“A Paper Agitation”: The All India Newspaper Editors’ Conference, the Indian State, and the Struggle Over the First Amendment

Abstract

ABSTRACT The addition of the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution is considered a crucial moment in the constitutional history of liberty of speech and expression, and by extension, freedom of the press, in postcolonial India. Aimed at limiting the right to free speech and expression through several caveats, the attempt to pass the amendment roused fierce press protest led by the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference (AINEC). Such protest notwithstanding, the Nehru government succeeded in passing the amendment through Parliament. This article seeks to revisit the months of April to July 1951 to understand how the press and, in particular, its primary organization—AINEC—understood the threat to their liberty and organized against it. In particular, the arguments put forth by AINEC and the methods applied by its leaders to unify the press shall be studied through the letters, meetings, and editorials of AINEC and its major functionaries. The reactions these endeavors elicited, in turn, shall be studied to explain why the attempted unity, and the larger protest, ultimately failed, and what this failure can explain about the limits of press unity and the difficulties of opposing a nationalist government in early postcolonial India.