Above: Photo Courtesy The Hindu

~By Dilip Bobb

On the anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s emergency, a look back at the 18 months of censorship and its effect on the media

The large media turnout at the Delhi Press Club recently to protest the CBI raids on NDTV where eminent speakers waxed eloquently about the threats to freedom of the press, had a heavy sense of déjà vu. For those of us who were in the profession 43 years ago, when Indira Gandhi imposed a state of emergency (June 25th) and strict press censorship, the Delhi Press Club, centrally located on 1 Raisina Road and surrounded by government offices (including the then newly appointed Chief Censor right next door), became our refuge. Unable to write or report anything remotely negative about the government, the bar stools were lecterns to let off steam and the club itself a welcome escape from the stifling atmosphere visible everywhere else.

Between June 25, 1975 and March 21, 1977, the press was trapped in a dystopian limbo. It was like somebody had pressed the pause button on reality. I still remember it well, mainly because I had just joined the profession and my employers, themselves new to the media business, were preparing to launch a newsmagazine! Many of our future contributors were freelance journalists or newspaper reporters who would write under a pseudonym, and the favoured place to discuss the magazine and its contents in the context of the media clampdown, was at the members-only Press Club. Then, unlike now, not many journalists were supportive of the government and some prominent editors like Kuldeep Nayar had been thrown in jail as an example. The ones who backed the Emergency were well known, and wisely avoided the Club. For those of us in the profession, veterans or rookies, the full import of press censorship was a reality check. For the next 21 months, the dreaded blue pencil dictated our professional lives.

This is how it worked. National dailies like the Times of India, Indian Express and Hindustan Times, had a censor officer based in their offices where every word that was to appear in next day’s edition was scrutinized and the blue pencil used to underline words, sentences or passages that were remotely critical of officialdom. They were overly sensitive about any mention of Sanjay Gandhi and his hangers-on who were busy rendering males impotent in the name of family planning. He had no official status but unbridled power, including the choice of the crude and vengeful Vidya Charan Shukla, to replace the mild-mannered and cultured Information and Broadcasting Minister, I K Gujral.

For periodicals like ours, then a fortnightly, our editor was required to take all the page proofs for the next issue and report to the office of the Chief Censor, then a new but powerful portfolio. She would return a few hours later, and hand out pages with the hated blue pencil markings, for revision, rewrite or toning down. The censors were bureaucrats from the ministry of Information & Broadcasting, and, with very few exceptions, had gotten by on the so-called ‘Babu English’. The magazine I had joined, India Today, had hired people and also contracted freelancers who excelled in sophisticated writing and a mastery of the language. This was to be our USP and it also allowed us to write in a way that gave subtle hints about what was happening so readers could read between the lines.

I still clearly remember the day the entire staff (of five naïve youngsters) drove to Turkman Gate in old Delhi where we witnessed Sanjay Gandhi along with his partner in crime, Ruksana Sultana (mother of Amrita Singh who would become Saif Ali Khan’s first wife) and then Delhi Lt Governor Jagmohan, directing bulldozers which were demolishing huge inhabited buildings. Sanjay’s plan was to cleanse Delhi of its slums and force their residents to move out of the capital. We knew the Blue Pencil would delete any mention of the demolitions so we wrote a subtle 200 word piece in the last page, called Eyecatchers, which was mainly to do with glamour, celebrities and Bollywood. It mentioned the fact that in the heat and dust of Old Delhi, Ruksana Sultana had accompanied Sanjay on a beautification drive of the capital, and went on to describe how she looked (heavily made up and wearing oversized glares), and even mentioned the name of the French perfume which you could smell over the stink of sewers and unattended trash and rubble. It passed the censors and those listening clandestinely to the BBC (every educated Indian turned in the BBC to know what was happening in India, even though its legendary correspondent Mark Tully, had been expelled from India) knew about the demolition drive and its consequences.

Ruksana became a regular in the Eye-catcher’s page, being glamorous, fashionably attired and always by Sanjay’s side whether watching the demolition of the aesthetically ugly parts of Delhi or at the sterilization camps. We put a staff members ayah’s photo in a story titled Who’s Afraid of the Emergency? and mentioned that she was finally free of the burden of child bearing since her husband had ‘voluntarily’ opted for sterilization. Anyone reading between the lines could discern the intended sarcasm. The Eyecatcher page became a handy tool to outwit those wielding the Blue Pencil—we once put a picture of a budding actress from the National Film Institute on the page with the subtle hint that she had ‘impressed’ the I & B minister V C Shukla (she was widely rumoured to be his girlfriend).

It was a cat and mouse game between us and the censors, and it made us put an extra effort into our writing to try and score one over the blue pencil. It made all of us better writers as a consequence, for which we will be eternally grateful to Madam Gandhi and her errant son. It also made us regulars at the Press Club where stories of the excesses of the Emergency flowed as freely as the beer on a hot afternoon. Finally, 21 months later, the day dawned when the dreaded blue pencil no longer haunted our waking hours and the media dam broke. It was our Independence Day, marked with great joy and unbridled celebration—at the Press Club!