Framing the Nation: Citizenship, Conflict, and the Media in Contemporary India
Lead Research Organisation:
Loughborough University
Department Name: Communication and Media
Abstract
Background
The dual context of this research is the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019 and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, both of which have occasioned considerable media debate and political protest about the meaning of citizenship in India culminating in political violence in Delhi in February 2020. The CAA and the accompanying National Register of Citizens (NRC) is perceived by many as discriminatory against Muslims thereby throwing into doubt the idea of India as a secular nation. The NRC also raises the citizenship status of poorer Indians who might not be able to provide documents to prove their belonging. The outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020 further exacerbated these tensions as Muslims and migrant workers have not only been subjected to criticism in some media as being spreaders of the virus but also the impact of the lockdown has been particularly difficult for these groups.
Adding Value to Existing Literature
Christophe Jaffrelot in a recent interview has spoken about the 'saffronisation' of the public sphere that has resulted in the 'banalisation' of Islamophobia and anti-Dalit violence. Republic TV, similar to the Fox network in the USA, is only the most prominent carrier of this process but Jaffrelot argues that even liberal newspapers and broadcasters engage in self-censorship under a combination of economic and political pressure as media are reliant on advertising revenue for their survival (2018:473). The coverage of the CAA protests and the Covid-19 pandemic possibly represent not a continuation but an intensification of saffronisation that could mean that some broadcasters and newspapers become de facto incorporated into the BJP government with dissent is largely suppressed elsewhere throwing into relief the urgent question of the role that media play in sustaining democracy.
The saffronisation of the public sphere should be understood as an intertwined economic and political project. Sahana Udupa has argued that 'enterprise Hindutva' has been propelled largely by the affordances of social media (2018: 253). While social media has certainly been one of its vehicles, one can potentially extend the range of the concept to some traditional news media that provide a diet of entertainment and ideology that may serve both economic and political purposes. Such news coverage may help to create what Shakuntala Banaji (2018) has referred to as the rise of 'vigilante publics', groups thereby emboldened to take into their own hands the proper role of the state in a democratic polity.
While there is some extant literature on anti-Muslim and anti-poor representations and on representations of 'communal' violence in India media (Pandit and Chattopadhyay, 2018; Narayana and Kapur, 2011; Ahmed, 2017; Drabu, 2018; Ahmed, 2010; O'Brochta, 2019), we will add value to the literature: conceptually, through embedding media analysis in a broader understanding of the public sphere; methodologically, through deploying a mixed methods approach, which integrates stakeholder perspectives throughout the research process; and empirically, through examining contemporary contentious events, in which Hindi and English news media have actively framed nationhood.
The dual context of this research is the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019 and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, both of which have occasioned considerable media debate and political protest about the meaning of citizenship in India culminating in political violence in Delhi in February 2020. The CAA and the accompanying National Register of Citizens (NRC) is perceived by many as discriminatory against Muslims thereby throwing into doubt the idea of India as a secular nation. The NRC also raises the citizenship status of poorer Indians who might not be able to provide documents to prove their belonging. The outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020 further exacerbated these tensions as Muslims and migrant workers have not only been subjected to criticism in some media as being spreaders of the virus but also the impact of the lockdown has been particularly difficult for these groups.
Adding Value to Existing Literature
Christophe Jaffrelot in a recent interview has spoken about the 'saffronisation' of the public sphere that has resulted in the 'banalisation' of Islamophobia and anti-Dalit violence. Republic TV, similar to the Fox network in the USA, is only the most prominent carrier of this process but Jaffrelot argues that even liberal newspapers and broadcasters engage in self-censorship under a combination of economic and political pressure as media are reliant on advertising revenue for their survival (2018:473). The coverage of the CAA protests and the Covid-19 pandemic possibly represent not a continuation but an intensification of saffronisation that could mean that some broadcasters and newspapers become de facto incorporated into the BJP government with dissent is largely suppressed elsewhere throwing into relief the urgent question of the role that media play in sustaining democracy.
The saffronisation of the public sphere should be understood as an intertwined economic and political project. Sahana Udupa has argued that 'enterprise Hindutva' has been propelled largely by the affordances of social media (2018: 253). While social media has certainly been one of its vehicles, one can potentially extend the range of the concept to some traditional news media that provide a diet of entertainment and ideology that may serve both economic and political purposes. Such news coverage may help to create what Shakuntala Banaji (2018) has referred to as the rise of 'vigilante publics', groups thereby emboldened to take into their own hands the proper role of the state in a democratic polity.
While there is some extant literature on anti-Muslim and anti-poor representations and on representations of 'communal' violence in India media (Pandit and Chattopadhyay, 2018; Narayana and Kapur, 2011; Ahmed, 2017; Drabu, 2018; Ahmed, 2010; O'Brochta, 2019), we will add value to the literature: conceptually, through embedding media analysis in a broader understanding of the public sphere; methodologically, through deploying a mixed methods approach, which integrates stakeholder perspectives throughout the research process; and empirically, through examining contemporary contentious events, in which Hindi and English news media have actively framed nationhood.
Publications
Dasgupta R
(2022)
Viral Assemblages and Witnessing Extraordinary Times: Queer Patchworks of Intimacy, Precarity and Affect in an Indian City
in Journal of Intercultural Studies
| Description | If the condition of Indian news media were to be judged simply by reading Reporters Without Borders reports and the academic literature that emphasises the subservience of news media to Indian political elites, we would expect to find more or less homogenous mainstream media coverage of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests that were a major extra-parliamentary challenge to the BJP government in late 2019 and the early months of 2020. We did find some TV channels that clearly supported the BJP's position, notably ZEE and Republic TV. It should be noted that such support for Hindu nationalism is certainly no longer restricted to Hindi news channels. The argument that there are 'two cultures' is no longer true and may never have been. We also found evidence of some inconsistency in India Today's reporting of the protests and a reliance on BJP supporting actors in their coverage. We also found considerable evidence of the observance of objectivity rituals, particularly in a section of the press, but objectivity rituals, despite the rise of a 'news with a view' culture, have not been entirely extinguished in broadcast news for that matter. There are clearly contrasting styles of journalism at work in India separating broadcast from press journalism. The observance of objectivity rituals is often a defence mechanism, a way of carving out some professional autonomy across cultures and we would argue that this is true in India in a context where journalists are subject to considerable pressure from economic and political elites. In addition to the observance of objectivity rituals we also found evidence of the existence of endangered liberal news organizations across languages and across media. Individual journalists and news organizations showed themselves to be resistant to the 'chilling effect' of BJP disciplinary action. However, just as these journalists have shown themselves to be resistant to pressure, the BJP government has showed itself to be persistent in its desire to silence opposition from media organizations. In the run up to the 2024 Indian elections we expect such competition and conflict to intensify. |
| Exploitation Route | In general introductions to Indian society it has become a cliche to refer to India as 'the world's largest democracy'. The robustness of Indian democracy has, however, increasingly been brought into question since the advent of Narendra Modi's first BJP led government in 2014. Chatham House, for instance, the widely respected international foreign affairs think tank based in London, describes India as being currently set on a path towards an 'illiberal pseudo-democracy', similar to the political systems of Turkey or Russia. One of the characteristics of illiberal democracies that is often mentioned with respect to India is the degree of control exercised by political and economic elites over news media organizations. In its 2022 annual report Reporters without Borders ranked India in 150th place out of 180 countries judged in terms of media freedom, one place behind Turkey and five places ahead of Russia. Although India's position in the rankings has deteriorated marginally since 2014 and the formation of Modi's first government (it was ranked 140th in 2014) concerns about lack of media autonomy are long-standing dating back at least to Indira Gandhi's declaration of emergency in the mid-1970s (Paul, 2017). Such judgments about media freedom in India, however, are often exclusively based on surveys, qualitative interviews with experts and journalists, and qualitative case analysis rather than quantitative content analysis of press and broadcasting. By engaging in analysis of news content we have made an innovative contribution to understanding the complex relationship between economic, political, and media elites in India. |
| Sectors | Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |