Why Emergency is worth recalling by all journalists ?? SICKULARISM may not agree though

Lal Krishna Advani had famously said, the media crawled when it was merely asked to bend. 

But the sad part of the story is bootlicking has thrived in Indian journalism. But a few references and anecdotes from Emergency era would make sense !

 

Here are a few case studies and references:

"The Statesman proved a tougher customer. It had a record of uprightness, independence and integrity...On Nov 11, 1975, total pre-censorship was reimposed  on the Statesman's Delhi edition. The paper was informed that the Government had not been pleased by the editorial published by it on the Supreme Court judgement in Mrs Gandhi's election case......

The second ground for complaint was a news story published in the Statesman on the internal affairs of the Congress party".  -- says the book 'Decline and Fall of Indira Gandhi' penned by D R Mankekar and Kamla Mankekar.  

The book says that the newspaper was asked to tender an apology. "The Statesman did not apologise, on the contrary, the paper reiterated its stand in writing. The Government finally lifted the pre-censorship orders on Nov 20". The government later played the dirty games through the office of the then Information and Broadcasting Minister V C Shukla and made the Company Law Board serve a notice.

The book also refers to harassment faced by Ramnath Goenka and his 'Indian Express' paper and the group as a whole.

"On July 30, 1976, the Government took over the National Jute Company's management, a Goenka concern in Calcutta. On August 16, a pre-censorship order was issued on The Indian Express and it applied to all its eight editions. And when pages went to the Censor for his okay,  they were not returned till 8 am the next morning so that the morning editions came out after 10 am".  The book also says that the circulation of  'Indian Express' plummeted from 90,000 to 30,000.  

"The persecution of the Express became a world scandal and foreign newspapers like the 'New York Times' and 'Time' magazine gave much publicity to it. Indian missions abroad wrote back to New Delhi of the stink the Express case had created abroad for the Government of India".

आज ही के दिन 1975 में एक परिवार ने अपने हाथ से सत्ता निकलने के डर से जनता के अधिकारों को छीन व लोकतंत्र की हत्या कर देश पर आपातकाल थोपा था।

On this day, one family did not want to give up powers and hence deprtived people of their fundamental and civil liberties by imposing Emergency -- Amit Shah