And not just in English...

When this government was sworn in, in May 2014, there were many of us who were dismayed beyond simple description. Surprise wasn’t so much a part of it, but there was profound horror that so many people had been taken in by this pantomime rhetoric of ‘progress’ from a man and a party that had delivered so much division and destruction. Writing then, as many of us did in newspapers and magazines, we had tried to warn against the patently false grand promises and the bizarre fantasy that, somehow, the drapes of central power would make this pack of leopards change their spots, make them less man-eater and more aam-aadmi-ka-vikaas.

We did speak

As this regime marched into power, the question was what to do next. One had to stay vigilant, speak up, record and map the disasters this Prime Minister and his cohorts visited upon the country. We were under no delusion that our writing would affect anything substantially — the election results had demonstrated the foolishness of such hopes — but, as one friend said: ‘In the future, when the coming generations ask ‘what did you do during that time?’, one should be able to say ‘we spoke up, we were not complicit through silence’.’

Fortunes have been mixed for those who have spoken up against the misdeeds of the government over the last five years. When, as predicted, the writing on the wall became clear, with the lynchings, the attacks on institutions, the installation of criminals into positions of great power etc, so did the regime’s game plan. The small section of the English language print media that was asking hard questions could be squeezed a bit through back channels but otherwise ignored; in fact, it was important to keep the English-language critics preserved in their corral as proof to the world that India had an unfettered press.

No one spared

The attacks, take-overs, big fish swallowings of TV channels were mostly focussed on the non-English outfits, with non-English language TV getting the most loving attention, followed by regional papers.

If the odd Hindi-speaking anchor grew in popularity while asking tough questions and criticising the powers, his phone would be bombarded with death threats while cable operators developed technical problems with the anchor’s channel. If the odd print journalist began to expose stuff in a regional language, she was shot dead by ‘unknown criminals’. If another channel asked questions in the wrong language, say Hindi, then the journalists responsible found themselves out of a job. In the meantime, a majority of Indian channels and newspapers, when asked to crawl, went a step further and turned themselves into unctuous boot polish for ministerial shoes.

Over the last two-odd years, the good news is that all sorts of people have been speaking up, loudly and publicly. If the people in power found ways to stifle or circumvent dissent, then the dissenters too have found ways to go around the official and unofficial barriers. The scale is no match, the difference in the publicity ordinance being exchanged is ludicrous. On one side, you have crores worth of tax-payer-funded government ads, puppet media nakedly propagandising for the incumbents, and troll armies funded by oligarchs carpet-bombing social media. On the other side, you have whatever the opposition parties can pull out of their war chests, plus the diverse efforts of genuinely popular resistance. This might seem like a grossly uneven contest and, at many levels, that’s exactly what it is.

Shifting signs

And yet, there are signs that some things are shifting. A stand-up comic asks why Modiji is coming between him and Ambaniji, who should openly rule the country.

Another points out that Adityanath Bisht has closed old hate speech cases against himself, ‘Why worry? I’ll give you new ones,’ says Bisht in the comic’s imagination.

The meme and gif world is busy — a neon sign saying ‘chowkidar’ is bombed by a jet, leaving lit the word cho-r. News portals not beholden to big money are bringing out hard-hitting stories exposing official misdeeds and policy failures. And a lot of this is happening in languages outside the fenced-in English.

Marry all this to the fact that this government has actually failed on so many fronts, while creating different kinds of hellishness for ordinary people, and the balance changes.

I’m not saying the election will turn on a joke or a meme, but there could be a quantum of diverse things that manage to take the wheels off the BJP/ RSS’s deep-funded juggernaut campaign. And if it doesn’t, the record of these protests will still exist — the court of history has a habit of ambushing the momentarily powerful at a moment of its own sweet choosing.