NDTV Raid: The Authoritarian Regime And Its Shenanigans

The CBI raid on the offices of NDTV and on the residences of its promoters Prannoy and Radhika Roy are further manifestations of the authoritarian zeal with which the Modi regime is bent on erasing the public sphere in India.

With the single-minded goal of obliterating spaces of independent thought and sending out a chilling message to media organizations, the authoritarian regime is engaged in a game of well-concerted attacks on public spaces, seeking to silence any and all forms of media questioning.

The CBI raid was made on the basis of a petition made by a former disgruntled NDTV consultant, set in the backdrop of the ongoing NDTV critiques of the Modi government, NDTV journalists not towing the BJP line, asking uncomfortable questions of the regime, and putting the antics of the regime under journalistic scrutiny.

Moreover, the timing of the raid comes on the heels of the most recent incident where a belligerent BJP spokesperson, Mr. Sambit Patra, was asked by senior journalist Nidhi Razdan to leave an NDTV debate after he accused the channel of “having an agenda.”

This most recent CBI raid on NDTV follows the one-day ban imposed on NDTV in November, 2016 when the channel was accused of revealing sensitive details, such as the location of the ammunition depot, school and residential areas, and location of the attackers in its coverage of the Pathankot attack NDTV was singled out for harassment although there were many other channels who had exactly done the same thing.

That NDTV is targeted for state-sponsored harassment replicates the systematic ways in which the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) were targeted earlier by the state with the targeted strategy of eliminating sites of dissent. Each of these institutions of independent thought and critique are perceived as threats to the unchecked power and control of the regime, raising inconvenient questions that the regime feels need to be silenced.

The regime’s relentless attacks on these spaces of critical thought are directed at establishing a climate of uninterrupted control, nakedly sending out the message that to question the regime is to invite state-sponsored harassment.

Underlying these systematic attacks on sites of public articulation and deliberation is an overarching authoritarian logic that seeks to perpetuate control through the erasure of speech that is different from and challenging to the agendas of those in power. Reminder of McCarthyite-era excesses, the everyday instruments of the state are turned into tools for systematic witch-hunt. What is evident in these witch-hunts is their grotesquely targeted and selective nature.

A media house is targeted while corrupt business houses supportive of the Modi regime are left untouched, and in other instances, enabled.

The authoritarian impulse of the state is played out through the control exerted over organizations such as the CBI, turning these organizations into the instruments of the state. The independence of key institutions is sacrificed in the hands of a state all too insistent on extending its gargantuan power and control.

In authoritarianism, the very integrity of public institutions is the first to go as these institutions are turned into petty tools for reproducing state power.

In the India of 2017, the spaces of public conversation and debate are being systematically erased through concerted government efforts of shutting down dissent, accompanied by paid and unpaid trolling armies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that throw around the anti-nationalist label on anyone that dares to question the state’s propaganda. Add to this mix the hate-rousing non-journalism of television channels such as Republic TV and Times Now that are all too happy doing the dirty work of the state, stoking the passions of the mob around the propaganda figure of the nation.

This latest attack on NDTV stands out in its brazen abuse of power.

What is particularly salient about this raid is the lack of any sense of public accountability in carrying out the attack. To control the media to tell its glorified story of a “Shining India” is the singular purpose of the ongoing antics of this regime. And the CBI raids show that it will stoop to any length to consolidate its power.

In such a climate of increasing authoritarian control, the role of the media becomes even more crucial in standing up to the state’s abuse of power. Journalists must keep asking the uncomfortable questions and interrogate the excesses of the state.

The statement issued by the Editor’s Guild of India has stepped up to this vital role in India’s threatened democracy, calling for the CBI to follow the due process of the law to ensure that the freedom of the media is not interfered with.

The freedom of its media lies at the heart of Indian democracy, and every attempt to silence the media ought to be met with the strongest of public response.