New Delhi: Recalling her time in India, a New York Times journalist recently highlighted how invitations for tea from Indian ministers often led to confrontational meetings in which foreign journalists were scolded, revealing the hostile environment fostered against free press by the Narendra Modi government.
In February this year, Emily Schmall, who had been posted as foreign correspondent in India for four years, spoke on the topic of the “Role of the Media and the Modi P.R. Machine in India”. The videos of the talks were uploaded last month.
Schmall, who had been posted in India first by the Associated Press and then The New York Times, noted that the climate in India against free press has become so “antagonistic” that “even those of us in the foreign press corps found ourselves the targets of harassment sometimes far worse”.
She referred to the recent case of a French journalist Vanessa Dougnac who left the country after living and working here for decades after the Indian government told her that her Overseas Citizen of India card was revoked due to her reporting.
Besides, she recounted the Income Tax Department’s raids on the BBC’s office in New Delhi in the aftermath of a release of a documentary on Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Recently, former BBC employees in India have spun off a new firm, “Collective Newsroom” that will supply content to the British public broadcaster.
05 Role of the Media and the Modi P.R. Machine in India from Camden Conference on Vimeo.
Schmall also mentioned that during her time in India, internal surveys conducted over three years among the members of the The Foreign Correspondents’ Club Of South Asia had found that “one of every two foreign correspondents is summoned by the Modi government to explain their reporting”.
She said that she considered being “summoned at least twice a year” a “badge of honour”.
Describing the modus operandi, Schmall narrated, “Usually the summons came disguised as a friendly invitation, but just as soon as the tea had been poured, one minister or another would start berating us one time”.
She also recounted a specific meeting with the Informational and Broadcasting minister. “I remember the Minister of information going to the trouble of printing the last 15 or 20 of my and other correspondents’ articles. He then read headlines aloud seemingly at random with some sarcasm in his tone. It almost wasn’t worth the tea”.
However, the invitations for “tea” only scratched the surface of the methods the government used to harass foreign correspondents. “Beyond the reprimands, the government punishes those whose stories it doesn’t like with short term visas that make renting an apartment or even buying a cell phone service all but impossible”.
She also noted that “nearly a third of the subcontinent is now off limits to foreign journalists without a special permit, a permit that almost never comes”. Since the change in Jammu and Kashmir’s constitutional status in 2019, no foreign correspondent has been permitted to report from the state, said Schmall, who is currently the Times’ Chicago correspondent.
Later during the question and answer session, Schmall observed that there was increasingly an “us versus them” mentality, where the ruling party believed there was no necessity to engage with the foreign press.
While the BJP are “cultivating” their image among the media organs within India, the party doesn’t feel an equivalent need to “speak to the outside world that way”. “And if they do, it will be through Mr Modi himself in Washington”.
In India, Muslim journalists were especially vulnerable to government crackdowns, she stated, citing political scientist Ashutosh Varshney’s line on India being in the process of “creating its own Jim Crow system with Muslims denigrated into second class citizens”.
She pointed to the arrest of Siddique Kappan, a Kerala journalist, who was charged with sedition and UAPA for trying to report on the gang rape case of a Dalit teenager in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. He was released in October 2023 after more than two years.
At the same time, she noted that there were cause for optimism with “young Indians, especially young women are clamouring to get into journalism”.
“The universe of journalism schools is growing constantly in India and Indians comprise the largest share of foreign students at many journalism schools in the US, including my alma mater Columbia University’s Graduate school of journalism, even with the long hours and terrible pay in most Indian newsrooms, even with the high barriers to entry in Western news organizations where old hierarchies are proving slow to dismantle, even with the real threat of false charges, arrest doxing, harassment, physical violence and financial ruin,” said Schmall.
