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When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed censorship in the summer of 1975, few newspapers tried to withstand the attack on press freedom. This historical study used framing theory to examine how Indian Express constructed its position against the Gandhi regime during the twenty-one-month National Emergency. The qualitative content analysis of the Indian Expres's coverage demonstrated its struggle to frame the Emergency as authoritarian. More broadly, the analysis provided a way to understand how journalism functions under censorship.
On the night of June 25, 1975, news presses along Delhi's Fleet Street, home to several mainstream Englishlanguage newspapers of India, plunged into darkness at the start of a power cut that denied people print news for two days. Elsewhere in the country, presses faced a different problem: they were raided and stopped, and newspaper bundles were seized. By the early hours of June 26, hundreds of political leaders, activists, and trade unionists opposed to the ruling Congress party were imprisoned.1 But because of the absence of major newspapers, few among the public learned of the arrests, which were to become increasingly common in the next few months-a period called "the Emergency" in India.2
The purported goal of the Emergency, which lasted from June 26, 1975, to March 21, 1977, was to control "internal disturbance" and thus enable smooth governance and usher in national development.3 To achieve this goal, the Emergency suspended the constitutional rights of Indian citizens and instituted strict controls on the freedom of speech and press. Censorship-and in some cases prior restraint-was employed on newspapers and magazines. The government, led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, expelled several foreign correspondents, withdrew accreditation from reporters and arrested more than two hundred journalists.4 Most publications succumbed to the Emergency, choosing to abide by the laws of censorship, which prohibited publishing anything critical of the government.
Even so, among the English-language press, two newspapers- Indian Express and The Statesman-tried to withstand the attack on free speech.3 As most newspapers were "filled with fawning accounts of national events, flattering pictures of Gandhi and her ambitious son, and not coincidentally, lucrative governmental advertising," The Statesman and the Indian Express helped produce counter-frames by using visual and verbal rhetoric and by reporting issues that were otherwise suppressed.1' Despite the efforts of...