Every discussion on modern society touches the important modes of public opinion and civil society. While the discussions on civil society are largely influenced by the Gramscian theoretical framework, public opinion is riveted to the discourses on public sphere, a Hebarmasian notion. Public sphere in India or elsewhere is a dynamic social entity susceptible to the changes in the super structure ( consist of state and other institutional apparatus of hegemony such as religious apparatus ) as well as the organic formations in the base ( consist of family and private groups ). Base- superstructure is the integral component of Marxian social science. But there is an erratic tendency to perceive public sphere as a static entity.
We can see this in contemporary articulations on public sphere. Some like K.N.Panicker says that religion has grown in influence in the realms of public sphere. What we see as a religious public sphere is a manufactured discourse which creates the effect of public sphere. The actual public sphere is a democratic polity consisting of rational discourse and egalitarian participation. Thus actual public sphere fuels the systems of modernity ranging from ideology to aesthetics.
The actual public sphere blossomed during the period of enlightenment and possibly as a reflection of the creative urge from the bourgeois class ( capitalist ) and liberal market economy. This was driven by the changes in the relations of production and the forces of production. ( These are two paradigms of Marxian Political economy) It was accelerated by the break up in the feudal hierarchy of knowledge and social fabric. But gradually capitalists ascended to the ruling hierarchy replacing the feudal landlords and the religious apparatus. Thus capitalist state power structure emerged and with it a monopolistic capitalism. When capitalism moved up to the state hierarchy, social organizations took shape of trade unions and other primitive forms of political society. Gradually with the emergence of political society, the public sphere began moving towards the polity. That is why we have the notion of press as the fourth estate of power structure. Along with the public sphere, even civil society moved towards the political society.
As a sequel, political society started acquiring the characteristics of the public sphere.This was a dialectical process ( bi-directional ) whereby both the political society as well as public sphere underwent structural transformation. All this happened in a period when nation states where emerging in the world order. But the conventional public sphere started to lose its characteristics with the resurgence of market economy. Then the same capitalist began restricting the freedom of expression that was once their characteristic. But the forms of public sphere created by capitalist such as newspapers remained in circulation in the public domain. And this cocoon of public sphere became encapsulated within the walls of market economy. This process varied from country to country and region to region.
Wherever market economy gained predominance over nation state this process was rapid. In Briain, America and similar countries, thus Press became embedded within the market economy, detached from the state. The actual public sphere can be traced in the democratic institutions like Parliamentary democracy, Judiciary and so on. But as it is institutionalized it became static and rhetoric. Thus on one side we have institutionalized static public sphere in polity and on the other end, we see market driven degenerated cocoon of public sphere in the civil society. Thus the resultant public sphere can be said to be permeated between the political society and the civil society.
This society is described by Hebarmas as 'welfare state capitalism and mass democracy'. This historical transformation is grounded, as noted, in Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis of the culture industry, in which giant corporations have taken over the public sphere and transformed it from a sphere of rational debate into one of manipulative consumption and passivity. In this transformation, "public opinion" shifts from rational consensus emerging from debate, discussion, and reflection to the manufactured opinion of polls or media experts. Rational debate and consensus has thus been replaced by managed discussion and manipulation by the machinations of advertising and political consulting agencies: "Publicity loses its critical function in favor of a staged display; even arguments are transmuted into symbols to which again one can not respond by arguing but only by identifying with them".
For Habermas, the function of the media have thus been transformed from facilitating rational discourse and debate within the public sphere into shaping, constructing, and limiting public discourse to those themes validated and approved by media corporations. Hence, the interconnection between a sphere of public debate and individual participation has been fractured and transmuted into that of a realm of political information and spectacle, in which citizen-consumers ingest and absorb passively entertainment and information. "Citizens" thus become spectators of media presentations and discourse which mold public opinion, reducing consumer/citizens to objects of news, information, and public affairs. In Habermas's words: "Inasmuch as the mass media today strip away the literary husks from the kind of bourgeois self-interpretation and utilize them as marketable forms for the public services provided in a culture of consumers, the original meaning is reversed
But in countries like India, this process was never uniform. In the colonial India, using laws British regency tried to control the press and the public opinion. The anti-colonial movements resisted this and press became a political weapon. Thus the Indian public sphere in the pre-independence era was largely part of the political society. And Indian political society comprised of Indian bourgeoisie too. Hence the mix contained public sphere, political society and the national bourgeoisie. This mix began to separate with the process of decolonization. And the resultant public sphere retained the flavors of both the political society and the national bourgeoisie. This process and the ingredients varied from state to state.
Kerala polity can be seen as the most important example for the formation of the actual public sphere and the secular polity. This was rooted in the atheistic and rationalistic discourses of Sree Narayana Movement, and the social activism of Sahodaran Ayyappan and Ayyan Kali. The 1960 elections show this formation in the limelight. When the entire religious groups and institutions like church and NSS rallied against the leftists, the Communists were able to win the elections, despite the fact that the majority of the Keralites were non-atheists and believers of some faith. This shows the rational decision that people placed religion and politics in different quadrants of life. And that is an important reflection of how actual public sphere can exist in India. The same were reflected to some extent in the polities of Maharashtra and West Bengal.
Yet the south Indian newspapers inherited the common ingredients. The newspapers like The Hindu, Malayala Manorama comes in the category of the bourgeoisie newspapers with quasi-nationalistic outlook. Malayala Manorama gradually moved towards the market forces and the imperial interests as reflected in the 'Vimochana Samaram'. Nevertheless both of them retained their intentions to be part of the political discourses, influenced by the interests of the regional bourgeoisie. Indian national as well as regional bourgeoisie never stagged its religious inheritance. But the Indian state retained the characteristics of public sphere within the ambit of the constitution. When secularism was added in the constitution of India, it reflected in the Indian politics as well. Congress and the main opposition of left parties practiced this form of secular polity till the 1970s. The Indian media followed the same lines in this period.
But gradually it became weak with the growing clout of Imperialism in the Indian polity. The emergency period is the marked event in this regard. All the opposition parties in India were united against Indira Congress and it was under the aegis of imperial USA. With the growing presence of Imperialism in the Indian polity, religion and caste became dominant. Thus ethnic polity began subjugating the secular polity. This was driven by the imperial agenda to proliferate the ethnographic divisions within the Indian nation state. By rejuvenating the ethnic ( caste, religion, language, gender ) divisions, Imperialism aimed to fragment the Indian nation state. This process continued without a check from 1970s to the 1990s as a silent volcano. And it reflected in the Indian press as well. They followed the apple cart.
This arena saw the crystallization with the end of cold war and with the collapse of Soviet union. The world economy saw the surge of finance capital and perturbation into the national sovereign boundaries. It energized the Indian bourgeoisie as well as the religious fanatics. But the south Indian press retained its secular credentials only to the extent that they had shown almost equal appeasement towards each religion.In this backdrop, we can see that Indian capitalists viewed the Babri Masjid attack as an attack on the secular polity. In fact secularism in the actual public sphere means the placing politics over the dictum of god, the quasi-public sphere in Indian reality showed equal appeasement of all the religions promoted by different bourgeoisie. This process accentuated with the winds of liberalization, privatization and globalization ( LPG ). The Babri Masjid attack must be read out in this context. The quasi-public sphere in India exploded seeing the the tendencies of religious extremism in its peripheries. But the Hindutva movement as well as the Islamic terrorism was funded from the same source. This was conveniently ignored by the so called secular academicians and the Indian media.
The Indian media criticized the Babri Masjid attack. But that critique was never aimed at retaining the actual public sphere. It was just a realization that the Indian quasi-public sphere is perturbed. The equilibrium created by the secular polity was long lost with the formation of BJP and the casteist political parties like Samaj Vadi Party and BSP. Mandal commission report was an attempt by the Indian state to appease the communities along the ethnic lines. It helped only to worsen the situation.
Thus growing communalism in India and the Babri Masjid attack were the byproduct of the growing ethnic polity in India. Indian mainstream media which forms the quasi-public sphere or the split public was a mute witness to this brazen attack on the Indian secular polity. It could not come out of the veils of ethnic polity to call the spade a spade. There begins the story of accession of BJP into the portals of Indian state. And that marks the beginning of a new era of fragmentation of Indian public sphere across the ethnic lines. Even the secular political parties were forced to follow the ethnic lines along the same lines. The same trend can be seen in the media as well.
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