Careful With That Pen, Eugene
A couple of days back, I was talking to a friend about this one Indian journalist. We spoke of his strong and brave political opinions. We compared his reportage to some of his peers and wished there were more of his kind. The conversation took turns, went through alleys of political reporting and investigative journalism, and ended up at Gauri Lankesh. A bullet has been earmarked for this one too, we concluded.
We said this with a smirk and a stumbling giggle, but none of us actually found it funny. More than our fandom for the said journalist, the idea that someone could be killed for their thoughts hit a tense part of the gut. Humour was just a balm.
We then segued into the lane of internet freedom in India through a “did you hear?” lead-in. The Ministry of Information & Technology had recently published a draft of the new digital media and intermediary guidelines.
In case you haven’t had the chance to read yet, a primer — any platform that hosts content is an intermediary. You can post a meme on Twitter, a video about ’90s kids on Instagram, or a jazz cover of Selfie Maine Leli Aaj on YouTube. Barring basic guidelines, these platforms don’t filter your content. Similarly, you will find everything between Mindhunter and Mumbai Indians on Netflix.
The government of India, the democratically elected body that always prioritises national welfare, has some strong ideas about these platforms. Their proposed rules extend towards messaging apps and news media outlets, and any other kind of technology that comes in the way of their governance. This excerpt from A.S. Panneerselvan’s article on The Hindu summarises it best:
If the earlier regulatory framework was murky with many lines blurred and the onus of responsibility constantly oscillating between the originator and the intermediaries, the new guidelines give the executive unbridled power without any checks and balances.
Basically, the government controls everything you watch, read, and listen to. Additionally, they can legally ask for a transcript of your private text messages at any time.
I watch a lot of sport. It is impossible to not draw parallels with a boxer beating down an injured opponent, reducing his arms to jelly so that retaliation is out of bounds. Or a champion tennis player, on a favourite surface, bringing out the full range of tricks against a struggling opponent. Or the world’s best leg-spinner setting up a tail-ender. You get the idea — they have us on strings.
This threat isn’t new, of course. This amendment to the constitution is a natural result of a toxic echo chamber, where you are as safe as the majority deems you to be. Comply or become a road-kill in our journey to absolute domination.
Why is this troubling? Because the privilege of access, the ability to absorb all kinds of knowledge, is under grave threat. I can start my mornings with long-form articles from The New Yorker or Caravan. I can read about writers and their minds on Maria Popova’s brilliant Brain Pickings. Some of these writers are political, with ideologies different to our government.
With every step towards a singular monolith of information and narrative, we run a greater risk of shutting off half the town for those who want to wander. Easy access to books, cinema, and music is the most precious gift of digital media. For any of this to exist, a free and independent medium has to enable their industry. Pink Floyd would not have recorded The Dark Side of The Moon if their record label took an issue with the brazen social commentary on Money.
At the current rate, the only channel playing on my DTH in two years would be headed by that human advertisement for cheap cocaine masquerading as a journalist. The newspapers would be edited by his cronies.
I grew up loving newspapers. Every morning, before leaving for school, I would spend fifteen minutes going through the crisp pages of Hindustan Times. My grandfather watched on with keen eyes, egging me towards the editorials if I spent too long on the sports page. He loved my interest on the full breadth between Sampras and Sachin, but read more, he’d say. He would then walk me to school, asking me to summarise the morning news like a bulletin. In the evening, maybe after dinner, I would read a few pages from the Bengali daily — an assignment that served as much to brush up my linguistic fluency as to read a different perspective on the same news.
Newspapers, magazines, and television news formed my window to the world. I learnt about the art of cover-drives and backhanded drop-shots from colour pieces on Sportstar; about the context of the Kargil War from Barkha Dutt and Prannoy Roy’s poignant reporting; and the accomplishments and failures of pre and post-2004 Manmohan Singh from the many longreads on Economic Times.
Further down the line, I was given books to accompany the newspapers. There was one on Tendulkar, written by Gulu Ezekiel and published in 1998, that I must have re-read so many times that my folks took pity and got me a new stash on my favourite athlete. My time in front of the television, or at the park across the street, was limited to a couple of hours, but there was never a limit on how much I could read.
Great content comes to us in many shapes and forms. Take YouTube, for example. It is a hotbed for the video-journalism ecosystem. On the official Vox channel, you can find deep explorations into Indian trucks and Hong Kong’s housing problems. Head over to The New York Times, and you will find videos deconstructing Prince’s epic hits and biker gangs finding trouble with Harley-Davidson. I have spent many weekends just shuffling through Netflix’s stack of documentaries.
The internet can be a multi-cuisine buffet if you want it to be. My inbox has at least five new messages from Substack every day. I am subscribed to so many newsletters, I have a dedicated label on Gmail. This platform has done a great job of getting writers from every corner of the world under one roof.
And just like so many, I too have used it as a writing pad. Substack has felt like moving to a Macbook after a long stint with a rickety Lenovo. It has brought a bit of joy back into blogging. The newsletter model has allowed me to reach my readers — all six of them — through their inboxes. Every time I write, they know. I have scribbled on a lot between Orwellian politics to bad cricket commentary on these pages without being asked to tone it down.
Maybe I will get a sneaky email one day. A post taken down or a warning for potentially controversial content. If the government can get to Facebook and Amazon, what chance does a blogging platform really have?
Internet tools can be ephemeral, so a better one might come up tomorrow. Or maybe Substack and Medium get banned in India. Going forward, I’ll have to run through the fine print on the sign-up page to check if it is indeed a blank writing pad or a stencilled notebook.
The last thing I want, dramatic or sissy as it may sound, is for a bullet to be parcelled to my doorstep for writing a blog.
Originally published at https://linesonthegrass.substack.com.
