‘Political Line’

THERE WAS A TIME when news of India in the Western media was a rarity. I recall a time, as a student in London in the second half of the 1970s, when we were dependant on visitors from home to update us on happenings in India. The mainstream newspapers had occasional articles, but if my memory serves me right, a disproportionate number of them were about Indian exotica—the last steam engine to roll out of Bombay, the pukka sahib who had stayed behind in Assam, and so on. Only rarely was politics thought significant enough to grace the foreign pages.

The reason was obvious. India in the 1970s was well and truly entrenched in the ranks of the ‘developing’ countries. Its economy wasn’t of tremendous significance to the West and its politics mattered only when lots of blood was spilled. The great army of Overseas Indians who now dot the literary landscape of New York and London didn’t exist at that time, with perhaps the sole exception of VS Naipaul.

It is very different now. I learnt from a wonderful interview ANI’s Smita Prakash did with Shashi Shekhar, a former CEO of Prasar Bharati, that audiences had plateaued in the West and the big media houses were greedily eyeing the vast numbers of well-off Indians familiar with the English language. This would explain why there is a surfeit of writings on the General Election involving some 970 million registered voters. India is now a lucrative media market for Western corporations.

That’s understandable and even welcome in this age of globalisation. However, Shashi Shekhar did all of us a great favour by publishing an exhaustive list of headlines in Western publications on the politics around the General Election. This was the same list that Congress’ in-house Inspector Clouseau published minus any attribution to show that the international community was well and truly convinced that Modi was regarded as an autocrat, a tyrant and someone who had single-handedly destroyed the institutions of Indian democracy. Glancing at the headings, most Indians would think that the Western media is woefully one-sided in its coverage, but to the supporters of the old, dispossessed dynasty, there is no other side to India’s reality.

I have often wondered why these publications persist in this unending vilification of Modi. Is it because they genuinely believe Modi is an ogre, comparable to the Supreme Leader of North Korea? Or is it because they have made Hate Modi an integral part of their editorial policy from which they cannot move?

Sometime in March this year, a well-connected Indian writer who had spent the past decade in London approached me to present the ‘other side’ to the West. He said someone from the New York Times would connect with me. On March 5, I received an email from Dan Martin, based in Seoul, who “commissions and edits guest essays for NYT Opinion”. He wrote, “we would love to find a thought-provoking essay on the appeal of PM’s BJP movement.” He was particularly concerned that the Western media coverage “creates the perception among some readers of India being consumed by some sort of unwanted hostile takeover, when in reality the BJP government under Mr Modi has been the choice of millions of Indian voters…”

He repeated this invitation on April 19 and asked me for a potted version of an essay. He was fine with my essay structure and asked me to incorporate some of the criticisms of Modi, which too was fine with me. The 1,500-word essay which was sympathetic to Modi and had elaborated on the shift in the Indian establishment, was sent to Martin on April 22. He responded, saying that he would have a video call with his team and get back asap. When he did get back after two days, it was to say that “it looks as though we won’t move forward with this. Sorry for that.”

To be fair, he did offer to explain why the essay didn’t quite meet their expectations. I replied there was no need. I understood “editorial policy”. He thanked me for “understanding” and that was that.

The reason for narrating the journey of the rejection of a commissioned essay is not to unearth some conspiracy. I have no doubt that when the essay was commissioned by one well-meaning editor, its aim was to dispel an impression that the NYT had its own jihad against Modi. They also chose me because I had a long track record of being supportive of Modi from his Gujarat days. So, what I wrote was not unanticipated—and in any case, they had pre-approved a potted version. The problem arose once the essay was referred to a larger editorial team. That’s when the supremacy of the ‘political line’ was asserted.

What the Western media is practising isn’t journalism. It’s straightforward politics.

media marketNarendra ModiNew York TimesOverseas Indianswestern media