“A Paper Agitation”: The All India Newspaper Editors’ Conference, the Indian State, and the Struggle Over the First Amendment

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe addition of the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution is considered a crucial moment in the constitutional history of liberty of speech and expression, and by extension, freedom of the press, in postcolonial India. Aimed at limiting the right to free speech and expression through several caveats, the attempt to pass the amendment roused fierce press protest led by the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference (AINEC). Such protest notwithstanding, the Nehru government succeeded in passing the amendment through Parliament. This article seeks to revisit the months of April to July 1951 to understand how the press and, in particular, its primary organization—AINEC—understood the threat to their liberty and organized against it. In particular, the arguments put forth by AINEC and the methods applied by its leaders to unify the press shall be studied through the letters, meetings, and editorials of AINEC and its major functionaries. The reactions these endeavors elicited, in turn, shall be studied to explain why the attempted unity, and the larger protest, ultimately failed, and what this failure can explain about the limits of press unity and the difficulties of opposing a nationalist government in early postcolonial India.KEYWORDS: AINECFirst Amendment (India)Indian Constitutionpostcolonial Indiapress freedom Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. Jagdish Natarajan, History of Journalism in India (New Delhi, India: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1955), 173–75, 250.2. Robin Jeffrey, “Mission, Money and Machinery: Indian Newspapers in the Twentieth Century,” Institute of South Asian Studies Working Paper, no. 117 (November 25, 2010): 17, https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/media/isas_papers/ISAS%20Working%20Paper%20117%20Mission,%20Money%20and%20Machinery.pdf.3. Emily Rook-Koepsel, “Dissenting against the Defence of India Rules: Emergency Regulations and the Space of Extreme Government Action,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (August 2, 2018): 650–54, https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.20181485475.4. Rook-Koepsel, “Dissenting against the Defence of India Rules,” 654.5. Devika Sethi, War over Words; Censorship in India: 1930–1960 (New Delhi, India: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 204–7.6. For a study of how the First Amendment has been interpreted by Marxist and liberal historians and scholars, see Nivedita Menon, “Citizenship and the Passive Revolution: Interpreting the First Amendment,” Economic and Political Weekly 39, no. 18 (2004): 1812–19.7. Geerpuram Nadadur Srinivasa Raghavan, The Press in India (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1994), 138–43.8. V. Krishna Ananth, Between Freedom and Unfreedom: The Press in Independent India (New Delhi, India: Alcove, 2020), 46–57.9. Tripurdaman Singh, Sixteen Stormy Days (New Delhi, India: Penguin Random House, 2020), 90–98.10. Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (April 1983): 147–60, https://doi.org/10.2307/2095101; and Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests and Identities (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014), 147–57.11. Matthias Nordqvist, Robert C. Picard, and Ossi Pesamaa, “Industry Associations as Change Agents: The Institutional Roles of Newspaper Associations,” Journal of Media Business Studies 7, no. 3 (2010): 51–69, https://doi.org/10.1080/16522354.2010.11073511.12. Marco Althaus, “The Weimar Republic’s ‘Press Parliament:’ Institutionalizing the Daily Government Press Conference in Berlin, 1918–33,” Journalism History 44, no. 4 (December 2019): 208, https://doi.org/10.1080/00947679.2019.12059213. This author is grateful to the anonymous reviewer for suggesting that the development and functions of AINEC be explored within the ambit of existing theoretical explorations, including institutional theory.13. Natarajan did not discuss his sources in the book. This is probably because the book is Part II of the report of the First Press Commission, and the sources and methods of the Commission are provided in Part I of the report. For the sources and methods of the First Press Commission, see Government of India, Report of the Press Commission (New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1955), 1–12. The reference to Natarajan’s history is on page 10.14. Sethi, War over Words, 201–14.15. Ananth, Between Freedom and Unfreedom, 33–58.16. Raghavan, The Press in India, 239–40.17. Of them, Indian Express and Times of India commanded circulation of over 100,000 copies per day. Registrar of Newspapers, Annual Report of the Registrar of Newspapers in India (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1958), 38–39.18. Registrar of Newspapers, Annual Report of the Registrar of Newspapers in India, 51–72.19. Bombay Chronicle was at this time a weekly, while Economic Weekly was a newly launched periodical. Both of these were consulted primarily because their archives were digitized by the Asiatic Society of Bombay and the Sameeksha Trust respectively. Hindustan Times is listed in the RNI report of 1958 as a daily. However, in 1951, it was a weekly.20. Boobli George Verghese, Warrior of the Fourth Estate: Ramnath Goenka of the Express (New Delhi, India: Viking, 2005), 84–92; and T. J. S. George, ed., The Goenka Letters: Agony and Ecstasy in the Indian Express (New Delhi, India: Pinnacle Books, 2006), 1–12, 183–84, 191, 250–55.21. B. Shiva Rao, The Framing of India’s Constitution: Select Documents (New Delhi, India: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1967), v-ix.22. Kanchan Karopady Bannerjee, The Benegal Brothers: The Story of a Family and Its Times 1864–1975 (Pune, India: Ameya Prakashan, 2010), 82–106.23. Arvind Elangovan, “Constitutionalism as Discipline: Benegal Shiva Rao and the Forgotten Histories of the Indian Constitution,” South Asia 41, no. 3 (2018): 605–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2018.1481596.24. Joachim Alva, his wife Violet Alva, and their son and daughter-in-law, Niranjan and Margaret Alva, have all been members of Parliament and public figures. However, only Margaret Alva has written a firsthand account of the Alva family in her autobiography, Courage and Commitment: An Autobiography (New Delhi, India: Rupa, 2016), 23–32. Apart from a cursory reference to Joachim Alva as her father-in-law, there is not much to be found in this work on him.25. K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword (Bombay, India: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965), vi-viii, 230; and M. Chalapathi Rau, Press in India (New Delhi, India: Allied Publishing House, 1968), 48–61.26. In other words, an attempt has been made to verify that the person making the comment was an “eyewitness” and a “participant” in the events narrated by them.27. Rook-Koepsel, “Dissenting against the Defence of India Rules,” 643. AINEC was thus a body of editors as opposed to proprietors. The proprietors’ body was the Indian and Eastern Newspapers Society or IENS.28. AINEC, Constitution of the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference (Madras, India: The National Press, 1942): 1.29. AINEC, Constitution of the All-India Newspaper, 1–6.30. Sethi, War over Words, 177–87. This was colloquially called the Delhi Code.31. Letter from S. J. L. Oliver, Secretary, Home Department, to R. Tottenham, Additional Secretary, Home Department, March 6, 1944, File No. 33/6/44-POL(I), Home (Political-I) Department, Government of India.32. This can be verified by comparing AINEC membership lists during this period to the newspapers listed in the Annual Report of the Registrar of Newspapers.33. This has been explained by Sethi in her study of the work of AINEC and PACs in the 1946–1949 period, i.e., the period immediately preceding that of this article. See Sethi, War over Words, 177–96. However, she has not utilized institutional theory in her work.34. Open defiance of AINEC was, in fact, noted in contemporary sources. The Urdu press, which favored the Muslim League in general, tended to behave as if they were unaware of the Delhi Code. See Sethi, War over Words, 184. The Indian state after independence came down heavily on the Urdu press. See Aritra Majumdar, “A Partition of the Public Sphere: Violence, State Repression and the Press in India and Pakistan, 1947–1949,” Media History 29, no. 3 (2023): 368–83, https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2022.2079479.35. Ananth, Between Freedom and Unfreedom, 50.36. “Press Advisory Boards to Suspend Work,” Times of India, June 25, 1951. Devdas Gandhi and Benegal Shiva Rao, both members of AINEC, were also representatives of the IENS to government deliberations. See Sethi, War over Words, 146–47. It was not difficult for the press barons to circumvent the clause stating that only editors or their nominees could be members. Goenka, for instance, was listed as the chief editor of some of his publications, while Gupta performed a similar function at the Tej and Tushar Kanti Ghosh at Amrita Bazar Patrika.37. S. A. Sabavala, letter to the editor, Times of India, June 4, 1951. K. Rama Rao’s closeness to Nehru dated from his time as editor of National Herald, a paper Nehru was closely associated with. His contacts with Nehru continued during his Searchlight and Indian News Chronicle years. See K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword, 126–28, 230. Devdas Gandhi was a son of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the son-in-law of C. Rajagopalachari. See M. K. Gandhi, “A Word to Lakshmi,” in This Was Bapu, ed. R. K. Prabhu (Ahmedabad, India: Navjivan Publishing House, 1954), 80.38. Sethi, War over Words, 241.39. “Nothing Short of First Amendment to Constitution Will Do,” Bombay Chronicle, June 24, 1951.40. In K. Rama Rao’s words, “The AINEC had tamely accepted the press restrictions under the Nehru-Liaquat pact, but it spoke for nobody. I [then editor of Searchlight] was not for tolerating a futile appeasement policy towards Pakistan which only encouraged its bellicose intransigence.” See K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword, 234.41. Sharad Karkhanis, Indian Politics and the Role of the Press (New Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing House, 1982), 191–96; and Sethi, War over Words, 208–09.42. The demand for partition of India in order to provide the Indian Muslims a homeland of their own had been crystallizing throughout the 1940s under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League. Following multiple rounds of negotiations, the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, declared on June 6, 1947, that India would be partitioned into two sovereign countries, India and Pakistan, in August 1947. In the last months of British rule in India (some historians date this violence from the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946), violent communal riots between Hindus and Muslims increased manifold in their spread and intensity, covering large parts of North India in the process. The British had, as part of their withdrawal plan, handed over the bulk of the administration to an interim government that included both the Congress and Muslim League. However, congressmen and “leaguers” blamed each other for the spiraling violence. Sections of the press of these regions, particularly in the major publication centers like Lahore, Karachi, Delhi, and Calcutta, openly took sides and aided the spread of rumors and communal hatred. Once the country had been partitioned in August 1947 (Pakistan became independent on August 14 and India on August 15), the interim government transitioned into the first government of independent India with most Muslim League members departing for Pakistan. The Congress, now firmly in power, attempted to suppress the continuing violence in regions like East Punjab, Delhi, and United Provinces. As part of this, curbs were imposed on the press of these regions. Such curbs were initially imposed on the basis of colonial laws such as the Defence of India Rules (DIR), but the government went on to pass emergency laws of its own. Devika Sethi has studied this transitional period with specific focus on censorship. See Sethi, War over Words, 175–99. For an understanding of how the press was impacted by these developments, Majumdar’s short study of the period immediately before and after Partition can be referred to. See Majumdar, “A Partition of the Public Sphere,” 368–83.43. Sethi, War over Words, 231.44. Ananth, Between Freedom and Unfreedom, 35–46.45. Singh, Sixteen Stormy Days, 81–82.46. “Hands Off the Press,” Economic Weekly, May 26, 1951.47. Singh, Sixteen Stormy Days, 90–92.48. “Nehru Attends AINEC Committee Meeting,” Indian Express, February 9, 1951.49. The rumors were considered reliable enough to be the subject of editorials. For instance, see “Liberty and Vigilance,” Statesman, April 10, 1951.50. The rules of legislative procedure do not make it mandatory for bills to be published before their introduction on the floor of the House. They only require that members of the Parliament (and specific government ministries) be provided with advance copies. However, once the bill was introduced, it was published in the Gazette of India, which made it an official part of the legislative record. It has become current practice to invite public comments on draft bills that entail major legislation and to attempt to incorporate these when introducing the final version of the bill in Parliament. If the draft is not placed before the public, the government could, if it wanted to, take various sections of public opinion into confidence. Journalists were furthermore well-placed to obtain details of the major provisions of upcoming bills and in ordinary cases where the government was in fact bringing forth the bill (perhaps in the next session), the latter overlooked the advance reporting of the bill’s provisions by the press. Lastly, most bills were claimed to be fulfilling promises previously made in manifestos or speeches, and hence, the contents of those draft bills which were yet to be tabled could be surmised from the earlier speeches of the political leaders.51. The letters were reproduced in print in the Hindustan Standard. See “Nehru-Deshbandhu Correspondence,” Hindustan Standard, May 24, 1951.52. “Liberty and Vigilance,” Statesman.53. “Scope of Changes to Constitution Reduced,” Statesman, May 4, 1951.54. Moving laws was usually the prerogative of the law minister, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. The significance of Nehru personally moving the law, and thus staking his reputation on its passage, was not lost on the press. Lanka Sundaram, for instance, commented, “Fearing the reaction if the Bill were to be presented by a lesser man, Nehru took the onerous responsibility on his own shoulders.” Lanka Sundaram, “Our Inglorious First Amendment,” Hindustan Standard, May 21, 1951.55. “Nehru Introduces Bill to Amend Constitution,” Statesman, May 13, 1951.56. Sethi, War over Words, 205–6.57. “Nehru Defends Bill to Amend Constitution,” Statesman, May 17, 1951.58. “MPs Criticize Amendment Bill,” Statesman, May 18, 1951.59. “Nehru’s Bill Sent to Select Committee,” Statesman, May 19, 1951.60. “Calcutta Editors in Delhi,” Hindustan Standard, May 19, 1951; and “Editors Deputation to Meet Nehru Today,” Hindustan Standard, May 20, 1951.61. “Calcutta Editors in Delhi,” Hindustan Standard, May 19, 1951; and UPI & PTI, “Editors Deputation to Meet Nehru Today,” Hindustan Standard, May 20, 1951. It is not possible in this limited space to give a biographical sketch of all the members of the delegation. However, it may be pointed out that all of them were veterans of the field of journalism. More information about them may be found in Thayil Jacob Sony George, Lessons in Journalism: The Story of Pothan Joseph (New Delhi, India: Viva Books, 2007); Jogendra Nath Sahni, Truth about the Indian Press (Bombay, India: Allied Publishers, 1974); and Shankar Ghosh, Scent of a Story: A Newspaperman’s Journey (Noida, India: Harper Collins, 2018).62. “Curb on Freedom of Expression Resented—Nehru-Deshbandhu Correspondence,” Hindustan Standard, May 24, 1951.63. “Amendments to Article 19—Sri Nehru’s Reply to AINEC Deputation,” Hindustan Standard, May 21, 1951. Goenka, Gupta, Pothan Joseph, Devdas Gandhi, Jagdish Natarajan (editor of the Tribune and author of History of Journalism in India), and A. D. Mani were the members who finalized the letter.64. “Curb on Freedom of Expression Resented—Nehru-Deshbandhu Correspondence,” Hindustan Standard, May 24, 1951.65. “Curb on Freedom of Expression Resented.”66. “Amendments to Article 19,” Hindustan Standard, May 21, 1954.67. “Amendments to Article 19.”68. “Amendments to Article 19.”69. “Amendments to Article 19.”70. “Amendments to Article 19.”71. Some representative examples of views on the First Amendment from different newspapers are as follows: “Fundamental Rights,” Times of India, May 15, 1951; “Freedom of the Press,” Times of India, May 21, 1951; “Unconvincing,” Times of India, May 30, 1951; “No Hasty Amendment,” Statesman, May 12, 1951; “Government and the Press,” Statesman, May 24, 1951; and “Hands Off the Press,” Economic Weekly, May 26, 1951.72. “Freedom of the Press,” Times of India.73. “Withdraw It,” Hindustan Standard, May 17, 1951.74. “Fundamental Rights,” Times of India.75. “Journalists Protest,” Times of India, June 1, 1951.76. “Proposed Amendment to Constitution Resented,” Hindustan Standard, May 25, 1951.77. Natarajan, History of Journalism in India, 250.78. K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword, 263.79. “Proposed Amendment to Article 19(2),” Statesman, May 25, 1951.80. K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword, 289–90.81. M. Chalapathi Rau, “The Press after Nehru,” Economic Weekly, July 1964, 1249.82. “Insaf” literally means “justice,” and it was the pseudonym used by Durga Das, a noted journalist and a senior figure in the Hindustan Times establishment. He said the name was inspired from Gandhi’s usage of Insaf Raj in this works. His recollection of his Political Diary days is given in his memoirs. He does not, however, mention this particular clash of words with Goenka. See Durga Das, India From Curzon to Nehru and After (London, UK: Collins), 212.83. Ramnath Goenka, “Obtaining Safeguards for the Freedom of Press,” Times of India, May 25, 1951. The author has referenced Insaf’s opinion from Goenka’s rebuttal since the original article could not be obtained in the newspaper archives. Insaf was the pseudonym used by Durga Das, an editor of Hindustan Times. He wrote a column titled Political Diary under this pseudonym, promising not to treat anyone as a “sacred cow.” His own account of the beginnings of this column are given in his political memoirs. See Durga Das, India from Curzon to Nehru and After (London, UK: Collins), 212–13.84. Goenka, “Obtaining Safeguards for the Freedom of Press.”85. “Nothing Short of First Amendment to Constitution Will Do,” Bombay Chronicle, May 24, 1951.86. Verghese, Warrior of the Fourth Estate, 90.87. K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword, 256–57. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewer for pointing out that this statement suggests insights into the decision-making of the proprietors of the Indian News Chronicle. This is a valid point, since the decision to bring in Kripalani is obtained from Rao’s memoirs. While Rao, as the editor, would have been privy to the decisions of the proprietors, it has to be admitted that his insights into the proprietors’ decisions are difficult to corroborate through alternative sources. Hence, the author has qualified the Indian News Chronicle experience by stating that it is narrated by Rao. The arrangement between Gupta and Goenka, and the position given to Rao in this setup, however, is corroborated by Verghese in his biography of Goenka. See Verghese, Warrior of the Fourth Estate, 89–90.88. K. Rama Rao, The Pen as My Sword, 257–59.89. Government of India, The Constitution (Amendment) Bill 1951: Report of the Select Committee (New Delhi, India: Parliament Secretariat, 1951), 1.90. “Congress MPs Demand Freedom to Vote,” Hindustan Standard, May 24, 1951.91. Lanka Sundaram, “Revolt Against Constitution Amendment,” Times of India, May 29, 1951.92. Editor, “The Ayes Have It,” Hindustan Standard, June 2, 1951.93. Editor, “Not Enough,” Times of India, May 28, 1951.94. “Parliament to Consider Constitution Bill,” Statesman, June 1, 1951; and “Efforts to Allay Opposition,” Hindustan Standard, June 1, 1951.95. “Efforts to Allay Opposition.”96. “Parliament to Consider Constitution Bill.”97. “Efforts to Allay Opposition.”98. “Main Clauses of Nehru’s Bill Passed,” Statesman, June 2, 1951.99. S. B. Sabavala, “Letter to the Editor of Times of India,” Times of India, June 4, 1951.100. Sabavala.101. The Congress MPs who were leading AINEC voted to enact it or abstained. This placed them in an anomalous position as they had voted in a manner that went against the agitation they themselves were leading.102. “Press Advisory Boards to Suspend Work,” Times of India, June 25, 1951.103. “Press Advisory Boards to Suspend Work.”104. “Press Advisory Boards to Suspend Work.”105. “Press Advisory Boards to Suspend Work.”106. “Press Advisory Boards to Suspend Work.” The signatories were H. M. Joshi, P. V. Gadgil, J. Natarajan, D. S. Potnis, D. R. Nisai, and Mr. Puri (Delhi). (Since the member lists of AINEC are unavailable, it is impossible to verify which Mr. Puri is being referred to in this artifact.)107. “The Press Fights for its Freedom,” Economic Weekly, June 30, 1951, 630. Reference to the “Bombay group of newspapers” is especially interesting, since there was no defined grouping as such within AINEC. Here, it may be surmised that the Bombay group of newspapers refers to the Times of India, Bombay Chronicle, and other newspapers that were published in Bombay, which took a harder line against the government compared to the standing committee leaders. In the AINEC session, its leader was Frank Moraes, the editor of Times of India. The Economic Weekly was a relatively new Bombay publication, started in 1949. It would be renamed in 1966 to Economic and Political Weekly. See “About Us,” Economic and Political Weekly, https://www.epw.in/about-us.html.108. “The Press Fights for its Freedom.” The opposition of Times of India’s editor, Frank Moraes, to AINEC leadership is documented in the reports of the tumultuous AINEC meeting appearing in the press. However, the remaining members of the group remain unidentified. That being said, this group would have held enough clout within AINEC, either by sheer numbers or by influence, that they could defeat resolutions brought forward by Standing Committee leaders like Devdas Gandhi. See notes 100, 105, and 108.109. “AINEC Resolutions are Misleading,” Times of India, June 28, 1951.110. “Guarding Press Liberties,” Bombay Chronicle, July 15, 1951.111. “Press Bill Passed—2 Year Limit,” Statesman, October 7, 1951. The bill, when it finally came to be enacted, came to be known as the Press (Objectionable Matters) Act, 1951.112. “The Ayes Have It.”113. M. Chalapathi Rau, The Press in India (New Delhi, India: National Book Trust, 1974), 160.114. Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, and Aditya Mukherjee, India Since Independence (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books, 2000), 168–74.115. A useful comparison may be made with the same government’s response to the controversial Hindu Code Bill. Faced with spirited protests by the rightist sections of the Indian political sphere (particularly the Ram Rajya Parishad and the Hindu Mahasabha), the government decided against proceeding with the bill. Some scholars are of the opinion that this contributed to the resignation of B. R. Ambedkar, a leading figure in the drafting of the Constitution, from the Cabinet. Eventually, the Hindu Code Bill was split into four parts, and substantially watered down to reduce the intensity of opposition. These four parts were then debated and passed as separate pieces of legislation between 1952 and 1956. For a detailed study of the extent of opposition to the Hindu Code Bill, see Chitra Sinha, Debating Patriarchy: The Hindu Code Bill Controversy in India, 1941–1956 (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2012), 100–107.116. The Press Council of India was formally established in 1966 even though the Press Commission had recommended its creation more than a decade earlier. Following the period of repression during the Emergency (1975–77), the Press Council was reestablished in 1979 and continues to exist to this day. See PCI, Brief Resume of PCI, Press Council of India, https://www.presscouncil.nic.in/ResumeOfPCI.aspx.117. Ananth, Between Freedom and Unfreedom, 190–99.118. AINEC, Code of Ethics for the Press in Reporting and Commenting on Communal Incidents Adopted in 1968, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/edit/ethiccodes/ALLIND1. html.119. Dinker Rao Mankekar, The Press under Pressure (New Delhi, India: Indian Book Company, 1973), 130–43.120. For instance, see S. N. Singh, “A Free Press?” Indian Express, September 30, 1980.121. Editors’ Guild of India, “About Us,” https://editorsguild.in/about-us/.122. Regrettably, a detailed study of AINEC through the entirety of its existence in postcolonial India is beyond the scope of the present work. Furthermore, any attempt at such a work would require access to substantial archives of AINEC, including annual membership lists, minutes of meetings, as well as letters between members themselves. To the best knowledge of the author, these materials are not available, or are available for only a few years and in a very fragmentary state.Additional informationNotes on contributorsAritra MajumdarAritra Majumdar is an assistant professor in history in Sivanath Sastri College, an affiliated college under the University of Calcutta. His research focuses on the public sphere in late colonial and postcolonial India, with special focus on the role of newspapers. His recent contributions include a study of the impact of Partition on newspapers in 1947, and a study of the evolution of ideas of press freedom during the 1950s. He also has authored a book on the evolution of ideas relating to economic planning in India in the late colonial period, which was published in 2021.