The burly man who stepped out of the black Ambassador that morning in November 1975 may not have dragged Prabir Purkayastha into a car full of plain clothes policemen. They had come to the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi looking for another man – DP Tripathi, the president of the Students Union. They nabbed Prabir thinking he was Tripathi, and despite Prabir and his friends saying no, still took him into custody. It was the middle of the Emergency and JNU students had just called for a three-day strike in protest against the expulsion of their leader Ashok Lata, who also happened to be engaged to Prabir. The wedding would of course be delayed, with Prabir remaining in jail for a year.

Nearly 50 years later, when the police came looking for him a second time there was no question of mistaken identity. It was him they wanted, the founder of Newsclick, a web portal that had steadfastly covered the farmers’ protest and the agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act, movements against the Union government’s proposed laws. Prabir was accused of using ‘Chinese funding for anti-national propaganda’ and charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). It took seven months for him to get bail.

He had, just before the arrest in October 2023, written in his book, Keeping Up the Good Fight, about the two kinds of Emergencies in India, the declared one of ‘75 and what he called the undeclared one of this day. “It became a bit prophetic,” he tells TNM, laughing, on a day he is in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. In his book, he writes in detail about the differences in the ‘two Emergencies’, significantly adding that while measures were drastic, the one in the 70s had not targeted a section of people.

But Prabir adds, back then you couldn’t go to court. The Act you were booked under was called MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act) in place of UAPA. “We did go to court but as you know, the famous four-to-one judgement of the Supreme Court said that during the Emergency we have fundamental rights but we could not move courts for them. A verdict that was officially struck down many years later,” he says.

There is now the UAPA and the PMLA [Prevention of Money Laundering Act], he adds, Acts that are used to investigate and arrest opposition MPs and MLAs and those who question the government. That includes the media – the independent media to be specific – who do not toe the pro-government line.

A day earlier, Prabir spoke about the emergence and relevance of alternative media in Indian democracy, as part of the 23rd N Narendran Memorial Lecture in Thiruvananthapuram.

Even as we speak, DIGIPUB – a coalition of digital media organisations – has come out against the Union government’s Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, which could hamper press and creative freedoms. Prabir, who was one of the core members of the coalition, says how the government uses various instruments to exercise such control. “One is the power to give or deny ads. Advertising revenue from the government is a source of income, particularly for the regional press more than ‘the national press’. The big national platforms have more access to private ads. But regional newspapers are almost entirely, if not significantly, dependent on Union and state government ads. Another [instrument] is of course, the threat of different actions, to register FIRs and so on. Those who have spoken out have also faced income tax raids and various other things,” he says.

This is one reason that a majority of the big media houses toe the government line, he says, but he adds that there is some change post the 2024 general elections. “You see, the first selection is not how you write news. The first selection, the first censorship, is what is the news you cover? And I think that’s where the change is visible, even big media has become a little more free with covering events, they are not covering just various state visits of the Prime Minister, the foreign minister or other ministers. Yes, there is fear, but the fear is a little less because there is now the feeling that the government will not carry out a crackdown which is difficult for it to defend in public. So public opinion does make a difference, and public opinion is expressed in different ways,” Prabir notes.

He has always been a believer of people’s movements. In his book, he writes passionately about the difference that mass movements have made. Even the fall of the Indira Gandhi government post the Emergency came out of the people’s mandate, a development she had not seen coming, he writes.

At the time, he says, the opposition parties had wondered if they should even participate in the elections (in 1977). “They hadn’t understood what had changed in the minds of the people until they went out to campaign. They realised that the people were just waiting to show Mrs Gandhi what they thought of the Emergency. So I think that also is what happened partially this time. People are now asserting that they want their opinion to be heard through a free and fair election. We want our verdict to be respected. We do not want this. 

“After all, the BJP lost simple majority even with all the instruments of power in their hands, the way they built up the Ram temple issue, the way they had spent money and had the money to spend, the way they hamstrung the opposition, putting half of them in jail. In spite of all this, people showed that, yes, they have a voice, they are not going to let any government muzzle them, and they want their voice to be heard. So I’m very hopeful that democracy will be fought for and retained because of people’s willingness to do so.”