5 - Blue Pencils, Red Pencils: Censoring the News in Wartime

Summary

The colonial state needed Indian resources and the support of the Indian public during the Second World War. The concern with public opinion—and in wartime, morale—was also linked with the desire of the colonial government to pose as the ‘sole spokesman’, as it were, of the Indian people. In other words, if the government could gauge public opinion correctly and act accordingly, then there was no need for parties such as the Indian National Congress to voice nationalist demands. Concern with public opinion in India on the conduct of the war remained a constant hum in the background. During the course of the war, the colonial state in India varied both methods and degree of censorship, but was consistent about the central aim of surveillance: to prevent useful information from reaching the enemy, and to obtain useful information for itself. This was true of the aim of wartime censorship in the United States as well. According to Byron Price, the Director of the Office of Censorship of the US government, its use was defensive, offensive and limited. As Price put it, ‘That which does not concern the war does not concern censorship.’ This of course, as we shall see, was easier said than done, especially in India in the context of anti-colonial agitation running in parallel to the war.

The Mechanics of Wartime Censorship

Wartime censorship had two legal pillars: the first consisted of provisions predating the war (the CrPC, the IPC, the SCA, the Press Act of 1931, and so on); the second (the Defence of India Act and Rules; hereafter DIR) were issued as wartime measures. The DIR had provisions to pre-censor certain articles appearing in the press; violation could attract a penalty of up to five years’ imprisonment. The Official Secrets Act was amended too, and its violation invited the death penalty or transportation for life.

The chief objectives of censorship of news reports—which the GOI preferred to call ‘Control of Publicity’—were three in number: one, to ‘prevent public opinion from being stirred to enthusiasm for the [anti-colonial] movement or to indignation against the Government’; two, ‘to guard against the propagation of noxious rumours and mis-representations both in India and abroad’; and three, to deny publicity to individuals that would lead them to win ‘a martyr's crown’.