Is Prime Minister Modi Nervous About Losing The 2024 Elections
Journalists in Delhi protesting the raids and arrests of Newsclick staffers.
October 3, 2023
This week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government escalated its attacks on the few independent media outlets in India who are critical of his policies and actions. In a brute display of force, hundreds of police raided homes of 46 journalists, freelancers, cartoonists, and consultants working for Newsclick in Delhi and Mumbai, seizing their laptops, phones, and documents.
The police also raided the offices of Newsclick. They arrested Prabir Purkayastha, its founder and editor, and Amit Chakravarty, human resources chief, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), an anti-terror law, for allegedly raising funds for terrorist acts and promoting enmity between different groups and criminal conspiracy.
The arrest and “the raids on NewsClick and the homes…are an act of sheer harassment and intimidation,” Beh Lih Yi, Asia program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said in a statement. “This is the latest attack on press freedom in India.”
The CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization, based in New York, that promotes press freedom worldwide.
Newsclick, with subscription based English and Hindi editions which focuses on “progressive movements,” has been critical of Modi and his Hindu nationalist supporters. It has consistently raised human rights issues like the crackdown on students and farmers protests and violence against Muslims, Christians, and other minorities.
In August, Indian officials launched a case against Newsclick alleging that it received funds from an American millionaire who had funded the spread of “Chinese propaganda.”
Apparently, rather than present evidence for charges of Chinese propaganda, the officials are using anti-terror laws for the raids and arrests. Those arrested under such laws can be imprisoned for years without being charged and with no access to the courts.
“I don’t need to justify it. If anybody has committed a wrong, then investigation agencies will work on that,” Anurag Thakur, India’s Minister of Information and Broadcasting, said while speaking to the media about the Newsclick arrests and raids.
The anti-terror laws are repeatedly used “by Indian authorities to intimidate, harass journalists, human rights defenders and activists violating their rights of freedom of expression and association,” according to Amnesty International.
India ranks 161st among 180 countries in press freedom rankings by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a Paris based advocacy group for journalists.
Since 2014, after Narendra Modi first became Prime Minister, the Report notes, Modi took a critical stance vis-à-vis journalists, seeing them as “intermediaries” polluting the direct relationship between himself and his supporters.
Modi “engineered a spectacular rapprochement between his party, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), and the big families dominating the media,” the RWB Report adds. “The prime example is undoubtedly the Reliance Industries group led by Mukesh Ambani, now a personal friend of Modi’s, who owns more than 70 media outlets that are followed by at least 800 million Indians. Similarly, the takeover of the NDTV channel at the end of 2022 by tycoon Gautam Adani, who is also very close to Narendra Modi, signalled the end of pluralism in the mainstream media.”
Media outlets in India, the RWB Report continues, “largely depend on advertising contracts with local and regional governments…media executives often see…(editorial policy) as just a variable to be adjusted according to business needs. At the national level, the central government has seen that it can exploit this to impose its own narrative, and is now spending more than 1.8 billion rupees ($22 million) a year on ads in the print and online media alone.“
The RWB Report states that the prosecution of journalists, the politically partisan media and the concentration of media ownership all demonstrate that press freedom is in crisis in “the world’s largest democracy”, ruled by Modi, leader of the BJP and the embodiment of the Hindu nationalist right. Indian journalists who are too critical of the government are “subjected to all-out harassment and attack campaigns by Modi devotees known as bhakts.”
In addition to enjoying favorable coverage by the major TV and print media outlets in India, the BJP uses WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook and other social media to reportedly spread its divisive propaganda to hundreds of millions of Indians without any checks by Meta, Alphabet and other U.S. based owners of the platforms.
Given such wide control by the BJP and the Modi government over what most Indians watch and hear on any media, why is the Modi government keen to crush criticism from minor independent media outlets like Newsclick? Is it due to arrogant intolerance of any criticism? Perhaps for political reasons?
In May, a united opposition won the elections in Karnataka, replacing the BJP government in the state. Similarly, in recent elections for vacant seats in constituencies in several key states, a united opposition has defeated BJP candidates. This is especially the case in Uttar Pradesh, the state with the biggest population and hence the most crucial state in determining national parliamentary elections.
These election results show that a majority of Indians, dealing with massive unemployment, unaffordable healthcare and rising food prices, are not being swayed by the pro-BJP and pro-Modi coverage they watch and hear on the major media and social media platforms.
National parliamentary elections are due in 2024. If the opposition parties unite and back a single candidate for each seat, they have a good chance of defeating Modi.
So, the arrests and raids of journalists, including at Newsclick, are likely aimed at pressuring the few remaining independent media outlets to stop criticizing the Modi government, in order to prevent any further boost in popular support for the opposition parties.
Following the arrests and raids on NewsClick, hundreds of journalists protested in New Delhi against the crackdown on independent media under Modi. Protesters carried signs with slogans such as, “Stop attacks on media. Stop threatening media.”
“Journalism is not a crime,” Aakar Patel, chair of board at Amnesty International India said in a statement. The raids and arrests “are the latest attempts by the Indian government to decimate independent and critical media.”
Ram Rahman who protested against the arrest and raids on Newsclick journalists.