"When the pen falls silent : An elegy to democracy"

New Democracy? (Editorial space is empty)

- PRIYANKA SAURABH Research Scholar in Political Science, Hisar, Haryana.

"During the Emergency, newspapers left their editorial columns blank in protest. Today editorials are being written — but it seems as if the emptiness within has been filled.

When Indira Gandhi declared emergency in 1975, protesting meant going to jail, picking up a pen meant losing paper. Yet ‘Indian Express’, ‘Jansatta’, ‘Pratipaksh' and many regional newspapers chose the most vocal form of silence against the government by leaving their editorial columns blank.

Today, emergency has not been declared. There has been no formal suspension of freedom of the press. Yet journalists are in jail. Some were killed, some were sold, some were silenced. There is a whole generation that does not know that in a democracy, newspapers ask questions to the government, not aarti.

The new democracy is where the government speaks and the public listens. If the government lies, the media turns it into a slogan. If a farmer dies, a student cries, a woman screams - the camera angle is changed. The new democracy is where "sedition" is no longer the limit of expression, it is the definition of disagreement. Where "nationalism" is no longer a public interest, it has become a disguise for the government's interest.