JOIN USThe government’s decision to suspend the Al Jazeera news channel for five days in India was excessive punishment for an unintended mistake. The channel had shown wrong maps of India in a graphic, without marking Pakistan-controlled Kashmir as a separate territory. This had happened in 2013 and 2014, and the channel rectified the mistake later and apologised for it. To take action against the channel after a long lapse of time and after it regretted the mistake is unfair, and as the channel itself noted, disproportionate to the offence. The channel’s explanation is convincing. It says the error was caused by a software which is normally used by broadcasters, and when it was brought to its notice, the mistake was rectified. This is the normal journalistic practice. To go beyond that and to punish a channel by blacking it out is being unreasonable and heavy-handed.
An inter-ministerial committee called the display of the wrong maps “a cartographic aggression”. This was certainly an exaggeration. The word “aggression” was a misnomer because there was no deliberate intent to misrepresent India’s boundaries and to support Pakistan’s claims to Indian territory. The mistake has never happened again too. Maps are sensitive for all countries and India is no exception. Some years ago the government had forced The Economist magazine to black out a map of Kashmir in the copies distributed within the country. But democratic societies and governments should behave with a sense of maturity on such matters, especially when the access of people to media is involved. The government should also realise that such restrictions imposed on media channels are useless, because the channel is available online to all those who want to watch it.
Indian media has made such mistakes about other countries’ maps. During the G-20 summit in Brisbane last year, Australian media published a map of India without Kashmir in it. It was ignored by the government. There is a view that the kind of action taken against Al Jazeera would not have been taken if the mistake had been made by say, the BBC. The action also comes as one among a series of bans and restrictions placed on the media, including the ban on a British documentary on the 2012 Delhi gang rape. It will be taken as yet another sign of a culture of intolerance being increasingly exhibited by the government. The government is also doing a disservice to the country when it mistreats international media. The right policy is to be more open and give greater access, and not to shut the media out.