Lalit Shastri*
Who owns our collective memory, and what happens when history becomes difficult to access?
After working with The Hindu as State Correspondent for Madhya Pradesh for nearly two decades — a period when the State was the largest in the Indian Union and continued thereafter as the second largest after the bifurcation that led to the creation of Chhattisgarh — I recently attempted something simple: to trace and revisit my own published work. Between 1992 and 2009, roughly 300 of my articles appeared in the newspaper, covering politics, governance, environment, tribal rights, and the making of history in real time.
This is not merely a question of a journalist revisiting his own bylines. It raises urgent concerns about access to information, archival justice, and the ethics of burying public-interest journalism behind digital paywalls.
From Public Record to Walled Garden
Till a few years ago, these articles were freely accessible online. A simple Google search with my name would bring up thousands of links — a verifiable trail of reportage that not only bore my byline but also constituted primary source material for researchers, students, and future journalists. Today, that trail has been wiped clean from the public domain.
“What was once accessible as a matter of public good is now locked away.”
To my surprise, reclaiming my own work now came at a price. By 2025, The Hindu’s archival charges meant that recovering about 300 of my own bylined articles would cost me more than Rs.1.5 lakh. I was expected to pay a small fortune simply to access reports I had researched, written, and published for the public record. In the meanwhile, I have paid and rerieved pdf copies of few of these newsreports
This is not an innocuous act of digitization and monetization. It signals a troubling shift where journalism — especially historically significant journalism — is transformed from public record into privatized commodity.
Journalism as Public Good, Not Proprietary Asset
Democratic theory has long held that journalism is not just a profession but a cornerstone of public discourse. Jürgen Habermas, in his concept of the public sphere, argued that a free press provides the space for rational-critical debate, which underpins democracy. When news organizations convert their archives into commercial property, they undermine this very principle.
“To hold archives hostage to paywalls is to privatize history.”
What is lost is not just access but credibility. A scholar attempting to reconstruct the political events of the 1990s in Madhya Pradesh, or the environmental struggles of tribal communities in Chhattisgarh, is now cut off from authentic first-hand reporting. In its place, what circulates in the public domain may be fragments, misquotes, or secondary interpretations with no guarantee of authenticity.
The Ethics of Archival Control
It is fair to argue that newspapers, like any other institution, face economic pressures in the digital age. Monetizing archives can be seen as a survival strategy. But when survival comes at the cost of suppressing history, the ethical question cannot be ignored.
“Archives are not just property of media houses; they are part of the collective memory of society.”
UNESCO has repeatedly stressed the importance of “open access to knowledge” as a global imperative. By restricting access, we risk erasing critical layers of lived history, especially those documented by journalists who bore witness on the ground.
A Diabolic Disappearance?
What is particularly disturbing is that this disappearance from search engines and the burying of accessible archives cannot be explained away as mere monetization. It appears systematic, even diabolic, in its consequences. Journalism produced by seasoned reporters for the larger public good has been effectively buried.
“When journalism is walled off, history itself is put under erasure.”
What remains accessible is scarce, fragmented, and stripped of credibility. For students of history, political science, journalism, and even for policymakers, this creates a vacuum of verifiable reference material. The implications are profound: when the past is made inaccessible, it distorts the present and diminishes the future.
Towards an Alternative Archival Ethic
If journalism is indeed the “first draft of history,” then news archives are not optional luxuries — they are civilizational assets. India, as a democracy with a vibrant press, must confront the question: who owns history? Should the narratives of the 1990s and 2000s be accessible only to those who can afford to pay thousands of rupees, or should they remain part of the nation’s freely available knowledge base?
Universities, libraries, and public institutions must push for an alternative model of archiving — one that ensures long-term preservation, free public access, and respect for the labour of journalists who reported for the common good.
Journalism Should Not be Buried
As someone who devoted decades to field reporting in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, I see this not as a personal grievance but as a systemic issue that strikes at the very heart of the relationship between journalism, democracy, and memory.
When journalism is walled off, history itself is put under erasure. The stories of the dispossessed, the environmental struggles, the political upheavals — all risk vanishing into a void of commodified silence.
The question that remains is stark: Do we, as a society, accept that our recent history should be buried under a commercial paywall, or do we reclaim it as a public good that belongs to all?
* The author, Lalit Shastri is founder-Editor of ThisisNews.org. He is a highly respected journalist. His exemplary career spans decades of dedicated service. Earlier, he has headed the Madhya Pradesh Bureau of two of India’s premier English newspapers, The Hindu and The Asian Age.
