The Free Voice Read online

  THE FREE VOICE

  Contents

  1. Speaking Out

  2. The Robo-Public and the Building of a New Democracy

  3. The National Project for Instilling Fear

  4. Wherever a Mob Gathers Is Hitler’s Germany

  5. Being the People

  6. The Babas of India Are Here to Stay

  7. How We Love

  8. The Fundamental Right to Privacy

  9. Let’s Treat Ourselves to an Ice Cream This Independence Day

  Speaking Out

  ‘A judge dies. His son and wife are unable to summon up the courage to speak their minds. Shouldn’t the Chief Justice of India assure them of safety, making it possible for them to speak? If a citizen, out of fear, loses the courage and the will to live, to speak, who will reassure him? If, as the upholders of the Constitution, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Prime Minister cannot provide this reassurance, who can? Have we allowed power to become such a blanket of fear that it will keep terrorizing us and we will pull the same blanket over ourselves for security, lying helpless under the very terror that makes us tremble? An ordinary citizen, too, needs answers, or else everyone will believe that if this can happen to a judge, absolutely no one is safe.

  I want to confess something to you. I felt fear, too, when I read the story. Yet I’m devoting this Prime Time show to it so that Anuradha Biyani does not feel that her brother, the judge, was probably killed and we did not speak. Judge Loya’s son should not feel that someone killed his father and none of his countrymen will speak for him. It isn’t as if we aren’t afraid; we are. But the way out of this fear was to bring this story before everyone. Now, whatever will be, will be.’

  ‘Now, whatever will be, will be.’ This closing sentence of the NDTV India Prime Time Show of 23 November 2017 was for my viewers, and also for myself. I had found release from the fear that had held me in its suffocating grip for two days. Through the duration of the show, I’d felt that every single word was holding me back, as if to warn me: ‘Enough, don’t go any further. You cannot put yours and yourself in danger just to overcome your fear. Fear does not end after you’ve spoken out. Even after you’ve spoken, fear lies in wait for you with its nets and snares.’

  But I had spoken, and I was free.

  That November afternoon, as I was heading to the NDTV studios to conduct my usual Prime Time show, I was wrestling with the silence surrounding the allegation that a judge had died in suspicious circumstances. The silence lay thick even three days after the news broke. A report had been published in Caravan magazine which raised questions about the death of Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya, who had been presiding over the CBI court in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case in Gujarat, in which BJP president Amit Shah was the prime accused. No statement from the judge’s wife and son had come after this story broke. Was it because of some terror that the family could not say anything? Can people be so afraid that they cease to have faith in everyone? Even in themselves? I was myself living the fear that must have been inside them. I was worried, too, that the story in Caravan could be wrong. I felt as if I had somehow put myself on the line. This story wasn’t mine, but now it had become also mine.

  I am making no claims about the story in Caravan, but the fear and the silence surrounding it had set up a shuddering within me. Perhaps fear is not even the right word for this, but doubt. Doubts create all sorts of restlessness within. They shatter one from the inside; like someone is using a hammer and a chisel to chip away at a wall. Before I broke down and became even more of a ruin, I decided to broadcast Judge Loya’s story on prime time.

  It was almost 9 p.m. The fear was threatening to overwhelm me. There was no one around me with whom I could share my apprehensions. I looked within myself and saw a news anchor falling into a deep dark well. To save himself, all that he had was his voice, which he wanted to reach to people at maximum pitch and volume. I used each word as the step of a ladder and began to climb out of the depths of my fear. And, after I finished broadcasting the Prime Time episode, it felt as if I had kept a promise which I had made to Judge Loya’s wife. I had also freed myself of fear.

  But, afterwards, others’ fears lay in wait for me. My phone buzzed incessantly. The voices at the other end were all chilled. I felt as if I wouldn’t even be able to get home. Unpleasant doubts crept into every conversation. I gradually began to feel alone. It felt as if each person was delivering a final warning before going away. The story in Caravan could have been wrong, that was plausible; but other than that apprehension, had I also crossed that line which dictates that certain people and versions of certain stories should not be questioned? Were people actually, genuinely, so afraid of that man at whose doorstep Judge Loya’s story finally washed up?

  Fear can be real. It can also be imaginary; but the factors which create and control imaginary fears are very real. So speaking out will never be easy. It may even well be an act of bravery, but what is significant is something else. When you speak, you must first challenge yourself. You first become your own interrogator before asking questions of others. If your life is clean and uncorrupted your voice will have the ring of truth. To speak, you must persevere; it isn’t a single act done in a moment or without effort. You strain your entire being from within. In the same way in which Usain Bolt leans his body forward into the wind at the finishing line. The farther you lean your body into the finishing line when you speak, the closer you will come to the truth. But the truth is not just a set of bald facts, easily gathered and stated. Truth is also defined by its time, the prevailing environment and the systems that run the institutions in that environment. So while a ribbon awaits Bolt at the finishing line, for people like us, there is a concrete wall. When you reach the finishing line, you run straight into that wall. Everything, your job, your credibility, your life itself, is at stake.

  Where your fear ends is where those who sit at the top of the power hierarchy go to work. You are freed from one fear but they will spread ten more around you like booby traps. Courage is nothing but the struggle to emerge from one circle of fear into another, then another; a constant struggle to be free of fear. These days, whenever I write something, say something, afterwards, people introduce me to new and different varieties of fear. Even if what I say is commonplace and non-controversial, people caution me: ‘Aren’t you afraid? Take care of yourself.’ Whenever I hear these words I see a world of fear on the speakers’ faces. These exhortations to keep safe have made people cowards. Because they are not warnings to speak carefully, but warnings to not speak at all.

  Whenever someone asks me if I am afraid to speak out, fear spreads its wings out within me. I go back to being that Ravish of my boyhood days who would recite the Hanuman Chalisa and chant ‘Jai Bajrang Bali’ as he walked underneath the bel tree. I had heard someone say that ghosts reside in bel trees. If there was no one on the road, I would run as fast as I could, my slippers in my hand. As I ran, my body would become limber and strong and I would forget the ghost; I would even slow down. For the longest time I thought that in later years my fear had vanished because I had left the bel tree behind. I now understand that it was the act of becoming limber and strong which had vanquished the fear. If we do not show mental and physical strength in the face of fear, it will keep us forever standing underneath the bel tree.

  This was what used to happen in cinema halls too. As soon as the hall lights would dim, I would become afraid and I would screw my eyes shut during scenes of violence. I have never been able sit through a rape scene in a movie with my eyes open.

  At school, the fear of failure would kill me every day during examinations. I was an ordinary student. I had no grasp of science subjects and thus the months of March and April used to be exceedin
gly sad. My father said to me during one of these moments of fear, ‘If you study gradually all year round, you will have no need to cram during examinations. And there will be no need to be terrified either.’

  I was leaving home to sit for the mathematics paper during my board examinations. I cried so hard that Babuji had to come along with me. A bucket was filled with water and a rose floated upon its surface, the way in which it is done when a girl leaves her marital home for the first time after marriage. I just wouldn’t leave home. I still don’t know why Babuji went along with me that day. In the normal course of things he was unbothered with which class I was studying in, which subjects I was bad at and which ones I did well in. As the time came for us to part, I felt like clinging to him and weeping one more time. When he left me at the school gate, Babuji said, ‘You shouldn’t be so afraid. Why do you have such fear within you? You’ve prepared well, haven’t you?’

  I have always remembered Babuji’s words. When I came to Delhi and started studying for my graduation, I won over my fear of academic failure. When all my friends would go home to Patna for holidays, I would sit in the library and work on my fear. I made friends with my B.A. examinations.

  My mother too remains unfazed by any circumstance. Laughing, she often tells Noyona, ‘This one starts crying before anything has even happened. Just the mention of examinations used to be enough to make him cry.’ This is the same Noyona because of whom I have become free of fear in all the other areas of my life. But that story is for another telling.

  This man whom people ask to be careful and stay safe was a coward for a large part of his life.

  I feel a great deal of fear even today. I am very afraid of making mistakes. I make that journey from fear to courage every day. My days start with the trolls’ abuses and threats and end with the thought that I should be careful for the sake of my job. Not a day has passed in three years during which I have not heard people talking about the possibility that I might lose my job. But fear is also what saves you from rashness. It is that resting place between courage and rashness. That point from where you commit to a course of action.

  Power knows who should be removed from the path of its onward march and when. It maintains a strict calendar and schedule. Despite that, in a democracy, people keep alive the act of speaking out. And the thrill of this journey, between fear and courage, has destroyed my sleep, it has gained me abuse, and sometimes made my ears resound with applause.

  One must pay other prices for speaking out too. When colleagues with whom I had worked for twenty years were having to leave the company, many among them looked in my direction. There was a great distance in their eyes. They felt that it was because of me that the government had punished the organization.

  During that time I ran into a former colleague in the office bathroom. All he asked was: ‘Couldn’t we have changed our line of work?’ I asked him in return, ‘So shouldn’t we have become journalists?’ My question did not answer his, and I did not have any other answer for him. The experience of losing a job is bitter for everyone, I thought. One should not feel bad or offended by someone’s words at such a time. I kept standing before him like time that has already passed. There was no point in expressing the pain that I felt at parting with him. I stood there as upon a shore, inwardly shattered. I do hope that in my colleague’s eyes, the men who did not like that a journalist should speak out are as culpable as I am.

  ‘Couldn’t we have changed our line of work?’—this statement sank its hooks deep within me. Should I instead have become part of a mob which kills someone on a moving train, which won’t allow a movie to be released, which corners a man in his own house and murders him, which climbs on to the roof of a court of justice and unfurls a saffron flag? I thought these thoughts as I walked slowly out of the bathroom. The act of speaking out makes you alone. I have no friends in this profession of mine. Each one I speak to advises me to keep silent.

  Even today I feel as if I am tiptoeing underneath the great bel tree of power. The only difference is that I no longer chant the Hanuman Chalisa. I don’t implore God to preserve my life. Rather, I thank him for all that he has given me. I analyze my facts carefully, I keep my pen straight, and I keep my tongue clean. The ability to speak follows naturally.

  My speaking up, and its being viewed within the framework of courage, all of it is thanks to what happened after 2014. Post 2014, the political winds began to change course. Criticism of the government began to be equated with criticism of the nation. A factory called the ‘IT Cell’ was set up and many varieties of fear were manufactured inside its basement. The trolls of the IT Cell mounted fierce attacks on anyone who dared to ask questions. They were called many things, from anti-nation and anti-religion to even pimps of the opposition parties. Many journalists were cast in the mould of an opposition. They were called anti-Modi. Even serving ministers began to attack reporters. The IT Cell rapidly transformed media into ‘godi media’—lapdog media. Many anchors and journalists crept into the laps of power and began chanting the Modi Chalisa.

  The IT Cell is not simply the unit of a particular party. It is a mentality which has formed among a large section of society. I call that entire set, the collective of people who share that mentality, the ‘IT Cell’. This IT Cell has transformed a large section of the citizenry into trolls. Many people find this idea of the mentality of the IT Cell a joke, but this is a fully realized human resource which works extensively from the metropolises to far-flung areas of India. Many of the news channels which work in today’s India are an extension of this IT Cell.

  This IT Cell has its own laboratory: the WhatsApp University. The amount of history that this WhatsApp University has tried to teach in three years would not have been taught in the seventy years since Independence by all historians together. The only difference is that the history taught in the WhatsApp University is fake and poisonous. Even India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, fell victim to this WhatsApp University. His clan, his religion and his name were all changed and distorted. He became a greater ‘villain’ than Jinnah, than whom there is no man more evil for the IT Cell and its parent family. Gandhi has not been spared either; in this case the IT Cell laboratory does what certain politicians cannot afford to do in public, though they privately wish Gandhi had never existed.

  The WhatsApp University has also extensively defamed, vilified and abused journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai, Rana Ayyub, Sagarika Ghose, Barkha Dutt and me, among others. The handful of us journalists, who are only doing our job, have been declared traitors. We have been blamed for every injustice committed in India. A new benchmark has been set up in the WhatsApp University as far as speaking out is concerned: ‘Why didn’t you speak then, and why are you speaking only now?’ With this mischievous statement, the public has been handed a weapon. People have been told, ‘Any time they ask a question, ask them, “Where were you when that happened?”’

  I remained enmeshed among these questions for a long time. I kept thinking, ‘I am a journalist, I am not myself a newspaper. I cannot comment on everything. And keeping quiet doesn’t mean that I become a party to injustices.’ Why didn’t you speak then?—this is a design by which a sense of guilt is created within that person who asks questions. And those who ask that artful question conveniently forget to ask those who remain silent why they aren’t speaking.

  For over three years now, I have found myself dealing and arguing, not with the government, but with the new armies it has built in our society. The generation that has emerged from the WhatsApp University has become the private army shielding the government and it demands the name and address of anyone who is critical of the government. Soon they’ll be asking us for our Aadhar numbers before deciding whether we can ask the Modi government any questions or not. A mob has been created which will harass and intimidate us on behalf of Power. This mob is answerable to no one, as long it remains a cheerleader for the establishment. When we demand accountability from the government, the mob is let l
oose.

  This mob broadcasts new rumours and lies every day. These lies don’t disappear into a void. I’ve seen them seep into lakhs, if not crores, of minds. The establishment has outsourced its power to this tireless mob which will surround one anywhere, at any time. Every day I’m stalked by a new lie. Every day I fight a new lie. It would be exhausting, but for the occasional sign that the fight is not in vain.

  In January 2018 I was doing a series for Prime Time on jobs in the country. The government institutions that recruit people take an average of four years to fill a single vacancy, when there are millions seeking jobs—and there are very few vacancies to begin with. After one of the first programmes in the series, a young man called Rahul phoned me from Bihar’s Aara town. I had met him when I was in Bihar in 2015, covering the high-voltage Assembly elections. He was calling me now, over two years after that meeting, he said, because he wanted to apologize. He said I had spoken about young people like him in my series on jobs, no one else had bothered, and this when he and many of his friends had abused and hated me for long. He said local members of the Bajrang Dal had convinced them I was anti-Hindu and anti-Modi. I was anti-India. I was a Communist and my annual salary package was one crore plus perks. That would have made me a very rare Indian Communist indeed. Rahul went on to say that he had also been taught to hate Muslims and had his head filled with the poison of communalism. He had wasted his life. He was purging himself of the poison.

  It’s this poison of hate that I’m fighting, too. It has spread all around me. It has ruined many young minds. These young men wander about with explosive hatred inside them. They want to find a way out of the hell they have been pushed into. But there’s hardly anyone around to help them climb out. On good days, I feel I can be the one to help.

  It’s one of the things that keeps me focused, despite the torrent of abuse I face even when I write about something as neutral as the weather. These aren’t routine abuses used by people. These are rocks and stones hurled by Power that fall all around and create a wall of mental despondency. Enduring these abuses has begun to feel like an exercise in sensing the true heft of Power.