Opinion

Whatsapped ’75

Would a mobile-enabled Emergency have been different?

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Whatsapped ’75
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Ranchi was a sleepy little town back in 1975. Compared to a dozen daily newspapers that come out today, there was not one then. Newspapers from Calcutta, the Dak or the early edition, arrived by train in the morning while the late city editions of newspapers from Delhi, more up to date with news, rea­ched in the afternoon by air. There was of course no television, not even Door­darshan, which was confined to Delhi at the time. Offices of news agencies PTI and UNI were almost always the first to receive information from the outside world—while people with access to the newsroom of the All India Radio were marginally better off—AIR’s editors and reporters had relatively fewer restrictions on making phone calls that cost a fortune if they ever came through.

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On June 26 evening, when Emer­gency was declared, power supply to Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Delhi was allegedly cut off to prevent or delay the publication of newspapers. Delhi newspapers did not arrive the next day but almost everyone who converged at the Modern Book Depot to buy their copy seemed to know it had something to do with the Eme­rgency. The editors had been put in jail, claimed someone, while someone older commented that all newspapers were to be closed down. As the bureaucracy struggled to put censorship in place (first they tried to post officers at every media house; then they ordered the media to produce page proofs to the censor and when even that proved unmanageable, they reluctan­tly allowed newspapers to publish what they pleased but with the warning that they would be booked under the Defence of India Rules if they violated censorship guidelines). What I, barely 19 at the time and growing up in a media milieu, rem­ember is the relish with which bureaucrats set about fixing newspapers. One of the first letters from the deputy commissioner within 48 hours of the Emergency threatened an editor that any further violation of censorship “would bring down the full vigour of law” on the establishment.

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Information dried up with government officials and PSU executives citing the Official Secrets Act to deny information on even the number of ration cards distributed in a district. And yet we seemed to receive reasonably reliable information about what was happening in the rest of the country and pretty fast. Have you heard George (Fernandes) is mobilising an underground force to take on the government? He changes his disguise every day. Did you hear about this lady, Ruksana Sultana, with that over-sized sunglass? She is the companion of Sanjay Gandhi these days? Did you know about the demolitions at Turkman Gate in Delhi? Hey, Ramachandran is just back from Delhi and he heard this from a senior bureaucrat—everyone or almost everyone appeared to have some source, some relative or friend in high places and information would spread like wild fire. Underground literature also flourished. Mostly cyclostyled and often smudged and unreadable in places, open letters, commentaries and newsletters popped up at regular intervals, shared among friends, some of whom took the precaution of hiding them in their underwear lest they were physically searched somewhere.

Emergency jokes also flourished and the wonder was that the same jokes would be heard on visits to different cities. Could they have all spread by word of mouth? Would things have been different with cellphones? Would it have been difficult to suspend freedom of expression for as long? Or, would it have helped mobilise a far more violent resistance than what we saw? The government could still have blocked messages, as they do in Kashmir; and bureaucrats and police officers could have exchanged information much faster. Surveillance could have been even more oppressive. Who knows?

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