Indian Journalists Under Attack For Speaking Up Against Modi Govt: Reuters Report

Indian Journalists are censored, stalked and threatened with life if they have something to say against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to a Reuters report. Three senior editors have left their jobs after receiving threats of life from Modi’s followers for publishing reports which go against him, the report said.

Be it Twitter or Facebook, or on the roads, journalists are hounded by Modi’s followers. Modi himself sometimes summons them and coerces them to withdraw, the report claims.

Reuters noted the sudden exit of Bobby Ghosh from Hindustan Times for a new initiative he started that Modi reportedly did not like. The ex-editor of Hindustan Times had launched the ‘Hate Tracker’ web page to keep an account of violent religion-based crimes in India. But the move did not sit well with the Modi government’s temperament. Ghosh quit the newspaper after the owner of the newspaper met Modi in September last year. Sources close to Ghosh told Reuters, Modi was not happy with Ghosh’s editorial decisions.

Harish Khare, the Editor-in-Chief of Tribune, had also resigned last month. He told Reuters, “It (the government) will use every resource in its command to pressurize, manipulate, misguide media or any other voice which seeks to be independent of the government.”

Tribune, a widely read newspaper, had written an article exposing flaws in Aadhaar, following which it received a strong backlash from the government, Khare said.

NDTV’s Ravish Kumar said he is often threatened and hounded by Modi’s army. “As soon as he gets out of his home, he knows he is not safe,” he told Reuters.

Sagarika Ghose, a columnist with the Times of India, said: “I have had death threats and gang-rape threats on social media and also through letters sent to my home. They know where I live.”

On Wednesday, Reporters Sans Borders, in its Press Freedom Ranking 2017, ranked India 138th among 180 countries—just one level above Pakistan which sits at 139. Stumbling down two positions from 136 in 2016, India is now below countries such as Zimbabwe and Myanmar.

The Reporters Sans Borders report said: “With Hindu nationalists trying to purge all manifestations of ‘anti-national’ thought from the national debate, self-censorship is growing in the mainstream media and journalists are increasingly the targets of online smear campaigns by the most radical nationalists, who vilify them and even threaten physical reprisals.” “At least three of the journalists murdered in 2017 were targeted in connection with their work,” the report said.

GVL Narasimha Rao, the BJP spokesperson, refuted the arguments. He told Reuters the allegations of intimidation were far from the truth.

“On the contrary, the BJP has been a victim of the viciousness of large sections of the media that flourished under the patronage of the Congress, left and other opposition parties,” he told Reuters in an email. “The unabashed bias of these media against the BJP has not dented our party’s political growth.”