Category: Culture

Uttar Pradesh: Brutal Attacks Against Journalists Spotlight Threat to Press Freedom in India

These incidents have fuelled a strong response from media organisations and journalists who are demanding urgent action to ensure their safety.

Uttar Pradesh has witnessed two brutal attacks against journalists, sparking outrage and raising concerns over press freedom and safety in India’s most populous state. On the intervening night of October 30-31, a journalist was murdered in Fatehpur district, and on October 27, two journalists from Hamirpur district were allegedly stripped, beaten and humiliated by a panchayat chairman and his henchmen. These incidents have fuelled a strong response from media organisations and journalists, who are demanding urgent action to ensure their safety.

Two local journalists from Hamirpur, Amit Dwivedi and Shailendra Kumar Mishra, filed a complaint alleging they were violently assaulted by Sarila Nagar Panchayat chairman Pawan Anuragi and his henchmen. According to their complaint, Anuragi’s men not only beat them but also disrobed them at gunpoint, recorded humiliating videos and even forced them to drink urine.

Dwivedi and Mishra reported the incident to Jariya police station, claiming they were held captive and subjected to severe humiliation. The journalists allege that they were summoned to the Jariya bus stand around 6:20 pm on October 27 by a man named Gangaprasad alias Babu, who had requested a meeting on behalf of Anuragi. Upon their arrival, they were reportedly led to a room in the house of one Akash, where they were confronted by Anuragi and several henchmen, including Akhilesh Rajput, Vikram Yadav, RK. Soni, Akash Anuragi, and Narendra Vishwakarma.

Inside the room, the situation escalated as the chairman’s men allegedly switched off the lights and began to physically assault them. The journalists further claimed they were stripped, threatened with death and coerced into handling weapons for staged photos and videos. During the assault, their phones were confiscated, and they were warned that if they reported the incident, both they and their families would face severe consequences.

Following the journalists’ complaint, a case was registered against Anuragi and his henchmen under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), including charges of rioting, voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful confinement and criminal intimidation.

However, in a controversial turn of events, the police also filed a counter-complaint against both journalists, alleging house trespass, intentional insult and criminal intimidation under BNS, as well as charges under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The move has led to concerns about a possible attempt to intimidate the journalists or weaken the case against the chairman.

Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Manoj Kumar Gupta stated that the police are actively investigating the complaint lodged by the journalists and are in contact with journalist unions. Gupta added that the police have conducted raids to apprehend the suspects but have yet to make any arrests. The police have reassured the journalists and media associations of an impartial investigation and prompt action.

Despite assurances from the police, Dwivedi and Mishra claim that law enforcement is acting under pressure from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They also say that chairman Anuragi is from the ruling saffron party. According to the journalists, while there is video evidence of the incident, the police have registered a weak case against the chairman, allegedly under pressure from influential political leaders. “Police have registered a frivolous case against us in stringent sections, aiming to pressure us into withdrawing our complaint,” they alleged.

This incident in Hamirpur is not an isolated one. Just days earlier, on October 30-31, a journalist named Dilip Saini was murdered in Fatehpur district. Saini, who worked for a news agency, was killed in what police initially described as a property dispute with financial undertones. An FIR was filed, and five suspects have been arrested in connection with the case. However, four suspects remain at large. According to ASP Vijay Shanker Mishra, efforts are ongoing to apprehend the remaining suspects.

The recent attacks have been viewed as part of a worrying trend, with Uttar Pradesh seeing increasing violence against journalists. The Uttar Pradesh Accredited Correspondent Committee (UPACC) condemned these incidents, with association president Hemant Tiwari calling for immediate action against the accused. “These attacks create an atmosphere of hostility toward journalists and undermine the government’s claims of zero tolerance toward crime,” Tiwari said. He added that he had raised the matter with senior state officials, emphasising the need for swift and decisive action.

Veteran journalists and press associations argue that the state’s response to these incidents is crucial for maintaining press freedom. Former editor of a Hindi daily, Kumar Bhawesh Chandra noted that many journalists, particularly those in smaller towns and rural areas, face threats from influential political and criminal figures. “The government must prioritise the safety and security of journalists, as these attacks are a direct challenge to freedom of expression,” Chandra stated. He further urged chief minister Yogi Adityanath to take personal responsibility for ensuring a secure environment for journalists in the state.

Hemant Tiwari of the UPACC remarked that “any laxity in handling these cases could imply government complicity in the crimes against journalists.” He said that the attacks have left many journalists feeling vulnerable and worried about their safety. “If the government fails to act decisively, it will erode public trust in the state’s commitment to law and order,” Tiwari said.

These incidents come amid increasing concerns over press freedom in India. According to the 2024 Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, India ranks 159th out of 180 countries. The country’s low ranking reflects growing pressures on journalists, particularly those covering critical or sensitive topics.

Journalists’ associations and press freedom advocates argue that targeted attacks, intimidation and the misuse of legal provisions against journalists have worsened the climate for media in India. The recent incidents in Uttar Pradesh underscore this growing threat and have led many journalists to call for stronger protection.

Chandra further said that the state government needs to take visible action, not only to punish the perpetrators but also to send a strong message that attacks on journalists will not be tolerated.

Recalling the Incomparable Ashok Kumar: Actor, Artist and Friend

A personal tribute to a man who the thespian who had a long, six decade career.

Basking in the glory of the rising sun, its light filtering into my Himalayan retreat through the majestic pine trees standing tall on the middle ranges, I rummage through treasured memories that have defined my life in many ways.

One such memory is of an exceptional man, not only the first superstar of Indian cinema but also a shining example of human values, whose quiet dignity and modesty account for his iconic status even today – twenty three years after his passing and in the 113th birth anniversary on the October 13.

Named Kumudlal by his parents, Ashok Kumar, recipient amongst others, of the Padma Bhushan and the Dadasaheb Phalke awards for his outstanding contribution to Indian cinema, redefined the role of his art by promoting transformational social changes of the era. In a career spanning over sixty years during which he acted in over three hundred and fifty films, his mass appeal as an actor remained undimmed.

His moving performance against untouchability in Achyut Kanya (1936) drove home the film’s powerful message and provided a heightened impetus to the national movement for social reforms, as did his portrayal of a magnanimous husband wronged by his wife’s infidelity, in Gumraah (1963). His role in the film as a suave french speaking and dignified husband was much applauded for a sensitive handling of a taboo subject that needed to be addressed in deference to the changing societal mores.

Ashok Kumar’s powerful act in Satyakam [1968] as a protagonist of honesty, integrity and truth in the personal and public sphere left an indelible imprint on my evolving moral consciousness as a teenager. The film’s message that honesty has its rewards despite its tribulations remains a compelling shadow of memory in my soul. Aashirwad [1968], a film in which Dadamoni or elder brother, as he was respectfully called, played the role of a doting father espousing family values, won the National Film Award for the best feature film in Hindi and left a deep impression.

His versatility as an actor was in full play in Kanoon [1960], a film that depicted the dichotomy between law and justice on the complex philosophical question of capital punishment and its proportionality. The impact of a compelling courtroom drama staged by star performers Rajendra Kumar and Ashok Kumar was decisive in the choice of law as my future profession that determined the course of my life.

Dadamoni had already acquired a special place in my heart by the time I met him in or around 1983 in a totally unexpected meeting in Mumbai at the residence of the veteran actor Sunil Dutt. Dutt was hosting a dinner for members of the Punjabi society. The late Vasant Dada Patil was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra at this time and I would often visit him at Sahayadri, his official bungalow.

On one occasion when I was with him, a delegation led by O.P. Bahl, then a Congress party MLA visited him with a request to be the chief guest at a dinner being hosted by Sunil Dutt. Since I was present at this meeting by sheer chance and because I was acquainted with Bahl, the invitation was also extended to me. Little did I know then, that this would be a special moment in my life.

I reached Dutt sahib’s residence at the appointed time. An atmosphere of a Punjab village had been curated with sumptuous Punjabi cuisine to accompany. And then came the moment of a lifetime. I saw Dadamoni conversing with a small group in a relatively quiet corner of the garden. With my heart throbbing, I walked closer to the group but was hesitant to introduce myself to the only star I had ever wanted to meet.

Finally, mustering strength, I told him that I was his fan and asked if I could have two minutes with him alone. He obliged graciously. His exclusive attention assured, I mentioned to him that it was on account of his performance in Kanoon that I had chosen law as my vocation in life. He was visibly happy but also surprised and told me that no other fan had chosen the course of his life on account of his acting. In a personal gesture, he later sent me a signed video recording of Kanoon. Thus began a relationship that was to last till his final days. Cherished memories and a special bond have kept him alive in my heart since.

Time passed and my visits to Mumbai [then Bombay] became more frequent on account of my increasing professional engagements in the city. On several of these occasions I would visit Dadamoni at his residence when he preferred to meet me in the comfort and easy informality of his bedroom on the first floor, surrounded by his painting instruments and small bottles of homeopathic medicines.

In a private life of the quiet that he had chosen, the comforting and permanent presence of his gracious wife Shobhaji around him tempered his solitude. Their lifelong companionship was the patriarch’s source of strength in the family, where his will was the law. On one of my visits to Mumbai, Dadamoni organised a dinner for introducing me to his family members. Without much ado, a national celebrity had opened his heart and home to an unsung struggling lawyer in an overwhelming act of reciprocal friendship.

In 1989, Government feted him at New Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditorium for the prestigious DadaSaheb Phalke Award. On this occasion he invited me to the function which I attended and was seated between him and the then little known Aamir Khan, who had also received his first award. While Ashok Kumar was the centre of attention, Aamir was sitting quietly in his seat unnoticed. Sensing Aamir’s discomfort, Dadamoni asked me to converse with him so that he did not feel ignored.

I remember him telling me then, ‘Yeh Ladka kaabil hai. Bahut aage jayega’. Such was his caring nature and understanding about people. During Dadamoni’s visit to Delhi, I hosted a reception in his honour which was attended by several distinguished persons including Sardar Gurdial Singh Dhillon, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Justice P.N Bhagwati, former Chief Justice of India, in a demonstration of the esteem in which he was held in the country. Dadamoni also visited us at my residence knowing how much that would mean to me. This is a much treasured moment, captured in a photo frame that adorns my study.

In the 113th birth anniversary, we remember with awe and admiration a unique individual, a man of many parts – an actor par excellence, poet, painter, homeopath, linguist, lawyer, chess player, a limerick composer and a staunch nationalist who wore his stardom with ease. Reserved by choice and prizing solitude to spur his creativity, he shunned the glitz and glamour of Bollywood, remaining true to his ingrained moral imperatives.

His trademark Lungi-Kurta dress at home was a window to his bhadralok simplicity as was his unassuming demeanour in public. His acting reflected his personality in a seamless merger of the person and the artist, confirming thereby that the chief value of art lies in the expression it gives to the artist. The various characters they play are their ultimate test, one that Ashok Kumar passed with distinction in each of his films: Bahu Begum, Meherban, also Jewel Thief and Kismet in which he plays the anti-hero are an enduring testimony to the excellence of his art.

In the later years of his life, particularly after the passing of his beloved wife, he endured the trials of a lonely heart, whose stirrings and silences were transposed to the painting canvases in his room. With ‘cares at an end and the voyage done,’ our eternal hero has left behind memories that have immortalised him. His admirers can say that his life was a blessing, his memory a treasure and that he was loved beyond measure.

Ashwani Kumar is a former Union Minister for Law and Justice.

India, Globally: Effects of a ‘Diplomatic Disaster,’ Umar Khalid, G.N. Saibaba and Hate

A fortnightly highlight of how the world is watching our democracy.

The Narendra Modi government frequently posits India as a ‘Vishwaguru’ or world leader. How the world sees India is often lost in this branding exercise.

Outside India, global voices are monitoring and critiquing human rights violations in India and the rise of Hindutva. We present here fortnightly highlights of what a range of actors – from UN experts and civil society groups to international media and parliamentarians of many countries – are saying about the state of India’s democracy.

 Read the fortnightly roundup for October 16-31, 2024.

Canada-India

On October 14, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada’s national police, held a press conference to publicly disclose allegations that officials of the government of India are implicated in criminal acts (including murder) targeting Sikh dissidents in Canada. Most recently, Canada has alleged India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah, is involved. We present below a dedicated section on media reports and reactions (from this fortnight) to Canada’s allegations, touching not only on Canada-India relations, but on India’s standing in the world. 

Toronto Star, Canada, October 16

In his opinion piece, Robin Sears writes that India will “pay a heavy price” for the “diplomatic disaster” brewing, as criminal allegations against the Indian government are being investigated by Canadian police. Sears writes that “India has for many years ordered killing, or at least indulged its intelligence agency in spying on, harassing, and threatening” Indian-origin citizens in many countries.

He reveals that more than 20 countries with significant South Asian populations have intel about India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and its “criminal behaviours in their country”, from alleged poisoning, murdering Sikh activists, to arming a military regime. In light of the Canadian police’s revelations of evidence against Indian agents, Sears says countries may now want to move from private nudges to “make it clear publicly that India’s behaviour is intolerable”.

He warns that past thinking among countries that India’s flawed international diplomacy could be accommodated in light of “strategic and economic interests” has to shift to now “wonder when their day will come; when their national police will feel compelled to call a press conference to denounce the Indian government as a criminal in their country”.  

Toronto Star, Canada, October 17

The Toronto Star’s Editorial Board writes that while Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau can be accused of “naiveté in international affairs”, he had “no option” but to “aggressively expel” Indian diplomats in light of India’s “brazen and dangerous disregard for the rule of law in a sovereign nation”. The Board recognises there may have been “more diplomatic ways” of dealing with this, “but India would not allow it”.

Indian officials have repeatedly rebuffed Canadian and American attempts to get India to cooperate with the investigation, and have “rejected” detailed evidence recently presented to them by Canadian police. The scale of allegations is “stunning”, eight people are charged with murder and “22 are charged with intimidation, coercion, harassment and uttering threats”. While the ‘Five Eyes’ partners (the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK) are backing Canada’s calls for India to cooperate, the Board also points out that they are “all walking a fine line supporting Ottawa while trying not to alienate Modi”. 

Read a summary of the Five Eyes responses here.

CBC News, Canada, October 16

Benjamin Lopez Steven presents “ key takeaways” from Justin Trudeau’s testimony delivered on October 16 at a public inquiry on foreign interference. With regard to India, Trudeau shared two important revelations. He said that the initial investigative assessment on the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar was that it was a gang or criminal-related, and it was South Asian leaders and parliamentarians who “suggested the government of India was involved”. It was only after this input that Trudeau requested agencies to investigate this angle. He also shared that his government decided they would not go public with the allegations against the Indian government on Nijjar’s killing, before the G20 summit in September 2023, as India was hosting the summit. When Trudeau shared the allegations and his concerns in a private conversation with Narendra Modi at the summit, he said Modi responded by saying there are people who are “outspoken against the Indian government in Canada that he would like to see arrested”.  

Read an editorial in the Canadian paper, The Globe and Mail, with criticisms of Justin Trudeau’s stance towards India at his October 16th testimony. 

Toronto Star, Canada, October 19

Allan Woods reports that the investigation into criminal activity by Indian officials in Canada is revealing “suspicious incidents from Brampton to British Columbia, and as far away as California, Italy and Australia”. Across countries, Sikhs who criticise the Indian government or advocate for an independent Sikh homeland have reported “verbal or physical threats that they believe are linked to their activism”. This continues the long-known “obsessive focus on Sikh separatists” of Indian security services.

Woods writes that even after Canada went public with accusations of the Indian government being involved in Nijjar’s killing in September 2023, threats to Sikh activists have not declined. He documents life-threatening incidents against activists in California (USA) and Australia as well as numerous cases in which activists have been told they will be denied visas to India or “threatened with arrest”. Priya Chocka, an associate professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, says “this has all come out in the open because India has just refused to cooperate with Canada”.  

Washington Post, USA, October 29 

A report states that Canada’s deputy foreign affairs minister David Morrison alleged that India’s home minister Amit Shah “ordered a campaign of violence, intimidation and intelligence-gathering” targeting Sikh activists in Canada, in his testimony before Canada’s parliamentary committee on national security held on October 29. Morrison also confirmed that he had passed Shah’s name to the Washington Post, which first reported the allegations. He did not divulge how Canada knew of Shah’s suspected involvement. In her testimony to the Committee, Nathalie Drouin, Trudeau’s national security adviser, said that Canada has evidence the Indian government “first gathered information on Indian nationals and Canadian citizens in Canada through diplomatic channels and proxies”. Drouin also said that the Canadian government decided to go public with the allegations against India “when it became evident the Indian government would not cooperate with Canada on proposed accountability measures”. 

Read more here and here about the RCMP’s evidence on the involvement of the “highest levels” of the Indian government

And in other media updates…

Al Jazeera, Qatar, October 15

Mukta Joshi traces the journey of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) which despite “its claims of non-partisanship” has emerged as an “effective advocate” of Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Joshi says when it was first established 20 years ago, HAF “was not formed to champion the Indian government” but it has done so since Modi became Prime Minister in 2014. HAF has met legislators to “influence” the American government to push for laws it wants on US foreign policy on India. It has also “acted in the US to counter the Modi government’s critics”.

Joshi points to several instances where HAF has   refuted reports that minorities in India are being persecuted. While HAF publicly denies its relations with the Indian government and the BJP, Joshi writes that it is “treading a fine line” as its partisan activities raise questions whether it should register as a “foreign agent” under US law. Joshi also documents that HAF Board members are political donors and several are affiliated to Hindu nationalist organisations in the US.   

Rest of World, USA, October 15

Parth MN reports on how Hindu nationalists are using WhatsApp to mobilise targeted attacks on Christians and Christian places of worship in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. He further exposes that organisations like the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) are carrying out forced conversions of Christians to Hinduism. Since 2022, “according to local VHP officials, hundreds of Christian families in Bastar have been converted”. The VHP imposes conversions through “funeral attacks” in which it organises mobs (through WhatsApp) to reach Christian families just as they are about to bury a deceased family member and forcibly prevent burials until they convert. Parth writes that the VHP wants Bastar’s residents, mostly from indigenous tribes with no organised religion, “to identify as Hindus”. The VHP also claims that conversions to Christianity are the “real problem”. While forced conversions are illegal in Chhattisgarh, Degree Prasad Chouhan, president of the state chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), says “the laws are not applied equally for Hindus and Christians”.  

The New Statesman, UK, October 19

Naomi Klein presented Arundhati Roy with the PEN Pinter Prize on October 10 and in this edited version of her speech at the ceremony, she underscores “why we need Arundhati Roy”. She reminds the audience that just as PEN announced the 2024 award to Roy, it was reported that “she could face charges under India’s draconian anti-terrorism laws” and media frenzy of the kind “that has brought angry mobs to her door before”. She describes Roy’s nonfiction work as similar to a “war correspondent” on the “places and people experiencing maximum pain, maximum injustice, maximum state violence” like “Kashmir, the Maoist insurgency, the aftermath of the Gujarat Massacre”.

Klein stresses that Roy, and an Egyptian writer being honoured while he is in jail, are “in danger” and we must face “the reality that we have entered a brazen new stage of state violence”. Klein concludes by saying while there is fear, “there are many new alliances to make, new solidarities to forge, new strategies to devise”. 

New York Times, USA, October 22 

Suhasini Raj profiles Umar Khalid, a young Indian Muslim political activist, whom Raj describes as a “a symbol of the wide-ranging suppression of dissent under Prime Minister Narendra Modi”. While Khalid has been speaking out against anti-Muslim hate for a long time, “he became more vocal after Mr. Modi’s rise to national power, which injected deeper violence into the existing anti-Muslim prejudice”. Khalid has been in jail for four years without a trial on terrorism charges. He has been accused of making anti-government speeches and participating in WhatsApp groups that were organizing protests against a citizenship law with grave implications for Indian Muslims. Khalid’s time in pretrial detention shows how the “process is the punishment”, said his father Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas. His bail applications have been rejected thrice in lower courts, the Supreme Court has postponed his bail hearings “at least a dozen times”, and often when Khalid is taken to court, judges will recuse themselves. Mr Ilyas says, “In India today, one has to pay a price for speaking the truth, and it is very easy to frame someone with a Muslim name these days.”

Climate Home News, UK, October 28

An investigation by Climate Home, an climate justice journalism initiative based in the UK, shows that the Indian government “weakened rules to curb pollution” after “lobbying” by “state-run” Indian coal “giants”. Coal India Limited and the National Thermal Power Corporation “pushed back hard” against regulation of disposal of “fly-ash”, a “by-product” of coal fired power plants which can “blow away” or “leach into groundwater”, causing air pollution and damaging crops.  Stringent fly-ash disposal is necessary after  “decades of public health impacts for local communities”.

In 2021, the Indian government introduced requirements for companies to use and clean up all accumulated ash, and heavy fines for non-compliance of its proper disposal. The companies lobbied to get the fines reduced and “loopholes” introduced to lessen the other requirements. For instance, in their correspondence, the companies argued high fines risked coal plants being shut down and could lead to a “power crisis”. Shripad Dharmadhikary, a member of a fly-ash watch group, says that “loopholes” and “lack of technical parameters” means that it is not possible to “guarantee that no more leaks would occur” even when the government certifies that pollution has been addressed. These companies are expanding at “record speed” despite India having “agreed internationally to phase down the use of coal”.

Parliamentarians and public officials advocate

In a press briefing on October 15, Mathew Miller, a spokesperson for the US State Department was asked about India’s response to Canada’s public allegations against the Indian government. Miller replied that the US perceived the allegations against India as “extremely serious” and they wanted to “see India take them seriously and cooperate with Canada’s investigation”, but India “has not chosen that path”. Miller also said India “continues to be an incredibly strong partner of the United States”. He shared that the US government has been having “conversations” with the Indian government “at the senior-most levels” over the last few months.  

On October 17, the US Justice Department announced that “murder-for-hire and money laundering charges” have been filed against an Indian government employee, Vikash Yadav, “in connection with his role in directing a foiled plot to assassinate a U.S. citizen in New York City”, with co-conspirator Nikhil Gupta. Yadav was still at large. “Today’s charges are a grave example of the increase in lethal plotting and other forms of violent transnational repression targeting diaspora communities in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, and “let there be no doubt that the Department of Justice is committed to disrupting and exposing these plots and to holding the wrongful actors accountable no matter who they are or where they reside”. Notably, Gupta told American undercover officers, about a day after the Nijjar murder in Canada, that Nijjar “was also the target” and “we have so many targets.”  

Dr. Philipp Ackerman, the current German Ambassador to India, sent a condolence letter to Manjeera, Dr. G.N. Saibaba’s daughter, dated October 17 expressing his shock and sadness at Saibaba’s “early death”. He shared that meeting Saibaba left a “deep impression” on him and wrote that “your father’s story, his long imprisonment and his unwavering commitment to civic rights in India commanded a tremendous amount of respect from me”. 

Thierry Mathou, the current French Ambassador to India, sent a condolence letter to Dr. Saibaba’s wife, Vasantha Kumari, about “how saddened” he was at the news of Saibaba’s passing. He wrote about how “as a committed academic, writer, and human rights activist”, Saibaba’s work “was known and appreciated in India and beyond”. The Ambassador also conveyed heartfelt condolences “on behalf of the Embassy of France in India”.

G.N. Saibaba was an Indian scholar and activist who was severely disabled and incarcerated for about a decade, after being sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism charges. Saibaba was exonerated of all charges and released in March 2024. He passed away on October 12, 2024.

Experts say

The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University published a factsheet on October 15 on Ekal-USA (Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation), a sister organisation of Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation of India (Ekal-India). Ekal-USA is Texas-based with over 70 chapters in several US cities, and Ekal-India is a “Hindu nationalist group that operates single-teacher schools in India”. Two prominent members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu “supremacist paramilitary organisation”, were the first to develop the concept of these schools. Ekal-USA was founded by an RSS leader and funds “more than 74,401” Ekal schools in India. The schools are run by eight organizations in coordination with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. These one-teacher schools teach curriculum which is designed by Ekal-India to students in rural and tribal areas of India. Prominent Hindu nationalist leaders are listed as promoting and expanding Ekal schools; school officials, in turn, hold positions in Hindu far-right groups. Ekal-India has been “accused of promoting hatred towards religious minorities”. After an incident of anti-Christian violence in Madhya Pradesh in 2004, peace activist Harsh Mander said part of the mobilisation included “local teachers” of Ekal Vidalayas. 

As the Indian government vies for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, Amnesty International said in a statement dated October 21 that India “is falling short of its domestic and international human rights obligations”. Amnesty states that if India is serious about its bid, “it needs to demonstrate that it can engage responsibly with UN human rights entities” and “commit to upholding the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights”. Amnesty recounts that since 2019 India has been “the subject of around 25 statements from UN human rights experts” expressing concerns about human rights violations by India. Over several rounds of Universal Periodic Reviews (UPR), India has “not shown progress in implementing recommendations”, including failing to ratify the Convention Against Torture. Between 2011 and 2024, the Indian government “received over 200 communications from UN Special Procedures”, and has responded to “less than a third”. According to the statement, in response to two reports on the situation of human rights in Kashmir by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Indian authorities have vilified the reports rather than engaging.  

China Global South Project podcast hosts Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden interviewed Sushant Singh, lecturer of South Asian Studies at Yale University on October 22, about the recent agreement between India and China to disengage along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). In four main points, Singh focussed on India’s willingness to reach a compromise. First, a continuing border conflict with China was “very, very embarrassing” for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “strong man image”. In light of the “power differential” with China, said Singh, Modi turns “very timid and very shy”. Secondly, it is Pakistan, not China, which is India’s “primary nationalist target” and the military’s focus on the border with China lessens India’s ability to threaten Pakistan. Third, India needs China for its  own economic, trade and technology interests.  Lastly, India wants to pursue an “independent foreign policy.”  It also wants to continue to be “authoritarian” and “Hindu majoritarian” despite what the West says, including on “transnational repression”. For a path of aggression with China, India would need help from the West.  On the other hand, “peaceful” relations with China allow India less Western interference in its domestic and foreign policies.  .  

The World Association of News Publisher (WAN-IFRA) and the Inter American Press Association (SIP-IAPA), supported by UNESCO, jointly released a report entitled “Misuse of Economic Charges to Silence, Threaten and Attack the Press” on October 23. Based on 8 case studies including NewsClick in India, the report “highlights how effective the misuse of financial crimes allegations is in silencing journalists and media outlets”. Bringing charges of financial crimes – ranging from tax evasion to money laundering to terrorism financing – is used to attack both “financial viability” and the “reputation” of journalists. The prosecutions of these crimes often lead to closure of offices, freezing of assets, prison time, and financial ruin of the media organisation. On NewsClick in India, the report notes that it is a “worrying example of where broad anti-terrorism laws are applied to silence critical media outlets”. It states that the “misuse” of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) against NewsClick indicate the “abuse of anti-terror laws for political purposes.”  Andrew Heslop, Executive Director, Press Freedom, WAN-IFRA describes such actions as “lawfare” forcing media “to fight for the right to do journalism”. 

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a global organization which works for “the freedom, pluralism and independence of journalism”, called upon Prime Minister Modi to “immediately loosen the stranglehold on local media” in Jammu and Kashmir, in a statement dated October 24. Drawing attention to the recent elections in the region which brought into power those who promised “restoring press freedom”, RSF says that the “clear signal” to the Prime Minister is that “the repression of Kashmiri reporters must stop”. Celis Mercier, Head of RSF’s South Asia desk, notes that “over the past five years, a quarter of the journalists imprisoned under false pretexts in India come from Jammu and Kashmir.”  Three journalists currently in detention include Abdul Aala Fazili, Irfan Mehraj and Majid Hyderi. RSF  also notes that “at least 10 journalists are currently being denied passports.”  Given such “assaults on the rule of law and press freedom”, Mercier declares that “this reign of terror must come to an end.”

The Global Nature Conservation Index, released on October 24, ranks India among the top 5 worst performers in conservation efforts.  On the basis of 4 key pillars and 25 performance indicators, the Index places India at 176 among 180 countries.  Described as home to among the world’s most diverse wildlife and habitats, India scored well on ratification of international treaties on biological diversity and endangered species, and on the full range of ecosystems and habitats present in its existing protected areas. However, India’s performance plummets in several areas. Because of “habitat loss and fragmentation by agriculture, urbanization, and infrastructural development” India ranks a very low 177 under the key pillar, “Threats to Biodiversity”. Under the pillar “Land Management”, India ranks a low 174 on the indicator “protected areas terrestrial” with the Index stating that “7.5% of India’s terrestrial area is protected” and only 0.2% of national waters are protected. The Index stresses the need for “sustainable land use” in India since “land conversion for urban, industrial, and agricultural purposes has reached 53%”.  

The Global Tuberculosis Report 2024 report, published by the World Health Organization (WHO) on October 29, monitors progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Tuberculosis (TB) at global, regional and country levels. Based on 2023 data, the report shows that India is the highest contributor to the global incidence of TB (26%); to the incidence of drug-resistant TB at 27%, and to the gap between estimated and reported TB incidence (16%).  India is also among the 30 high TB burden countries where more than 15% of the population faces “catastrophic health expenditure”. An article in The Wire explains that spending  “more than 20% of a household’s annual income” on TB treatment is considered “catastrophic”. The Wire also analyses the data of the WHO report and finds that “India has missed the goals set for two out of three interim milestones for 2025” towards the WHO goal of elimination of TB by 2035. It notes that unlike any other country in the world, India has declared a target of achieving TB elimination by 2025 itself. 

Indian diaspora and civil society groups

Political Research Associates (a US-based social justice research and strategy centre offering support to change makers) and SAVERA (a US-based multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition) jointly published a report profiling the Hindu American Foundation (HAF).  They describe HAF as a “key node in the global Hindu supremacist (or Hindutva) movement” and part of “an emerging multiracial far right in the US”. The report lists three key aspects of HAF’s far-right advocacy in the US. First, HAF has “furiously fought” to prevent legal protection against caste discrimination, akin to “white supremacist tactics”. Second, it has “demonized Indian American Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs in the U.S”. Third, it makes “great efforts” to justify human rights violations by India’s ruling BJP. Savera warns that “HAF was often able to enter U.S. civil society spaces”, enabling it “to advance the marginal and supremacist politics of Hindutva into spaces the movement had previously failed to reach”. The report documents HAF’s “deep and ongoing financial, organisational and interpersonal ties” with “Hindu supremacist actors” in the US and India. 

12 Ummah (a platform of voices of Muslims around the world), released a video titled “The Long Shadow of UAPA: The story of Prof G.N. Saibaba” on October 12, the day of his death.  Images and video clips of Saibaba, as well as those who spoke in his support, are accompanied by a commentary that recounts that he endured almost a decade of incarceration after being arrested on terrorism charges in May 2014, shortly after the BJP came to power under Narendra Modi. The video also documents the support received by Prof Saibaba in April 2020 from a UN panel of human rights experts who urged the Indian government to release Saibaba immediately due to his deteriorating health, despite which he was not released. In March 2024, Saibaba was exonerated of all charges against him for lack of evidence and procedural irregularities. The video captures the  shock and disbelief expressed by friends and supporters at his “untimely demise” on October 12. “Lamenting that he could not enjoy the freedom he fought so hard to attain after enduring prolonged repression by the state”, Saibaba’s death is declared to be a “profound injustice and institutional murder”. 

On October 17, South Asian Left (SALAM), a diaspora group based in the US, announced the launch of  the ‘Tata Bye Bye” campaign in a press release.  The campaign demands that the “Tata Group disclose all contracts with Israel, and divest from them”. As a “major player in the U.S. economy”, the release stresses the Tata Group’s “extensive involvement in defence projects” including “military operations in occupied Palestinian territories”. These include joint ventures with Israeli defence firms that provide “missile systems and electronic warfare technologies”.  The campaign also calls upon the New York Road Runners “to drop Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) as a sponsor of the New York City Marathon due to TCS’s critical role in enabling Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”. TCS, “the most valuable subsidiary of Tata Group”, has provided Israel with digital services (such as cloud computing), which are “essential to Israel’s military operations and its broader system of digital control, which enables the surveillance and repression of Palestinian civilians”.

On October 30, 25 South Asian organisations and allies in Canada sent an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau, calling for “listing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates in Canada as hate groups/far right extremist entities”.  Recalling the RCMP allegations against Indian government agents being involved in criminal activity targeting Sikh dissidents in Canada, the letter cites an “extensive report” from 2023 which links “anti-Sikh violence in Canada to extremist groups like the RSS and their family of organizations, the Sangh Parivar”. The letter also calls on the Canadian government to investigate the influence of, and any human rights violations by the RSS and its affiliates in Canada and take measures to protect South Asians and other minorities. 

Read the previous roundup here.

Is ‘Pahari Renaissance’ a Path to Economic Revival in Himachal and Beyond?

The rise of social media has now enabled initiatives seeking to restore Pahari to its rightful place in the cultural landscape.

The first of November, observed as Pahari Day across Himachal Pradesh to commemorate the 1966 merger of Pahari-speaking areas, is a reminder that reviving Pahari is not just about language. It is about reclaiming a long-suppressed cultural identity. Uplifting it could enhance regional cooperation in the Western Himalayas, potentially supported by platforms like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

“A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language” — Noam Chomsky’s words resonate for anyone concerned about the status of Pahari language in Himachal Pradesh.

Most people in the state speak various Pahari dialects, but lack of standardisation and formal support and the rise of Hindi, associated with political power, marginalised Pahari, disconnecting many from their mother tongue and cultural heritage.

The rise of social media has now enabled initiatives seeking to restore Pahari to its rightful place in the cultural landscape. Conversations with content creators, influencers, advocates and community members reveal that this is about reclaiming a long-suppressed cultural identity, not just language.

New Delhi-based lawyer and Pahari language activist Arsh Dhanotia finds it sad that while millions speak in Pahari dialects, the language is “disregarded to the extent that it is not even the second official language of the state after Hindi.”

In contrast, Sanskrit, identified as a mother tongue by fewer than 1,000 speakers in the state, was declared the second official language in 2019. There is even a dedicated university and numerous colleges to teach Sanskrit in the province, but “even after 50 years of statehood we do not have a single college or university dedicated to teach and preserve Pahari and trans-Himalayan dialects,” said Dhanotia.

Linguistic zones

On 14 September 1949, India’s Constituent Assembly after two years of debate designated Hindi in Devanagari script as India’s official language, while retaining English as an associate official language for 15 years to aid the development and standardisation of Hindi. This involved using British-era Hindustani, eliminating Persian and Arabic words, and incorporating vocabulary from various dialects spoken in the Hindi belt, including Khari Boli, Braj Bhasha and Bundeli.

However, anti-Hindi agitations in southern India led to the continued use of English as the de facto official language.

In this confrontation, many faultline linguistic zones affected by Partition were overlooked. While Punjabi and Bengali are recognised, Pahari is often neglected.

The Pahari linguistic zone lies between the outer and lesser Western Himalayas, stretching from Shimla in India to Murree in Pakistan are where people speak mutually intelligible Pahari dialects.

In Himachal Pradesh, Pahari was further neglected as most of the present-day province was part of Indian Punjab until 1966, where authorities preferred promoting Punjabi. Dr Yashwant Singh Parmar, a key figure in the creation of Himachal Pradesh, emphasised Pahari linguistic identity as a central argument for a separate province. Dr Parmar classified Pahari as a distinct language from Hindi, Punjabi and Dogri.

His efforts led to merging Pahari-speaking regions like Kangra and Kullu from Punjab into the then Union Territory of Himachal on 1 November 1966. The state’s Art and Culture Department has designated that date as Pahari Day across Himachal.

After the State of Himachal Pradesh Act was passed on 18 December 1970 granting full statehood to the Pahari-speaking region, Parmar initiated a resolution in the Himachal assembly declaring Pahari as the state’s mother tongue. Simultaneously, he tasked linguist Narain Chand Parashar with standardising Pahari dialects spoken in the province like Kangri, Chambeali, Mandeali, Kulvi, Kahluri, Hinduri, Mahasuvi, and Sirmauri.

Parashar was also tasked with getting the language recognised as Pahari (Himachali) under the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution. This has yet to happen.

Shimla-based academic Dr Devender Sharma told Sapan News that efforts to standardise Pahari in Himachal Pradesh were going well until the mid-1970s, when “some pro-Hindi lobbies” exacerbated tensions between speakers of different Pahari dialects in public offices leading policymakers “to believe that the use of Hindi was the sole solution to this problem in official spaces”.

In the 1980s, television became more accessible but the state-owned Doordarshan was the only entertainment source in the province, with all its programmes exclusively in Hindi.

“This led to the expansion of Hindi and associated cultures of the Hindi belt in unofficial spaces,” said Dr Sharma. As a result, Pahari as well as trans-Himalayan dialects spoken in tribal areas like Kinnaur and Lahaul Spiti “took a blow”.

Pahari resurgence

Social media has revived Pahari dialects, a resurgence in Himachal Pradesh driven by content creators using social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram. Speakers are creating and consuming content in their mother tongue, which was not possible during the television era.

Radio jockey Abhimanyu Rai, 32, one of the first Pahari content creators, recalls starting to make funny videos in the Pahari dialect Mandeali, in 2016. It was tough initially, “but slowly and steadily people from across the province started to resonate with my work and gave me a lot of encouragement and support,” he told Sapan News. “In fact, the popularity I got through making content in my mother tongue helped me land a job as a radio jockey.”

“I take pride in calling myself a Pahari speaker,” says 24-year old content creator Bhavna Pathania. “At a time when most content creators are men, I feel as a woman I need to do my bit to make content which resonates with Pahari-speaking women.”

Pahari needs its own film industry — ‘Pahariwood’, she says, like ‘Bollywood’ as the Hindi film industry is known, or ‘Tollywood’ for Telugu language films. This will gain a Pan-Himachal reach, and with English subtitles “we can also reach global audiences”.

Pahari language is gaining visibility in short stand-up comedy clips, thanks to comedians like my namesake Vishal Sharma, 31. Recently, Sharma left his job to focus on his career as a Pahari stand-up comedian, performing in Indian cities with large Himachali Pahari communities. He aims to take his shows worldwide.

Emerging vloggers doing their bit to promote the language include Canada-based Shilpa Golra, a 34-year old doctoral researcher who makes food vlogs in Pahari to stress the importance of “speaking in our mother tongue.”

While applying for a Canadian academic scholarship recently, she was astonished that it includes Pahari as an option in the languages column, something she had not seen even in India.

Based in the United Arab Emirates, chef Santosh Thakur, 37, likes making vlogs in Pahari dialects “because I want the youth to be connected to our roots.” He respects all languages including Hindi, but feels the need to protect Pahari “even if we are less in number”.

Upcoming vlogger Abhay Chauhan, 18, started making vlogs in Pahari “just for fun” after moving to Sydney, Australia. He was surprised by how rapidly his followers increased.

Such unstructured social media efforts have revived Pahari, but a planned approach is now essential to elevate it from the margins to the mainstream. Despite being spoken by more than 4 million of Himachal Pradesh’s nearly 7 million residents, according to the 2011 Census, Pahari remains marginalised due to insufficient official promotion and media representation.

This situation persists in the entire Western Himalayas and even Britain.

Pahari is one of Britain’s most spoken minority languages, as highlighted by British academic Dr Serena Hussain in “Missing from the Minority Mainstream: Pahari-speaking Diaspora in Britain”, published in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2014. This was the first such study on British Pahari speakers published in a Q1 journal, in the top 25% publications in its subject category. The Pahari dialects spoken by the British diaspora come from Mirpur and nearby areas of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir princely state.

Breaking barriers

To elevate Pahari language content to the next level requires high-quality audiovisual production, suggests Yaduveer Singh, 30, a promoter and artist manager from Shimla, now based in Delhi.

Vlogger and podcaster, Mukuldev Rakshpati, 33 makes educational reels to promote aspects connected to the Pahari language movement. But without political and executive encouragement, the momentum gained will be “worthless”, he says.

Proper infrastructure is also necessary to make Pahari folk music global, says Chiraag Jyoti Majta, 32, a Mahasuvi dialect folk singer in Shimla. Without that, “it will be difficult to foster young talent, drive innovation and ensure growth of our music industry”.

Nirmal Joseph, a doctoral researcher in the Central University of Karnataka and Megha Manju Promodu, a communications expert now based in Swansea, Wales, both originally from Kerala, have independently researched Pahari dialects and one of its scripts, Tankri.

Promodu says that while the “standardisation of many diverse dialect chains has led to the emergence of globally recognised languages like French and Persian”, dialect chains like Pahari have not been effectively standardised or promoted “due to internal dialect rivalries”.

She believes that promoting a standard Pahari “is the only solution” to foster the creation of written works and enhance oral proficiency.

The fear that promoting a standardised Pahari “will lead to one dialect superseding others needs to be dispelled,” says Joseph. In Kerala, “we speak Malayalam, and we also have dozens of dialects which differ from each other.”

Promoting standard Malayalam helped protect all dialects, as well as preserve folk songs and literature through formal documentation. “It also led to proverbs and oral traditions being kept alive in everyday life”.

In 2021, Shimla-based lawyer Bhawani Pratap on behalf of fellow lawyer and Pahari language rights activist Arsh Dhanotia filed a petition in the Himachal High Court about the neglect and promotion of Pahari. He told Sapan News that the reactivation efforts should be similar to successful linguistic revivals like Welsh in Wales.

This requires absorbing Pahari into the educational curriculum under the New Education Policy, 2020. While the Devanagari script may be used in the short term, “a long-term plan should be in place to encourage the use of a nuclear Tankri script as traditionally our dialects were written mostly in various versions of Tankri”.

“The upcoming Census in India, which has been delayed for several years, will be crucial for the future of the Pahari language in Himachal,” he adds.

Currently, most Pahari dialects are categorised under Hindi. “To protect the linguistic heritage of the province in the long run it is essential to categorise Pahari dialects separately”.

A well-crafted strategy could preserve the language and spark a cultural renaissance, fostering a renewed progressive linguistic identity.

In his book, “Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature” Kenyan novelist and post-colonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o advocates for linguistic decolonisation, a concept which applies to the treatment Pahari has received in Himachal Pradesh. Even after independence from British colonisers in 1947, Pahari language continued to be suppressed by those in power.

The BJP-led union government recently approved classical language status for languages like Marathi, Assamese, Pali and Prakrit. Now it should also turn its attention to languages like Pahari.

Meanwhile, the Indian National Congress-led provincial government has yet to fulfill their 2022 election manifesto commitment “Himachal, Himachaliyat aur Hum” which promised to standardise Pahari dialects.

Uday Pathania an independent journalist based in Kangra makes it a point to have serious policy discussions with policy makers in Pahari – his attempt at protecting the linguistic heritage of the state. “If policy makers don’t do anything then common people will do something”.

Musician and audio producer Aasheesh, 34 in Shimla district also echoes a lack of faith in policy makers. “Leave Pahari dialects, the situation is so out of hand that even traditional Pahari instruments are being replaced by those which are alien to our culture, in shows promoted by government-backed institutions. How can we expect to go global with our music when we can’t even preserve authentic sounds of our folk music?” he asks.

Beyond Himachal

Given the declining political and economic situation in Himachal Pradesh and the entire Western Himalayas on both sides of the Line of Control, regional cooperation based on Pahari linguistic linkages could help strengthen economies of this mountainous region.

Advocate Hamender Singh in Solan district of Himachal Pradesh, recalls that his late grandmother, born in modern-day Solan, moved to Murree, at age 5 and lived there until 1940. She always fondly remembered the shared Pahari way of living in both areas.

He believes that the Western Himalayan region could have remained economically connected “even after 1947 if the majority religion practised in both sides of the LOC have not been mixed with domestic politics.”

“I hope to see a day when peace and progress will prevail over hostility in this region,” he tells Sapan News.

Policymakers on both sides of the Line of Control could learn from the economic initiatives in the Western Balkans, where many countries speak mutually intelligible dialects, like in the Western Himalayas. Despite ethnic divisions, these governments, realising the need for economic stability, are now working together as a unit with the European Union.

With its emphasis on peace and security the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation could be a constructive platform for such an initiative. The recent visit by India’s foreign minister to Pakistan for the SCO Council of Heads of Government Meet, the first in nearly a decade, highlights the SCO’s potential as a platform which can be used for fostering such regional cooperation in the faultline Western Himalayas.

Such an initiative could strengthen the entertainment, tourism and trade sectors in the mountainous region, while facilitating collaboration in agriculture, horticulture and climate change.

The same argument can be applied to bordering faultline areas of many SCO countries which desperately need an economic boost.

Vishal Sharma is a peace and security researcher originally from Shimla, Himachal Pradesh and currently based in Coventry, England. He is also a founding member of the Southasia Peace Action Network and Sapan News and has engaged in research on the Pahari linguistic identity within the Western Himalayas and among the diaspora since 2018.

This article first appeared on Sapan News Service.

The Enduring Legacy of Madhubala

Madhubala’s beauty and her early death before its decline have made her a timeless icon, inimitable and strictly not for sale.   

Hindi films from Bollywood are often deemed lowbrow and vulgar. For decades, young middle-class movie buffs in India have been brought up on this truism. Just as they have been led to believe that there can be no decent romance in languages other than the Queen’s English, or that only the Punjabis get it mostly right in matters of food, mounting of gala weddings and defying families in matters of heart.

Mrinal Pande

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

It is therefore time to go against the tide of public opinion. For starters, let us look at the very concept of vulgarity. The term ‘vulgar’ comes from the Biblical fold and it literally means ‘of the people’ – hence the term Vulgate’s Bible. So If Mughal-e-Azam is vulgar, then so be it. Why should we hesitate from asserting that the romantic musical still remains shamefully close to many Indians across generations. Mughal-e-Azam, a timeless musical from the 1950s, a romantic veritable Midsummer Night’s Dream, took K.A. Asif a decade to make and has been on every Indian movie lover’s shortlist since 1960. If it is vulgar, then we want more of it.

At the heart of this romantic musical is the haunting and luscious beauty of Madhubala, a young beauty from an impoverished Muslim family, pushed into films by an avaricious father, with a Hindu name like her colleagues MeenaKumari and Dilip Kumar. A Hindu name, it was felt in the immediate post-Partition years, would smudge her Muslim identity for the majority audiences  who were still feeling unsettled about our largely hybrid world of entertainment. As Madhu Bala, literally translated to ‘Honey Girl’, she would become more palatable. In the film Mughal-e-Azam, one must mention the much celebrated role of Akbar, played by Prithvi Raj Kapoor to much approbation. His Akbar today seems more of a cross between a madman and a Khap Panchayat patriarch. Similarly, Saleem, his rebellious son, played by Dilip Kumar, seems in the harsh light of action films today, a bit of a coward despite his good looks. He remains a resonant and remote son of a bossy father whom he defies weakly, mumbling his displeasure. The officially young find such compliance appalling now.

But it is the young, mischievous Madhubala, as the dancer Anarkali, who truly sparkles with her giggly uninhibited sexuality and her bold declaration of love for the prince as she dances. 

From the 21st century divas in Bollywood, the audiences demand a ‘hot bod’ and clothes that show it to the fullest. But in Madhubala’s case, her body is largely irrelevant. It is her face that even now can launch a thousand movie battles. Madhubala is Woman, as opposed to other contemporary talents like MeenaKumari, who despite better acting talent will remain a soft woman from Parineeta or Sahib Bibi, waiting on her man to thaw and love her. However today’s stars, wearing high-end dresses by designers like Manish Malhotra or Sabyasachi and branded make-up, attempt and fail to emulate her bewitching smile and those heavy-lidded eyes streaming a fluid sexuality that no mascara can lend, no eyeliner enhance .

Post-Madhubala Bollywood, in trying to create a clone, is only making beauty a commodity that can sell other commodities: high-end clothes, personalised accessories, FMCG goods, laptops, swanky bathrooms and cars. 

Madhubala was perhaps not an adroit and polished actress the way Meena Kumari, Nutan or Waheeda Rehman were. She was a presence, whether the scene played in a regal hall of mirrors or a forlorn auto workshop. Only music can showcase such a presence. And some of her best scenes play out through the haunting music that accompanies her arrival. Her best directors were musically sensitive photographers like Asif, who, in some strange way, understood the unavoidable attraction of her half mischievous, half tragic self-containment that rode the wings of songs like ‘Mohey Panghat Pe’..or ‘Ik Ladki Bheegee Bhagee si..’

It is notable that Asif’s reels of an earlier version of an unfinished Mughal-e-Azam, featuring a different cast, were discarded after Madhubala stepped in. Asif did not try to extend the quintessential appeal of Madhubala for his audiences by giving her long wordy dialogues (the kind Akbar or Saleem were to mouth with all the thunderous resonance of popular Parsi theatre style ‘dialogue delivery’). He accepted her wisely for what she was.

Physically, Madhubala remained the way she was till the end, somewhat ‘shapeless’ by today’s standards. A closer look reveals a dangerous lack of vitality around her eyes, brought on by a congenitally defective heart which caused her to die so young. Legend has it that before her illness was discovered and shooting for Mughal-e-Azam began, she and her great love Dilip Kumar came close to getting married. But her father would not let go of his golden goose and forbade matrimony for her. 

Madhubala seems to have receded thereafter in some place deep within herself and in Mughal-e-Azam, she seems to be responding to situations created for her by the script writer with a profound weariness and a premonition of an early death. This makes the tragedy of Anarkali even more touchingly real and haunting. Think of the slow ravishment of a peacock feather caressing her face or a bunch of grapes being dangled seductively close to that luscious mouth by Saleem . 

She seems to be responding to an inner reality, less to her lover. 

Madhubala’s kind of sad interiority soon came under threat by a new breed of actors that went on to rule the screen after the 1970s – the not-so-good looking but intellectually sparkling triad of Jaya, Shabana and Smita Patil and the earthly buoyant Mumtaz and Zeenat Aman. These new actors were trained and well read. They projected everything they had towards their screen lovers and villains, leaving nothing in reserve. Madhubala’s passive acceptance of the inevitable by women was by now a thing of the past.

Her illness, though cruel and lingering, saved Madhubala from being pushed into emulating the others while fighting the ravages of an advancing age. Like Marilyn Munro, Madhubala’s beauty and her early death before its decline have made her a timeless icon, inimitable and strictly not for sale.   

Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.

Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues. 

In ‘Singham Again’, Rohit Shetty Goes for Loud Hindutva Populism for Box Office Bucks

Even the presence of several top stars cannot save the film from being a sloppy effort.

Singham Again might be the most half-hearted, insincere film in Rohit Shetty’s career of two decades. Which is saying a lot, given that Shetty is a shining example of mainstream Hindi cinema’s convenient, shameless and shrewd populism.

Just look at his simplistic understanding of gender roles and patriotism, how he will blow the conch for Hindutva forces and alternate it with some of his insidious Islamophobia (like in Sooryavanshi and Indian Police Force), and his unsubtle endorsement for extra-judicial killings and custodial torture.

Like most of his peers, Shetty will say anything to get a clap out of his audience. It doesn’t matter how daft it sounds.

Like in a scene where a young boy asks his mother, who apparently works as a bureaucrat for the current government: “Did Ram really travel 3,000 km to save Sita?” The response is: “Of course, it’s a fact.” 

Even in a Rohit Shetty film, where idiotic dialogue is par for the course, this line sticks out.

This comes shortly after a sequence plays out like a recruitment video for a Kashmir first-responder unit. It concludes with our protagonist (Ajay Devgn) coming face-to-face with a group of Kashmiri youth, right after he has captured a terrorist.

Shetty builds up the tension for a hostile confrontation, but then a young man blurts out, “Stone-pelting is a thing of the past. This is naya Bharat’s naya Kashmir.” Expectedly, a drone shot of the tricolour on Lal Chowk follows after this exchange.

Even by the standards of a desperate, needy Bollywood film, Singham Again proves there’s no low that is too low for a scheming blockbuster willing to trade decency for money and whistles.

Shetty’s latest is an Avengers-like version of his cop universe, assembling all his previous cops – Bajirao Singham (Ajay Devgn), Sangram Bhalerao or ‘Simmba’ (Ranveer Singh) and Veer Sooryavanshi (Akshay Kumar), along with upstarts Shakti Shetty (Deepika Padukone) and Satya (Tiger Shroff).

Shroff’s character isn’t even afforded the dignity of a surname, presumably because he’s an orphan. He shows up for a brief fight scene, followed up by a backstory that can be encapsulated in the time needed to make instant noodles.

Singh is the only actor with anything to offer, single-mindedly focused on making an impact in this crowded film and bringing it out of Devgn’s comatose presence. He appears to be improvising most of his lines for a role that is as thinly written as the ‘wife’ characters in the cop universe.

Kareena Kapoor Khan, resuming her role as Avni – the better-half from Singham Returns (2014) – undergoes the humiliation of playing a damsel in distress. It’s a wasteful, disgraceful part for someone with Khan’s talents.

But what makes Avni even more embarrassing is how Shetty posits her as a part of the ‘cultural ministry’, whose aim is to turn non-believers into giving credence to theories that the Ramayana is a part of our history and not just a mythological text.

She does this through a series of motion-graphic re-imaginings of the Ram Leela, where she parades urban legends as (pseudo) scientific findings. For a bureaucrat trying to rise up the ranks, it doesn’t seem that far off. But Shetty uses this gimmick as a tool to basically remake the Ramayana within his cop universe. Singham is Ram, Simmba is Hanuman… the villain (Arjun Kapoor) is Raavan. Yawn.

I don’t know how much Shetty is clued into the discourse on X, but he has been criticised in the past for the Islamophobia in his films. In this film, for the longest time, he teases the audience with a villain who is called Danger Lanka, not giving his real name till much later.

Also read | ‘Indian Police Force’: Rohit Shetty’s Diatribe Against Muslims, Tempered With the ‘Good Muslim’ Cliche

The villain, Arjun Kapoor, probably sees this as his moment to craft something as memorable as Alauddin Khilji in Padmaavat (2018). But he is never supported by Shetty’s (six) writers – Yunus Sajawal, Abhijeet Khuman, Kshitij Patwardhan, Anusha Nandakumar and Shantanu Srivastava. All Kapoor ever does is flash his pearly whites, while hacking people with a machete.

After resisting for what seems like an eternity, Shetty introduces Kapoor’s character as Zubair Hafeez. Almost on cue, Kapoor starts using words/phrases like ‘inteqaam ki fateh’, ‘maqsad’ and ‘jazbaa’, which feels as natural and organic as the face of a rapidly ageing Bollywood celebrity.

At first, I dismissed the choice of the name of the villain, Zubair, as a mere coincidence. But then I heard him speak a line that riffs on “Ayodhya toh bas jhaaki hai, Kashi ab bhi baaki hai” (Milap Zaveri is credited for ‘additional dialogues’), and I stopped giving the film the benefit of doubt. Shetty knows the kind of bloodlust he’s feeding; consciously destroying the cultural fabric, only to earn some more money.

One of the most unintentionally funny things about Shetty’s film is its innate fear of backlash of the kind Adipurush (an adaptation of the Ramayana) faced last year. Despite being one of the most pliant films for right-wing forces and something that was purposed as a Rs 500-crore star vehicle for Prabhas, Adipurush failed at the box office and was criticised for the liberties it took from all quarters.

Shetty didn’t want there to be any doubt in even the most distracted viewers of his film’s Hindu identity; hence he scores every second scene with a chant as our heroes walk in slow-motion, coupled with a deluge of Hindu iconography, which seems to be catering to the Hindutva types.

The film even explicitly mentions in its disclaimer that its characters are in no way to be seen as revered deities.

Even putting aside its saffron propaganda, Singham Again is arguably one of Shetty’s laziest undertakings. It shows in the unimaginative action sequences, the terrible dialogues and the absolute mockery of its superstar cameos, despite affording each and every star their own ‘entry’ sequence.

Imagine that Padukone, a naturally charismatic movie star, who made an impact in Jawan (2023) with two songs, seems cordoned off in her own film. We hardly see her interacting with the other characters, almost as if she shot her portions separately and was later digitally infused into the film.

Devgn, who has had an overwhelming need to be worshipped as a star in the last 15 years, has finally snuffed out any possibility of being admired as a once-hungry, sincere actor.

If films are a dish, then Singham Again is equivalent to the mush meant to feed babies and the elderly. Watching this film in the nearly packed theatre, I remember thinking whether we were already in an ideological apocalypse.

As much as I was bored by Shetty’s sloppiness as a storyteller, it was nowhere near the rage I felt towards how much of Singham Again had become fair game. I looked around – a guy behind me was running a live commentary of the film for his friend over the phone, this couple next to me couldn’t stop whispering through the film’s runtime, and this group of young boys kept talking amongst themselves as everyone around them, in a zombie-like way, pretended like this was normal behaviour in a theatre.

The viewers seemed determined – or were too distracted – to accommodate any unruly behaviour around them and uncomplainingly ate up anything that the film offered in the name of ‘mindless entertainment’. Maybe such people deserve Singham Again and Rohit Shetty.

Why Is a War Correspondent’s Profession a Calling?

In ‘I Brought the War with Me’, British journalist Lindsey Hilsum has the courage to introduce the human interest despite the brutality, and by and large, with welcome non-romanticism.

Of the 50 short on-the ground narratives about various conflict zones, British journalist and war correspondent Lindsey Hilsum has structured her autobiographical text in ten segments. Within those segments, the events are neither chronological nor confined to one country.

‘I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line’, Lindsey Hilsum, Chatto & Windus, UK, 2024.

The narratives refer to warzones in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, with less than a handful in Asia and one in North America, and in terms of specific countries, the maximum references are to Syria, followed by Ukraine, Palestine/Israel, Rwanda and Russia.  The absence of Asia, by and large, and Latin America is explained by British priorities and possibly the journalist’s available budgets.

Why is a war correspondent’s profession a calling? Because, in Hilsum’s words, ‘the act of documenting someone’s story makes it count for something, or at least for something more than if it had never been recorded at all.’ She finds reporting from warzones ‘rewarding and exciting,’ the feeling of ‘living through history’ in which ‘nightmares, anger, tears and bouts of despondency are all normal…it is hard to believe that humans are inherently good.’

Sometimes she was an eyewitness to history; at others, among the first on the scene. In 1994, Hilsum served with UNICEF in Rwanda, the only foreign reporter when the Hutu genocide of the minority Tutsis began and led to 800,000 killed, one of the most brutal mass crimes of the 20th century. She reports that ‘I was alone in a city I scarcely knew with no petrol in my car. Barricades manned by red-eyed drunken men armed with broken beer bottles, machetes and nail-studded clubs had sprung up all over town.’ And on the Palestine West Bank, ‘we were the first outsiders in nearly two weeks who hadn’t come to kill them.’

Hilsum has the courage to introduce the human interest despite the brutality, and by and large, with welcome non-romanticism. She states that some ‘details were tantalizing in their mundanity…There was nothing that could be called victory. There was certainly no glory,’ pointing out the ‘futility and cruelty of war which never achieves the results promised by those who start it.’ In using the words of interviewees verbatim, Hilsum notes that the most courageous people in war have been civilians, and ‘war brings out the best and worst in people.’ In countless instances of inhumanity, she saw that in Uganda ‘children became the most feared fighters because they knew no restraint,’ and one with ‘a louring volatility I have never seen in an adult soldier.’

Lindsey Hilsum. Photo: Chatham House, CC BY 2.0.

Hilsum has no respect for American overseas interventions; the Afghans did not believe bin Laden had orchestrated the 9/11 attack from Afghanistan, and regarded the Americans as just another foreign invasion. The USA had equally little impact with its ‘reckless and aggressive behaviour’ in Iraq when its invasion had brought anarchy in its wake – ‘an ignorant, ahistorical intervention by outsiders.’ The Iraqis that had welcomed the US intervention ‘were now trembling with fury and outrage…US troops were regarded as liberators for less than 24 hours.’ So, is ‘totalitarian oppression’ better than the bedlam that follows it more often than not? This remains an imponderable question.

Hilsum considers terrorism in Europe: ‘If you thought about it too much it was unnerving so on the whole, we didn’t…Jihadism only has currency because their generation is looking for identity and meaning.’ Like W.H. Auden, she ‘knew human folly like the back of [her] hand.’ Therefore, she writes that ‘the online world increasingly demands binary attitudes; the only authentic response [varies] between happy warrior and bitter pacifist,’ whereas ‘experience tells me that that war never turns out as planned, and taints everyone it touches.’

Hilsum predicts that the ongoing conflict in the Sahel presages wider wars and greater African numbers who will try to escape to Europe and the US, and that refugee flows caused by climate change are only starting. She observes that the top five refugee-hosting countries include only one developed nation – Germany. Western societies are riven by polarising politics, AI disassociates the decision-makers from the killed while she regrets that ‘journalists focus on what is critical now.’ Deploring the destruction of ancient monuments, she states ‘the moment of history in which they [the combatants] were living was more important to them than preserving emblems of the country’s past.’

With unsentimental but often evocative prose, Hilsum notes that ‘Nothing bonds you to your colleagues as intensely as being under fire.’ Her own experiences were ‘too painful to recall but too searing to forget,’ for example, ‘In Mexico it’s more dangerous to be a journalist than a drug trafficker.’ And there are also rare flashes of humour – as in Ukraine when ‘statements of questionable veracity [about the author’s alleged connections with the British Queen] would speed up our passing through almost any roadblock.’

The poems are sometimes more eloquent than the text. After all, from time immemorial poetry has dealt with the tropes of passion and battle. Assessing a poem is a deeply subjective exercise, but the context for the poems is apposite, the poets sometimes familiar, others unexpected like Enheduanna, the world’s (2300 BC) earliest poet with her hymns to Sumerian goddesses Inana and Nanna; and touching when they concern the futility of settlement of disputes through force.

A student or practitioner of international relations would be on the lookout for any suggestion of bias, and to the author’s credit there are few, save a predisposition to oppose actions by Russia and Syria on account of ‘dictatorships’, irrespective of the legitimacy of their positions, and when ‘similarities between enemies can be almost unbearable.’ Russia according to the author has ‘belligerent imperial ambition’ which reflects the UK’s government and media’s prejudices.

It has to be questioned whether the non-chronological, non-geographical system of the book best serves the author’s interest. It seems so designed to appeal to the emotions rather than a reasoned train of sequence. It is for each reader to judge the validity of this format.

Krishnan Srinivasan is a former foreign secretary.

Can AI Help Improve Learning Outcomes at Scale?

For all its many interesting insights, Khan Academy founder Salman Khan’s new book, ‘Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education’, overlooks the many potential areas of concern in deploying LLMs.

Khan Academy founder Salman Khan’s book, Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing), is an exploration of the ways in which artificial intelligence, especially large language models (LLMs), of which Chat GPT is a popular example, can be deployed to transform the way education is produced, distributed and consumed. The narrative is essentially built around Khanmigo, an application that Khan and his team built on top of Chat GPT-4. 

Khan probably needs no introduction. With Khan Academy, he revolutionised the use of technology to deliver high quality learning at scale. The book describes how Khanmigo could engage with the various stakeholders in secondary and higher education – teachers, parents, learners, policy planners, officials in charge of admissions in universities, testing agencies and, not to forget, those who fund these activities.  

Salman Khan’s
Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing),
Published by Penguin (2024).

The structure of Khan’s narrative in the book is interesting. He describes briefly how each of the facets of education are currently managed – pedagogy in different disciplines, testing, student-teacher engagement, the role of parents and the admission processes. He then proposes how the adoption of AI can improve the processes, using Khanmigo as an example. The book thus serves as a quick, even if highly simplified, review of extant practices in secondary and higher education.

Divided into nine parts, the book discusses the use of AI in the pedagogy of social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics by providing examples from each of the disciplines. The examples are accompanied by transcripts of the actual chat on Khanmigo, which give the reader a picture of what transpires while using the app. 

Production and consumption of education in the LLM world

A few common features emerge from these examples and the accompanying transcripts. One, the app engages with the user in a Socratic process. Second, the app mimics a highly capable and creative human tutor, who is not just aware of the capabilities and inclination of the student, but also draws on the past engagement with her. Third, the app has the pedagogic versatility to teach disciplines as varied as literature, history, maths and science, each of which requires highly different approaches. 

Khan argues that thanks to these features, LLMs can address the shortcomings of the contemporary approach to learning where everyone in the class is subjected to the same pace of learning. Both fast and slow learners are equally dissatisfied with the current approach, which assumes a certain median learning ability. For the slow learner, the current approach leads to a growing cumulative learning deficit, all the way up to college, with all its attendant consequences that have been widely documented.  

Impact beyond pedagogy

By improving the productivity of teachers and bringing the learning experience close to high quality personalised tutoring, Khan believes that LLMs can potentially resolve a huge crisis enveloping the education sector across the world – the shortage of capable teachers and teaching assistants. 

Khan also makes a case for leveraging AI to improve learning outcomes for the underprivileged sections of society, at scale, thereby reducing inequality in access to quality education across the world. This has been his mission at Khan Academy.

The book describes how AI can serve as a coach for students as a non-interested third party, facilitating a conversation between parents and children, improving the testing process by making it more continuous and by providing instant feedback, making it almost a seamless part of the learning process. Khan proposes ways in which AI can remove the subjectivity in the process of selecting students for prestigious universities.

Generous to faults?

Khan’s belief in the power of AI is unstinting. Two lines bear out the depth of his conviction. “It (AI) is the trusty wingman that tackles the boring stuff, sparks creativity, supercharges lessons and helps educators craft unforgettable learning experiences that light up student’s minds.” He concludes by calling for what he refers to as “educated bravery”. He writes, “Let us use AI to create a new golden age for humanity, a time that will make today look like a dark age.”

For all its many interesting insights, the book’s treatment of the many potential areas of concern in deploying LLMs is inadequate. Khan acknowledges worries such as misuse of private information about users that could be gathered while engaging with LLMs, biases and subjectivity that could creep into them and unhealthy influences on young users. But he deftly dismisses them by either pointing out that those concerns also plague the alternate methodologies currently in use, as in the case of college admissions, or by suggesting that guardrails could be set up against such possible abuse.  

Chat GPT 4.0 is a quantum improvement in the use of LLMs and AI. It is a powerful tool that gets more versatile all the time, even as it gets deployed. That said, its application is still at an early stage. To that extent, one wishes Khan’s pitch for the use of AI in education was more balanced, taking on board the many hitherto unknown or underappreciated challenges in its deployment. That would have made the case for a broader adoption of AI in higher education even more persuasive.

G. Sabarinathan teaches at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.  

How a Film Enquiry Committee Paved the Way for the Film Finance Corporation

The Committee’s recommendation for an FFC was initially found unacceptable but the government yielded to the demand by 1956.

The following is an excerpt from Sudha Tiwari’s The State and New Cinema in Contemporary India published by Routledge.

The Film Enquiry Committee (1949)

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting noted in 1948-49 that an enquiry into the film industry was necessary. The last enquiry was conducted in 1927-28. A fresh enquiry was necessary in view of the growth of the film industry since that time, in order to examine how the organisation of the industry could be improved and on what lines its future development should be directed. A Film Enquiry Committee was formed on September 2, 1949 by the Government of India to “make recommendations regarding its further development as an industry and as a medium of education and entertainment”.

Sudha Tiwari,
The State and New Cinema in Contemporary India,
Published by Routledge (2024).

According to Kumar Shahani, “the intention of calling for that report to be written was absolutely Nehruvian…it fitted into the kind of state that Nehru imagined…should be created for the Indian nation”. The Committee was constituted by a Resolution of the government of India in the MIB dated 29 August 1949. As per the Resolution, the government of India did regard “the importance of the cinema in modern life and the magnitude and complexity of the problems relating to films”, making it essential to conduct a thorough enquiry into the film industry. Of the three important terms of reference given to the Committee, one of them was, “To examine what measures should be adopted to enable films in India to develop into an effective instrument for the promotion of national culture, education and healthy entertainment.” (Emphasis added). The Chairman of the Committee was S.K. Patil (Member, Constituent Assembly), and the rest of the members included M. Satyanarayana (Member, Constituent Assembly), V. Shantaram (Rajkamal Kalamandir Ltd., Bombay), B.N. Sircar (New Theatres Ltd., Calcutta), Dr. R.P. Tripathi (Head of the History Department, Allahabad University), V. Shankar (I.C.S., representing MIB), and S. Gopalan (Secretary of the Committee).

*

Response to the Film Enquiry Committee Report and its Recommendations

In 1954, when the recommendations were finally discussed in Parliament, Mr. Patil was disappointed again at the callous attitude of the government and at its turning down of the most important recommendation of the Report, i.e. the Film Finance Corporation (FFC). The government had declined the establishment of a film corporation with the usual excuse of the “priorities of expenditure to meet the urgent requirements of the development projects and programmes of the Five Year Plan”. The government had also rejected one of its other central suggestions, the forming of a statutory Film Council of India citing similar reasons. Mr. Patil opposed the government’s proposal to establish a National Film Board which was to direct and supervise the work of the proposed Film Production Bureau and the Film Institute. He said that such an arrangement would be an “enlarged edition of the present Central Board of Film Censors”.

*

The FFC in the Making

One sees two united voices emerging from filmmakers and producers: that there is a need to change the way Indian cinema looks, and that financing and changing the production ethics is the key to bring radical changes in the Indian film industry. Many from within and outside the film industry saw the state playing a crucial role in bringing these two changes. Though the state was present in all these debates and discussions, in providing a platform to the film community to come together and discuss the issues troubling the industry, it was still hesitant to take up its responsibilities towards the film industry. The recommendations of the Film Enquiry Committee were yet to be taken up seriously by the government.

The press reported in May 1954 that the government had rejected the FFC plan. Dr. B.V. Keskar, the then Minister of Information and Broadcasting, presented a statement to the Parliament on the action taken by the government on the recommendations of the Film Enquiry Committee. The government had decided instead to set up a National Film Board with a view to “developing the film as a medium of national culture, education and healthy entertainment”.

The Board was to direct and supervise the work of two new bodies, the Film Production Bureau and the Film Institute. The Film Production Bureau would give advice on scripts, offer guidance to producers on various aspects of production such as story, scenario, artistic talent, and cost estimates. It would provide a library and research service. The functions of the Bureau would be purely advisory. The Ministry told the Parliament that in the present state of the industry, the setting up of a representative statutory Film Council of India, as recommended by the Enquiry Committee, would not be advisable. It was feared that such a Council, at this stage – when there are diverse elements in the industry in different stages of development and with the attendant difficulty of reconciling several interests – would find it difficult to wield authority and take the responsibility of shaping the affairs of the industry. The Government would, however, be prepared to encourage any move on the part of the film industry itself to form a Film Council based on voluntary co-operation.

The Committee’s recommendation for an FFC was found “unacceptable both in view of more urgent commitments under the Five-Year Plan and the business risks involved in the proposal.” It only offered ‘suitable machinery by legislation’ if producers were inclined to find necessary funds for a corporation by contributions or otherwise. The government had, however, decided in principle to provide suitable grants for specific purposes such as the production of educational and children’s films. In October 1954, State Awards for Films were inaugurated “to encourage production of films of a high aesthetic and technical standard and educative and cultural value”. Films like Shyamchi Aai (1953) and Do Bigha Zamin were presented with the President’s Gold Medal and Certificate of Merit respectively. These decisions received a mixed response. The FFI urged the government to help stabilise the film industry by creating a film finance corporation as early as possible on mutually acceptable terms and conditions.

By September 1956, the government yielded to the demand for a finance corporation. News came that the government had decided to constitute a National Film Board and a Film Finance Corporation to help the development of the motion picture industry. First rejected, it was later realised that the film industry with its “tremendous educative and entertainment values, should be given State aid for proper development.” The proposed Board was to have, as its constituent units, the present censorship organisation, a production bureau, and a film institute. The FFC would initially have a capital of Rs one crore. The Bill to this effect was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 10 December 1956. The National Film Board was being set up “to promote the development of film as a medium of culture, education and healthy entertainment.” The FFC was to render financial assistance to film producers by way of loans. The Annual Report also informed that the form and details of organisation and the general principles governing the method of financing were being worked out.

However, there was again a long silence on the formation of the Corporation and the Board. While replying to a debate on the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill in Lok Sabha in December 1958, Dr. Keskar stated that the government was taking steps to establish an FFC “on a modest scale”. He also said that the preliminary work in this direction was already over, and the question would have been taken up much earlier but for the financial difficulties of the government. He also advised the gathering of producers, exhibitors, distributors, and film artistes to organise itself on sound business lines to overcome its financial and other difficulties. He invited the industry’s co-operation in achieving the ideal of a “wealthy and prosperous country”. He also stressed that the film industry was essentially a “social industry”. It provided entertainment and also served as a medium of instruction to the masses. It had, therefore, an important part to play in the evolution of society. It should not divorce itself from the society from which it drew its sustenance. Ministers still used phrases like “duty to society”, “people’s and the country’s welfare in their minds”, and films having a “beneficial influence” in their speeches and statements while talking about the film industry. Mr. Keskar was told that the Indian film industry was still facing the problem of lack of finance, and the high rates of interest which the producers had inevitably to pay the financiers were aggravating the problems. A suggestion was placed with the Minister that the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) could help the industry, with its large funds, by advancing loans.

The Film Finance Corporation Limited finally came into existence in March 1960. It started functioning in May 1960 in its Bombay office, with the appointment of a nine-member board of directors with Mr. N.D. Mehrotra, a retired Income-tax Commissioner, as Chairman. The main objectives of the Corporation were: to promote and assist the film industry by providing, affording, or procuring finance, and/or other facilities for the production of films of good standard and quality with a view to raising the standard of films produced. The FFC started with an authorised capital of Rs one crore to be subscribed entirely by the government of India.

Sudha Tiwari teaches History at the School of Liberal Studies and Media, UPES, Dehradun.

Should Newspapers – Owned by Billionaires – Endorse Presidential Candidates?

From the conduct of the owners of the ‘Los Angeles Times’ and ‘The Washington Post’, it is clear that the bigger threat is not engaging with the public on important issues and allowing multiple voices to be heard.

This past week, there has been a great deal of controversy in the United States over surprising developments at two of the country’s largest newspaper companies – the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post – related to traditional presidential endorsements, or in this case the decisions not to endorse.

On the surface, what transpired at the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post appears to be much the same. However, a closer look based on reports would indicate that the decisions made by the owner of The Times, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Post owner Jeff Bezos differ in at least one important way.

As reported, Dr. Soon-Shiong decided not to publish the endorsement after his editorial board had already presented their endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, because he did not agree with their decision. As the owner of the Times, that is indeed his prerogative, but it also clearly undermined the work of his editorial staff.

The Washington Post editorial board was also clearly preparing to endorse US vice-president Harris for president, but that endorsement never materialised. Rather, the owner, Bezos, recently made it known that he no longer wanted the newspaper to make any presidential endorsements. His motive is less clear and naturally became open to widespread speculation. His argument, as he explained after the fact (and amid massive subscriber cancellations) in a Post opinion piece, was that presidential endorsements have no impact on voters’ decision and that presidential endorsements run the risk of further eroding the public’s trust of news media.

He essentially argues that publishing such an endorsement only reinforces the public’s perception of “news bias.” Therefore, The Post would break from recent tradition and no longer engage in any presidential endorsements. Again, as the owner of The Post he is entitled to make that call, but given the timing of his decision he should expect the same outcry as The Times received.

From my perspective, had either of these two owners made their decisions not to endorse known even six to nine months earlier, they would face much less criticism if any at all. As it stands, they have opened themselves up to the current storm of criticism over “billionaire bias” and meddling.

As a former publisher and CEO of major newspapers in the U.S. for many years, I have had a front row seat at seeing how the impact of newspaper endorsements have changed over the past few decades.

Frankly, I would agree with Bezos’ argument that any news organisation’s formal endorsement of a presidential candidate has little to no impact on a voter’s decision when they cast their vote for president these days. Regardless, if, for that reason, a news organisation makes the decision not to make a presidential endorsement, they should make that position clear to their readers and audience well in advance. Being on the record early makes a big difference. Stating that position weeks before the election is wrong.

Having reflected on these recent developments over the past few days, at least two other thoughts occur to me.

First, while indeed presidential endorsements may not have the impact they once did, other endorsements do indeed matter, and news organisations still play an important role. This is especially true in local and state elections. Whether it is the election of local judges, mayors or state representatives, the insights of the local news media can provide important, additional insight to voters in considering who can best represent their communities’ interests. I would hope news organisations would continue to do their homework and weigh in on these important decisions.

Secondly, regarding the issue of “trust” in media and the idea that allowing opinions to be expressed necessarily show a direct correlation to bias is missing the point on at least one very important component of any responsible news organisation.

To really understand this point, we have to remember that a well-rounded news organisation generally is comprised of at least two distinct components: 1) news, and 2) opinion. We owe it to our readers and audiences to be clear how we distinguish between these two components.

Hard news is to be factual, accurate and unbiased in describing the events as they happened. This is a fundamental tenet for all professional journalists and cannot be compromised.

However, there is and should also be a place for opinion pieces. This is certainly true for individual columnists whose expertise and insights provide a certain personal perspective on things. And traditionally this has also always been true for great Editorial and Opinion sections of a newspaper.

In fact, this is where the institutional voice of an editorial page works to serve the community. Strong editorial positions offer a community a well thought out opinion or “point of view” on a subject generally advocating a position that the editorial board believes best serves the community. Importantly, the editorial position should also be complimented by various alternative voices and opinions to provide readers and audiences with opposing or alternative points of view.

I would argue that such an approach, that of offering both the institutional voice of the editorial page and alternative points of view, is more important today than ever. We live in a world where too many of us are only exposed to “echo chambers” of like thinking. We all benefit from learning and understanding alternative thinking.

Bezos may feel that there is a threat to trust in journalism by the editorial page of a news organisation taking a position on an important issue like a presidential election, but the bigger threat is not engaging with the public on important issues and allowing multiple voices to be heard.

Terry Egger has worked in newspapers in the United States for more than 40 years. Most recently he was CEO and publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Prior, he served as the CEO and publisher of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland for eight years as well as publisher of The St Louis Post-Dispatch.

This article was republished under a Creative Commons licence. The Wire has changed the headline and made slight edits to accommodate style demands.