Editor's Pick

ON 5 SEPTEMBER 1988, journalists and media owners—including Kuldip Nayyar, Khushwant Singh and Ramnath Goenka—hold a protest march from India Gate to the Delhi Boat Club against the Rajiv Gandhi government’s Defamation Bill. The government had introduced the legislation, without any prior public consultation, on 29 August 1988. It was passed by the Lok Sabha the following day.

Over the past year, both the national and international media had been widely reporting the damning revelations of the Bofors scandal, alleging corruption in the procurement of artillery pieces from a Swedish company. The Defamation Bill was seen as an attempt to clamp down on investigative journalism by imposing onerous restrictions on publishers. It placed the burden of proof on the defendant, who would have to produce evidence to demonstrate in a court that the impugned material was both true and served the public interest—a process complicated by photocopied documents not always being admissible as evidence. It allowed courts to, under certain circumstances, insist upon the personal attendance of all the accused, order a summary trial or ban any media coverage of the proceedings. Defamation was to be punishable by a month to a year in prison for the first offence, and by three months to two years for subsequent convictions.

On 2 September, 43 senior editors called the bill “a direct attack on the citizen’s right to know” and advised newspapers to disregard it and to challenge it in court. Following the national outcry, Rajiv Gandhi announced, on the evening of 4 September, that his government would not introduce the legislation in the Rajya Sabha the following day. The Delhi protest went ahead, and, on 6 September, journalists went on a nationwide strike. With the media remaining defiant and several Congress leaders coming out in opposition, Rajiv’s cabinet decided to withdraw the bill on 22 September.