Doordarshan on Thursday asked the CPI to “edit” a speech and ended up facilitating wide publicity to the very sentences the national broadcaster could not digest.
Citing violation of the model code of conduct, the national broadcaster asked the Left party to revise parts of a campaign speech that had compared the Narendra Modi government and the RSS to fascists.
Binoy Viswam, a CPI parliamentarian, refused to record the vetted speech and accused the broadcaster of acting as “his master’s voice” and wrote a Facebook post lambasting its decision.
He said the parts DD had objected to contained expressions like “fascist ideology”, “Mussolini” and “Hitler”.
“It’s unacceptable for the CPI. Hence I stepped back from recording (the speech). Let the people decide,” he wrote in the post.
The Election Commission allows political parties to campaign on Doordarshan and All India Radio during elections. Both have wide reach but it is not clear whether people actually sit through such speeches.
But the undelivered CPI speech has attracted a wide audience because of the dust kicked up by the Doordarshan request to edit it.
Prasar Bharati, the “statutory autonomous body” that manages Doordarshan, said in a statement that it had asked the CPI to edit the speech because it was “violative of the model code of conduct, which prohibits criticism of other parties or their workers based on unverified allegations or distortion”.
The decision was taken by a script-vetting committee of independent citizens of eminence, and Prasar Bharati has no role in the script-vetting process, Prasar CEO Shashi Shekhar tweeted.
The Prasar statement, which was handed to the CPI, painstakingly mentioned the parts that allegedly raised the red flags. Which means that those who could not listen to the objectionable parts could easily read them.
A part of the speech, as cited in the Prasar statement, goes: “Dalits, Adivasis, minorities and women were tortured and suppressed by the NDA government which was led by the ideology of racial supremacy preached by RSS….
“They borrowed it from the school of Mussolini and Hitler. Their doctrine was always subservient to the interests of the rich and casteist communal forces. If these same forces recapture power once again, it will be the end of India’s cultural diversity.
“Because the Hindutva philosophy is based (on) a concept that Hinduism based on the Brahminical hierarchy should be the religion of the nation. It is from that philosophy they evolved the ‘one nation, one culture, one language’ notion. Under Modi rule they have begun to talk about ‘one leader’ also.”
The statement adds: “The reference to ‘guided by fascist ideology’ in para 2 of the script was also pointed out.”