The Official Secrets Act is archaic, irrelevant and “simply used if you want to make an example of somebody”, former vice president Hamid Ansari said on Saturday, calling for a re-examination of the law in the light of present day realities.
Mr. Ansari was interacting with the press after after delivering the B.G. Verghese memorial lecture on the topic of “Journalism in Times of Strident Nationalism”. His remarks came in response to a query on the invoking of the Act in the context of The Hindu’s publication of excerpts from documents relating to the purchase of Rafale fighters.
On March 6,
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Stating that the relevance of the OSA has changed over time, Mr Ansari said: “In a former incarnation, I was taught that it is operative up to the grave.”
The former diplomat recalled that when photocopiers were first introduced at the Ministry of External Affairs, the head of the department would insist that the machine be kept in his room and only used with his permission.
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“Can today’s world work on those principles?” asked Mr. Ansari.
The former vice-president also recalled that a few years ago, when he had presided over the launch of a book which revealed interesting facts covered by the OSA, the audience included several senior government officials.
“There are so many things that in our land are still classified and yet, they are public knowledge, they are published elsewhere,” he said. “Who is the loser in this game? Our own scholars, our own public.”
“Recent events have produced Indian versions of embedded journalism…It has led to what I would call news distorting nationalism of ratings hungry TV channels,” he said. “A part communal, part pseudo-nationalistic poison has seeped deep into the media’s collective thinking and poses a very real threat to Indian democracy. The casualty in the process is credibility.”
Asked for advice to journalists in the age of social media and strident nationalism, Mr. Ansari said, “The techniques may vary, but the formula that you must speak truth to power is as valid today as when it was first uttered.”
Before delivering the lecture, the former vice president presented the Chameli Devi Jain Award for an outstanding woman journalist to Priyanka Dubey, a bilingual journalist with the BBC’s Delhi bureau. She was honoured for her work in exposing injustice with a sense of empathy, and holding power to account.