the ground and attempted to erect a Hindu temple to Rama, an event which radicalised the whole Hindutva movement. This is the backdrop to Modi’s discriminatory social and cultural policies—in 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the site of the demolished mosque be handed over to Hindus to build a new temple—as well as his symbolic gestures, like his scheme to rebuild Lutyens’ colonial complex in New Delhi. The big question, though, is whether Modi is not only sectarian, but also an outright inciter of violence and underminer of the constitution. Here four charges are laid. First, that in early 2002, shortly after becoming chief minister of Gujarat, he stoked a Hindu-on-Muslim pogrom in reaction to the murderous attack by a largely Muslim mob on a train passing through Godhra, in Gujarat, conveying Hindu pilgrims from Ayodhya. Second, there is the 2019 imposition of direct rule from Delhi onto the country’s one Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, which neighbours Pakistan. Third, a new citizenship law, also introduced in 2019 shortly after his re-election, giving Hindu but not Muslim immigrants a fast track to Indian citizenship. And fourth, the current farm reforms, which have anti-Sikh overtones because they particularly affect Punjab, “the breadbasket of India.” Also read: 1984, 1989, 2002: Three Narratives of Injustice, and the Lessons for Democracy Poring over accounts of these four cases, my verdict – surprise, surprise – is that Modi’s responsibility for bloodshed and excesses is ambiguous. It is what happened in his penumbra, rather than by his explicit or overt direction, which is so murky. During the 2002 Gujarat riots, more than a thousand were killed, mostly Muslims, with 200,000 people displaced and 230 historic Islamic sites vandalised or destroyed. No national official inquiry indicted Modi, even though his opponents were running the government in Delhi, and there was no repetition in the next 12 years of his chief ministership. But it was on his watch, and some of his associates were implicated and prosecuted. PM Narendra Modi with a peacock. Photo: Instagram/@narendramodi In Jammu and Kashmir, communal strife long predates Modi. The 2019 imposition of direct rule, a BJP manifesto pledge, followed decades of endemic instability and paramilitary outrages on both sides, akin to Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Nor has democracy been entirely suspended there. Multi-party elections in the region continue, including ones announced for a new Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly. Of the four charges, the anti-Muslim citizenship reform is the most partisan, and entirely of his own making. It is targeted mainly at Bangladeshi immigrants, but lies within the ambit of democratic decision-making. It is a less sweeping alteration to immigration than Trump’s anti-Mexican measures and far less than the UK government’s abolition of free movement of people to and from the European Union, even if the religious sectarianism is obviously a distinct aspect. Modi’s farm reforms are ambiguous for a different reason. There is no disputing their legitimacy in principle. Independent observers and modernising politicians, including Modi’s Congress Party predecessor Manmohan Singh, the Oxbridge-educated Sikh economist who made his name as a deregulating finance minister in the 1990s, have long urged and periodically attempted the liberalisation of India’s command-and-control economy, including its agriculture. Reforming an ossified regime of “minimum support prices” and state “agricultural produce marketing committees,” or introducing private agri-purchasing companies, is not wrong or inherently partisan. There are accusations that BJP-supporting middlemen will reap fortunes and screw over the farmers, and the handling of the farmers’ protests in Delhi has been terrible. However, as journalist Shekhar Gupta puts it, the first-order issue isn’t the legitimacy of the reforms—“at various points in time, most major political parties and leaders have wanted these changes”—but rather the executive incompetence that means they have been so mishandled, watered down and delayed that they will probably make little impact. “The Modi government has lost the battle for these farm laws,” he writes. “These laws are… dead in the water.” The chaos is par for the course for Modi’s “modernisation.” The disastrous 2016 demonetisation, a populist but unjustified attack on “black markets,” was followed by a new goods and services tax (GST), forcing small businesses to digitise their payment systems, despite chronically poor preparation and support. Four years later, medium-sized and small businesses, the backbone of the Indian economy, are still struggling. India’s unemployment rate was 3.4 per cent when the GST was introduced in July 2017. It is currently over 8%; even before Covid-19, growth had stalled. Also read: The Limits of Hindutva’s Homegrown Authoritarianism As for Thatcherite-style privatisation, it might be controversial if it had actually happened but, wary of opposition and loss of patronage, Modi’s biggest privatisations are announced and re-announced but don’t take place. The next ones are supposedly of Air India, hardly a good post-Covid prospect, and of as yet unnamed public-sector banks. It is the same story – namely the lack of any consistent story – with international trade. The seminal moment was in November 2019, when at the last minute Modi pulled out of a trade deal with the 15 Asian members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, leaving China supreme in the organisation. Ditto with industrial policy, which oscillates between liberalisation and protection. The latest incoherence is Rs 2 trillion ($27 billion) in “production-linked incentives” to assorted domestic and foreign firms for a period of five years. Asian economic commentary is no longer about the (always disputed) “Gujarat miracle” that Modi was going to transplant from one state to the whole country. Gone is the talk of a delayed continuation of Manmohan Singh’s modestly deregulatory 1991 budget with its grand paraphrase of Victor Hugo: “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come… the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea.” The discussion now is about post-Covid China again accelerating away from India economically, when the per capita income of this colossal neighbour is already several times higher. And about the consolidation of “crony capitalism” as business backers of Modi’s – like India’s wealthiest man Mukesh Ambani and fellow billionaire Gautam Adani – get richer while nothing changes for ordinary Indians. Even the campaign to “sanitise India,” ending open defecation in rural areas, has stalled. The god Rama is the ultimate Hindu embodiment of the supreme values of love, compassion and justice. Modi claims to stand for a new “Rama Rajya,” invoking Mahatma Gandhi. But the Mahatma, before he was assassinated by an RSS militant, wrote: “By Rama Rajya I do not mean a Hindu state. What I mean is the rule of God,” where the weakest would secure justice. He was unambiguous about that: not a hologram. Andrew Adonis’s latest book is Ernest Bevin: Labour’s Churchill. He was a UK Cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and founding chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission.
Previous Story

Narendra Modi Is Everything Apart From What He Seems

Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir police’s decision to pursue legal action against scribes and photographers who come close to gunbattle sites or near scenes of clashes between forces and protesters has created a flutter in the press fraternity in Kashmir, with media bodies terming the latest decree as a “tactic to coerce journalists into not reporting facts on the ground”. Media freedom has been frequently subject to restrictions in Kashmir and journalists often find themselves summoned to police stations, booked under FIRs and manhandled by the forces. On Tuesday, Vijay Kumar, Kashmir’s inspector general of police, warned journalists against covering operations at gun-fire sites in the real-time and printing content that “promotes anti-national sentiment”. “The media persons should do not carry any live coverage of any encounter or law and order situation,” a local wire service quoted him saying. “The freedom of speech and expression is subject to reasonable restrictions that should not violate other person’s right to life guaranteed under Article 21 or putting the national security in jeopardy.” On Wednesday evening, Kumar said he has issued written directions to all district Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs) to take legal action “based on facts” against media professionals who come close to gunbattle sites or near scenes of “law and order” situations. “I have already issued written directions to all districts SSPs yesterday. District SSPs will take legal action on facts,” Kumar told a wire agency on Wednesday, adding that directions applied to both national as well as for local media outlets. Kumar did not entertain calls from The Wire to confirm the reports. However, another SSP-level officer said that there was no order on this front and IG police “has just quoted Hon’ble Supreme court order and Cable TV Act”. He did not specify which apex court order was cited. Also read: Despite Reporting With ‘Utmost Honesty’, Threat of Arrest Looms Over Kashmiri Journalist The latest announcements have triggered a wave of apprehensions among Kashmiri photojournalists, who said they were unsure how security forces are going to react the next time they approach an encounter site. “Already, police stops us at the peripheral cordon when the encounter is going on,” said Waseem Nabi, a Kashmiri photojournalist. “Only after the gunbattles end do we swarm to the site of operation. In this light, it is really confusing what the directions want to convey.” The announcements also follow a cordon and search operation at Gulab Bagh area at the outskirts of Srinagar city on Wednesday. The 17-hour-long search operation during which forces claimed they fired warning shots to elicit a retaliatory fire from militants, ended without any exchange with reports claiming that militants may have escaped. When journalists reached the site the next day, they discovered a white-coloured building riddled with what appeared to be marks from heavy ammunition rounds. The interior of the building was also damaged significantly. Journalists in Kashmir have often found themselves at the receiving end of police action when anti-militant operations are underway. There are instances of journalists suffering violence at the hands of security forces during stone-pelting clashes and protests. Last week, a police constable was filmed kicking Qisar Mir, a Kashmiri photojournalist, near a gunfight site in Pulwama in South Kashmir. Similarly, Saqib Majeed and Shafat Farooq, two photojournalists covering clashes outside Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, claimed they were manhandled by policemen last month. Farooq, who said cops hit him with the rear end of a rifle, was later hospitalised. Kashmiri journalists are befuddled by the choice of words used by the police. “They say we are covering live encounters when actually we have never done that,” said Syed Shahriyar, a multimedia journalist who has been published by VICE news, BBC, Independent and Al Jazeera. “We only rush to gunfight site when forces withdraw. By placing restrictions on that, maybe the police is trying to convey that we mustn’t cover these events at all.” Coverage of gunfight sites has been an emotive issue for security agencies in Kashmir. The reports of destruction of residential or commercial structures where militants take shelter have become a source of simmering anger among the civilian population. During the last week’s encounter at Kakapora in Pulwama, video clips showing forces blowing up a house using improvised explosive devices went viral on the internet and elicited a resentful response from Kashmiri social media users. Also read: Srinagar: Journalists Allege Manhandling by Police Amidst Clashes at Jamia Masjid Last month too, six houses were razed to rubble during a gunfight at Rawalpora village in Shopian. Through media interviews with the locals, it came to light that villagers were allegedly told by the army to spray their houses with combustible liquid and set fire to them. The army later issued a statement refuting such charges. Last year, during a similar fire-exchange in Nawa Kadal area of Srinagar city, dozens of houses were destroyed. The editor of the news website that reported the extent of the destruction was later summoned by the police over his publication’s coverage. In Kashmir, media bodies have said they feel anguished at the police’s decision to place further restrictions on covering gunfight scenes. “If this is a part of the official policy of police then it appears to be a tactic to coerce journalists into not reporting facts on the ground,” a statement from 11 Kashmir-based media conglomerations said. “It also seems to be a part of the string of measures taken by the authorities to suppress freedom of press in the region.” The statement said that the media in Kashmir are aware of the journalistic guidelines and ethics they must demonstrate during gunfights and law and order situations, and that they have always upheld these principles. “Covering and reporting law and order situations in the region is one of the basic requirements for most news organisations and hence an essential part of the professional role of media professionals. Barring them from covering such events would mean stopping them from delivering their professional duties,” it said. “Press freedom is the cornerstone of a democracy and any attack on it undermines the democratic setup of which media is the fourth pillar. Any such attack on press freedom and journalism is highly distressful.”
Next Story

Kashmir Journalists Confused, Worried by Police Warning Against Covering Gunbattles

Latest from Breaking News

Go toTop