Briefly discuss the views of mahatma Gandhi about freedom of press
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Explanation:Mahatma Gandhi was a staunch believer in the power of the word and wrote very cautiously in his newspapers to mobilize public opinion. The subjects he chose to write on were varied and variegated, which depicted his honesty, integrity and transparency, touching the hearts of the readers cutting across generations and even nations. As M V Kamath has aptly pointed out, “...he wrote in a manner that anybody could understand. He was writing for Everyman so that Everyman could understand him easily. He had no literary pretensions but what he wrote was literature.”
Each time we put Gandhi behind us as a historical icon, he surprises everyone by bouncing back with ever increasing relevance. Through his writings, especially his autobiography My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi candidly disclosed his shortcomings, his weaknesses, and his vulnerability like any other ordinary human being. The difference lies in his overcoming his drawbacks through his indomitable will power and continuous effort to evolve as a man of the millennium, winning over friends and foes by his spontaneous flow of love and compassion. The impact of Gandhi can be discerned in leaders and cultures, astonishingly diverse.
The following passages contain Mahatma Gandhi’s original writings on journalism:
In the very first month of Indian Opinion, I realized that the sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countryside and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within. If this lice of reasoning is correct, how many of the journals in the world would stand the test? But who would stop those that are useless? The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice (An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, p. 211).
What should an editor do when something he has published displeases the Government or is held to violate some law but is none the less true? Should he apologize? We should say, certainly not. True, he is not bound to publish in such matter, but once it has been published, the editor ought to accept responsibility for it (Indian Opinion, Gujarati edition, April 23, 1919).
Indeed the journal (Indian Opinion) became for me a training in self restraint, and for friends a medium through which to keep in touch with my thoughts. In fact the tone of Indian Opinion compelled the critic to put a curb on his own pen….For me it became a means for study of human nature in all its casts and shades….It made me thoroughly understand the responsibility of a journalist (An Autobiography, p. 286).
The Journal Indian Opinion was a powerful weapon in the armoury of Passive Resistance and continues to be the only recorder of accurately sifted facts about our countrymen in South Africa and of Passive Resistance movement. It is in no sense a commercial enterprise (Letter to Mr. J. B. Petit, Secretary, South African Indian Fund, June 16, 1915).
I have devoted to the continuance of Indian Opinion and the establishment of Phoenix all my earnings during my last stay in South Africa that is nearly 5000 pounds (Letter to Shri Gokhale, April 25, 1909).