Restrictions on the Print Media: A Historical Perspective

 (Editor’s Note: Recently Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has announced to establish Pakistan Media Development Authority (PDMA) as reported by press according to which The federal cabinet is set to take up and approve on Tuesday (today) the draft bill for establishment of the Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA), sources in the government told Dawn.

The controversial bill has been strongly opposed by the owners of media houses and workers, but the information ministry has repeatedly expressed its resolve to establish the new authority.

The Digital Media Wing of the Ministry of Information on Monday issued a video footage of Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry with digital broadcasters, including YouTubers, where he said that declaration of around 50 percent of the newspapers in country would soon be cancelled.

In this regards WiseSindh is reproducing an article of Late Prof. Dr. Allah Rakhio Butt, this article historical perspective of restriction on media, especially print media).

 Freedom of expression has bitterly been despised by the autocratic rulers. At any time they are ready to crush the militant voice. Be they aliens, or the locals, their mindset bears striking similarity with regard to the press. The British who ruled the subcontinent for nearly two centuries like “Pheal Must” (Wild elephant) shivered in their shoes when “free comment” was given. In the dangerous state of mind they crushed what came in their way. A piece of advice in good faith for the sake of „good governance‟ can turn them paranoiac and unruly.

 The history of press restrictions may profitably traced back as early as the eighteenth century, when the press in the subcontinent was almost entirely owned by the Europeans. The first victim of official zeal was the Hickey‟s Bengal Gazette, edited by James Augustus Hickey. On 14 November 1780 its circulation outside Calcutta, through the post office, was stopped because of the paper‟s attack on Warren Hasting, the then Governor-General of India. Hickey was later fined and imprisoned in June 1781, and again in January 1782. In March 1782 his printing press was seized and his newspaper brought to an end. This was an ad hoe response, aimed at a particular title and a particular person, without the backing of the official legislation.

 Although the government watched carefully the activities of the press, no specific legislation existed to control it. In 1798the British were engaged in a great contest with the French to establish a dominant influence in India.

 In 1799 British was also at war with Tipoo in seringapatam. This crucial historical juncture prompted more rigorous supervision of the outspoken press. As a result, censorship was established in 1799, sometimes entailing the deportation of offending editors. In 1818 censorship in Bengal was eased, as it was in Bombay a little later, in 1819. Meanwhile James Silk Buckingham‟s Calcutta Journal (started in 1815) became very critical of government officials and in 1832 Buckingham suffered deportation. The same year a stricter act was passed, according to which no book or newspaper could be published without a pervious license from the Governor-General in India.

 The press has always had its well-wishers, besides its adversaries. In 1835 Sir Charles Metcalfe, the acting Governor-General, set the press free by resending previous legislation. During that year another movement of yet more moment’s significance was instigated: the introduction of western thinking among a selected class of India. The objects in view were spread of education through the English language and the nurturing of a class of natives, Indian in “blood and color” but English in “taste and opinion”, who could act as interpreters between the rulers and the alien subjects. Under this programme schools, colleges and universities were established.

 The first university was founded in 1857 at Calcutta, to be followed by1887 by four more, at Bombay, madras, Lahore and Allahabad. As the spread of education increased, the number of the educated natives soon exceeded government jobs available. Increasingly, educated Indians became the rivals of European residents in their country, especially of the officials who stood between them and the prize of their ambition. They began to find that their education was, in great measure, useless as a means of obtaining a respectable livelihood. They began to say, “You have educated us, you must employ us”. During the later half of the nineteenth century the English educated Indians, called „Babus‟, were a cause of great concern to their rulers. Dissatisfied by their status on their own country, they turned to the press and began preaching “India for Indians”.

In 1877 Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of India, wrote about them: “The only political representatives of native opinion are the Babus, whom we have educated to write Semi-seditious articles in the native press and really represent nothing but the social anomaly of their own position.” Thus the change brought by western education fostered a kind of press in India which was entirely unknown during Metcalfe’s rule. This press, mostly run by the Babus, rose during the comparatively freer times between 1835 and India Mutiny of 1857. the change came with astonishing rapidity and divided the press in India into two factions: the European-owned press and the Indian-owned press.

This division engendered a climate of suspicion and mistrust. And this proved to be the beginning of the end of mutual understanding between rulers and ruled. The latent hostility, cumulating in feelings of hatred, produced a spate of press laws which badly affected the wider relations of the two communities and, eventually, the growth of the native press in general. At base this was a conflict between British ruler and highly educated natives. Both parties were indifferent to the bulk of the population, to the rights of these masses to be educated and represented. Yet the masses turned into the educated native class, whom they regarded as their natural representatives.

Before considering restrictions on the Indian-owned press, it is advisable to look briefly at its growth during the later nineteenth century. By the middle of the century, the Indian-owned was developing rapidly and mostly in the vernacular languages. The number of native papers in English was as yet insignificant. During the post-Mutiny decades the advance continued, as the size of the reading public grew. According to one estimate of 1877, the Anglo-vernacular and vernacular newspapers in circulation throughout India numbered 382. of these, 102 were published in Bengal and 86 in the Bombay Presidency, and the remaining in other parts. The Bengal Presidency boasted two papers with a circulation of over 2000, the Amrita Bazar Patrika with 2,217 and the Saloba Samachar with approximately 3000, the later having a larger circulation at that date and did the entire native press in 1850.

 Among the Bombay Presidency papers the largest were the Gujrati Rast Goftar and the Subodha Patrika in Marathi, with ac circulation of 1800 each. In the North Western provinces nearly every principal town had its local Hindustani newspaper. In addition to vernacular and Anglovernacular papers, some of the provinces boasted important journals published entirely in English: in the Bengal Presidency there were the Indian Mirror, the Hindoo Patriot, the Bengalee, and the Indian Nation; in the Bombay Presidency, the Indian Spectator and the Sind Times; in Madras, the Hindu, and in the Punjab, the Tribune. Owing to the language in which they were published, the native English newspapers reached only a comparatively small, though widely scattered and educated classes. The vernacular papers had more universal readership, being read by princes, high officials and important people in all460 Native States.

 In the territories of British India they were read by all native employees of they Indian administration; by school, college and university teachers, and by large proportion of the great land holders, rich merchants and bankers. Through these channels the influence of native newspapers filtered down to a not inconsiderable portion of the masses, while their teaching affected approximately two million Indian youths who were receiving education in the various educational institutions of the land. The fear of so powerful an influence was natural. No sooner did the native press begin to develop than certain high officials, including Mount Stuart Elphinstone, the Governor of the Bombay, believed that an unrestricted press in the hands of natives must inevitably endanger British supremacy in India.

The native papers were alleged to be libeling all officers and inciting an ignorant and irrational people who were ready to accept any statement simply because it was in print. Perhaps more worrying than any of this was the circulation of underground newspapers, getting through the post unchecked: Who is to stop a lithographed newspaper, looking precisely like a letter, and addressed in English, from passing through the post? The mode of publication is just as cheap as any other. And who is to stop a conductor of such a journal undeterred as he would be by the ordinary restriction of law, from sinking to yet lower depths of virulence. We all know that secret literature is. The effectiveness of official vigilance in stemming the endless flow of libelous literature was suspect and pressure was mounting on the government to take positive measures against the native press. However, government strategy was not as yet to fetter the liberty of the press. In this it had the support of certain European newspapers: “It is strong government, not a censorship, which takes the sting out of press. If we can not rule the country in the teeth of a dozen half-educated scoundrels armed with a lithographic stone apiece, the sooner we are out of it the better.” Thus a spate of press legislation followed until 1947 and beyond up to PEMRA regulations 2003 and their amendments.

(By Dr. Allah Rakhio Butt)