Though the technology and techniques are
international, sensitivity to the local is essential for success. In every
language region, local people own the highest circulating daily. Though the
Indian Express group runs newspapers in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu
and Kannada, it is the market leader in none of these. Each language, moreover,
produces distinctive newspaper styles. The largest circulating Marathi daily, Navakal,
sells its four pages largely on the strength of the editorials of its
idiosyncratic editor who champions the feelings of ordinary people: I am an
ordinary person ... Our hearts are the same ... I am honest - that is the only
extraordinary thing about me. And people believe that I am honest - that is
more important. People believe that everybody else is dishonest. The editors
are paid editors. They are writing to the tune of the direction of their
owners, which is part of my propaganda - that they are hired ... hired by whom?
By the big capitalists to serve their interests. They cannot write the truth;
only I can write the truth.
One of the largest circulating Hindi daily, Punjab
Kesari, which originated in the Punjab town of Jalandhar but since 1983 has
also published from New Delhi, wraps a garish two-page magazine around the
paper every day. The news starts on page 3, and Punjab Kesari's readers like it
that way. Gujarati and Tamil news- papers are characterized by screaming
layout, spectacular stories and big headlines. The major Malayalam and Bengali
newspapers are more sober in make-up and more attuned to the conventions of
international English- language journalism. What works in West Bengal and
Kerala probably will not in Gujarat or Tamil Nadu. Proprietors have to
empathize with their readers.
What role then has the Hindi news press played in
violent political unrest and in the so-called "Hindu revivalism" in
north India from the 1980s? It is, I believe, not so much what newspapers say
but the fact that newspapers of a particular kind - large-circulation, nationally
dependent, capitalist-run exist. "Print created individualism and
nationalism in the sixteenth century," McLuhan proclaimed. "Program
and 'content' analysis offer no clues to the magic of these media or to their
subliminal charge." Perhaps because print and capitalism are coming to
much of India forty years after the foundation of the independent Indian state,
one subliminal message - certainly the one that Indian capitalists would agree
on - is of "Indian nation-hood." Regional capitalists who invest in
newspapers do not see their interests being served by balkanization. In the
daily presentation of an India centered view of the world, one of the
"subliminal charges" emanating from their newspapers of a country called India.
In Punjab, a violent starting point of the Khalistan
movement for a separate Sikh state was the murder of the founder of Punjab
Kesari, Jagat Narain, in 1981. His son was murdered in 1984, more than sixty
hawkers and representatives of the paper were murdered in 1989-93 and its
offices in Jalandhar remained under heavy guard in the mid-1990s. From the
start, the newspaper pursued an aggressive anti-Khalistan - critics would say
"an offensive anti- Sikh" - line. And Punjab Kesari's circulation
rose to make it the largest-selling Hindi daily in India in 1986, a position it
has retained.
To be sure, Punjab Kesari is a Hindi newspaper in
Devanagari. Its Gurmukhi-script, Punjabi language sister paper, Jag Bani,
produced by the same team from the same plant, suffered heavily through this
period, its circulation falling from 92,000 at the beginning of 1989 to 43,000
two years later, before climbing back to 90,000 by 1995. Published in Gurmukhi
but defiantly anti-Khalistan, Jag Bani drew the special ire of the insurgents.
On the other hand, its rival, the leading Gurmukhi daily, Ajit, was a target of
the police and Punjab government, which saw it as too ready to accommodate the
demands of the insurgents. Ajit's audited circulation grew from 131,000 at the
beginning of 1989 to a peak of 184,000 at the end of 1992 before falling back
to 148,000 in 1995. Newspapers in conflict are interesting; newspapers under
censorship are boring.
Newspapers are institutions - obvious, immobile and
vulnerable to pressure, particularly from the state. Mrs. Gandhi in 1975 had
little difficulty- in imposing all-India censorship. It is not too difficult to
get newspapers to say what a ruthless, powerful opponent demands. The
difficulty lies in having the people who read the newspaper believe such
stories or, indeed, care about them. Once the news seems false or unreliable to
readers, the potency of what a newspaper says wanes and also the readiness of
readers to buy the paper. Circulations fell during the censored years of the
"emergency" in 1975-77.
In Kashmir and northeastern India, journalists are
murdered and news- papers intimidated both by insurgents and government. No
doubt publication of accounts of atrocities, political programs and calls for
demonstrations helps to maintain separatist movements and insurgencies. But the
extent to which such publication causes them is far less clear.
The movements to create a "Hindu
community" in north India since the mid-1980s provide similar experience
which repays examination. Hindi news
dailies have been frequently accused of promoting antagonism between Hindus and
Muslims and irresponsibly supporting militant Hindu organizations. In one of
the most bizarre examples, during the first wave of marches against the Babri
mosque in the town of Ayodhya, a zealous subeditor on the Varanasi edition of
Swatantra Bharat, a major Hindi daily, inserted a handwritten "1 " in
front of "15" in a front-page headline on 2 November 1990 to inflate
the number said to have been killed by police from 15 to 115. In another cottage-industry
example, a subeditor drew bars on the photograph of a local religious leader to
make it appear he had been imprisoned.
This says a lot about Hindi journalism and the motivations of the proprietors whom journalists
seek to please. But it does not undermine the argument that the growing
Indian-language press embeds ideas of Indian nationhood. Indeed, the most
outrageous reporting in Hindi appeared in newspapers com- mitted to
"Indian nationalist" editorial lines. Such newspapers do not advocate
changes in India's geographical borders, but they may hint at changes to the
social borders of the "Indian nation" - i.e., those who do not
conform to "Hindu" values ought to be excluded from citizenship.
Because of India's press laws, major newspapers can only go so far in this
direction before they run the risk of penalties. But they are less likely to be
penalized than a newspaper like the Gurmukhi Ajit when it was thought to be too
sympathetic to Khalistan and secession. It is less risky for a Hindi,
Hindu-owned newspaper to question the social composition of the nation than for
newspapers in other languages to flirt with secessionists.
