9

Feb

Gandhi’s Lesson for a Nervous State: Why a Free Press Cannot Be Silenced

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Mahatma Gandhi disliked the way many foreign correspondents wrote about India. He believed they often misunderstood the country, reduced its complexities to spectacle, and filtered Indian politics through imperial prejudice. Yet he never argued that they should be silenced, expelled, or intimidated. Instead, Gandhi engaged them relentlessly. He wrote to them, debated them, corrected them, and argued with them patiently. He understood a fundamental truth that modern states often forget: flawed scrutiny is far better than silence.

Gandhi was a master communicator. For him, communication was not a one-time exercise but a continuous moral engagement. Dialogue, even with critics and dissenters, was his greatest strength. Many of his fiercest opponents despised him, some of them young and radical, yet Gandhi knew how to engage even those who detested him. Over time, many were persuaded—not through coercion, but through patience, moral clarity, and conversation. That was Gandhi’s real success.

Foreign correspondents, like all journalists, operate within institutional briefs and audience expectations. Converting them to a new worldview is never easy, but it is possible if the host country responds with maturity. Deporting journalists or branding their work “hostile” may offer momentary satisfaction, but in diplomacy and politics, high-handedness rarely pays. Accommodation, tolerance, and dialogue—the Gandhian way—remain more effective. Hostility diminishes when confronted with openness, not repression.

Criticism of foreign writing on India has existed since Gandhi’s time. But criticism cannot become an argument for disappearance. A free press is not a patriotic press. Journalism is not meant to flatter the state or soothe national ego. It must remain independent, free from both government and corporate pressure. And if this freedom is to mean anything, the public must pay for it. Otherwise, someone else will—and whoever pays ultimately decides what survives.

The article draws on Mahatma Gandhi’s approach to the press to argue that criticism, even when flawed, is preferable to silence. Gandhi never sought to suppress foreign correspondents; instead, he engaged them through dialogue, patience, and moral persuasion, believing openness reduced hostility more effectively than repression. The piece warns that branding journalism as “anti-national” undermines democratic values, as a free press is not meant to flatter the state.
Monday Mooring
By Shivaji Sarkar
It situates current anxieties—such as layoffs at The Washington Post—within a global crisis of journalism driven by declining revenues, technology platforms, and political pressure. While India often reacts angrily to foreign media neglect or criticism, the author argues the issue is a priority, not prejudice. Despite repression and economic stress, journalism endures through local initiatives and committed reporters, reaffirming that truth ultimately survives.

This uncomfortable reality forms the backdrop to the recent layoffs at The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos. There are serious conversations to be had about sustainability, shrinking advertising revenue, the slow cannibalisation of journalism by technology platforms, and what news is expected to do in 2026. These debates are already happening inside newsrooms and among journalists who understand the profession from within.

On social media, however, everything collapses into moral theatre. If a newspaper stumbles, it must be because its “agenda” failed. If journalists lose their jobs, it is declared karma. But disagreement with coverage cannot justify erasing journalism itself. By that logic, every flawed story would warrant shutting the profession down entirely.

Behind some of this gloating lies a familiar Indian irritation. Abroad, India is often reduced to images of unrest or deprivation, while China is discussed in the language of industry, technology, and power. The imbalance is uncomfortable. Yet the corrective lies not in blaming foreign journalists but in addressing our own habit of mistaking aspiration for achievement.

The truth is less flattering: the world is not as interested in India as our television studios suggest. Often, Pakistan—whether under civilian or military rule—has proved more adept at managing international perception. Its public relations machinery has frequently been slicker and more effective. India’s handling of the Kargil conflict under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee remains a rare exception, marked by maturity and diplomatic finesse.

News Is Neighbourhood

Many Indian television personalities learnt this the awkward way during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2021 visit to the United States. Expecting banner headlines, they flipped through American newspapers and found almost nothing. The silence surprised them.

Most national media, anywhere in the world, are absorbed in their own neighbourhoods—domestic politics, local economies, and nearby conflicts. India simply does not occupy the mental bandwidth of Western editors. This neglect is not necessarily prejudice; it is often about priority.

For years, analysts have explained why India has not emerged as an economic force capable of challenging China. Even institutions sympathetic to India temper their optimism. The IMF and World Bank speak of “resilience” and “promise,” while warning about fragile consumption-led growth and widening inequality. As a result, India rarely features in global coverage as a power reshaping the world order. China, by contrast, anchors discussions on geopolitics, trade, and technology.

The outrage this provokes at home is wildly disproportionate. It is easier to accuse foreign media of bias than to accept a humbler reality: India is not the centre of the world, regardless of domestic propaganda.

Meanwhile, the business of news itself is under existential stress. Advertising revenue has drained away. Search traffic is shrinking. Artificial intelligence is devouring attention. The platforms that once funded journalism are hollowing it out. If the wealthiest newspaper owner in history shows little appetite for subsidising public-interest reporting, it tells us how expendable news has become to modern capital.

Earlier media barons treated newspapers as civic institutions. Today, they are assets on spreadsheets. If they do not perform, they are cut. Sentiment no longer matters.

Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. In Banda, a women’s collective—without elite education but with deep conscience—runs a local news portal exposing administrative negligence and abuse of power. Through years of hard work, it has earned public trust and commands respect from local authorities. Across India, many such initiatives keep journalism alive.

There are pitfalls, too. Platforms like Lallantop began as independent ventures, gained popularity, and were eventually absorbed by large media houses. Big players learn the tricks and grow bigger. Still, localised media persists.

Repression, however, remains relentless. Across states, journalists are jailed, assaulted, or killed. Long before the Emergency, the local police station—the daroga—was the real editor in India’s districts. That reality has not changed. Bhagalpur blinding was exposed not by national dailies but by a local tabloid.

Power everywhere responds to scrutiny with intimidation. Whether in Bengal or Uttar Pradesh, Kerala or Maharashtra, the instinct is the same. Development publicity is welcomed; investigative reporting is branded “anti-national” or “foreign-sponsored.” Even government departments now behave like overzealous police officers, forgetting that press freedom was protected by the Supreme Court in 1950.

This is not an Indian phenomenon alone. In Hong Kong, media tycoon Jimmy Lai was sentenced in February 2026 to 20 years in prison under the national security law, accused of colluding with “foreign forces.” His case reminds us that authoritarian impulses transcend borders.

A free press is fragile by design. Even strong democracies chip away at it. Yet it survives because some journalists refuse to bend. Power everywhere prefers obedience to scrutiny. News is truth, and truth ultimately survives. Like the phoenix, a free press rises from ashes—resilient, renewed, and transformed. (A senior journalist and media activist, Prof Shivaji Sarkar specialises in financial reporting.)

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