Sometime in July, a recently-launched Assamese news channel, Pratidin Time, aired a news feature about clothes. It complained that young Assamese women were just not wearing enough clothes. The importance of clothes, it lamented, had diminished in the Assamese society. To make its point, it showed visuals of a vest-donning monkey. See, even monkeys understand the importance of clothes, the voiceover said. A long and spectacularly informative sermon about Assamese culture followed with pointers (for women, of course) on what to wear, how to do your hair, ad nauseum more of the same. Then the reporter, Hemen Rajbongshi, bemoaned that helpless men like him are blamed for not being able to get their eyes off these young women when they clearly don’t have a choice.

If you are cringing (or orgasmic), don’t, for there’s much more to go. The Assamese television media – a curious phenomenon, which you could think of as a cross between Comedy with Kapil and India TV – has always thought of moral policing as fair game. Growing up, I remember many instances of News Live‘s (another Assamese news channel) cameras barging into bars – to “expose” supposedly deviant and decadent youngsters. These impromptu televised raids became so popular that other news channels started following soon. (God knows how many times my well-meaning family members and neighbours, terrorised by News Live and its ilk, told me not to hang out at bars.)

Alcohol isn’t the only thing the Assamese media has been averse to. Another pet subject is prostitution (often imaginary). I remember a news channel charging into a single woman’s home with cameras on the basis of “complaints” from neighbours.  In 2011, a Mizo girl, seemingly inebriated, was looking for shelter in the wee hours of the morning in the well-heeled Chandmari area of the city. For some reason, a few local women took umbrage, called a news channel, and as soon as it arrived, started beating up the girl. Needless to say, the entire fiasco was recorded and telecast – and widely devoured in Assamese households.

In 2012, News Live hit a new low even by the Assamese media’s extremely flexible standards.  One of its reporters (allegedly – but having seen the raw footage, there’s very little, if nothing at all, to give him the benefit of doubt) instigated a mob into molesting and manhandling a 17-year-old girl as he recorded it. All in the garb of protecting our culture, of course, as the girl had come out of a bar and had had a few drinks.

Remember Pratidin Time’s news feature about clothes (or the lack thereof) was aired more than a month and a half ago.  No one back in the place I call home seemed to even remotely sense that there was anything wrong with any of it until it was called out on the Internet last week.  In fact, there has been very little condemnation of these channels’ ways all these years. That brings us to another curious phenomenon – the Assamese middle-class. Much like the beleaguered city of Guwahati, where all the news channels are based, it has grappled with the idea of modernity and culture for the longest time now – and has still not quite been able to make its mind up about it. That programming like this has continued for so long only means it draws its legitimacy from the Assamese middle-class – by far the largest consumers of these channels.

But why only blame the docile and confused Axomiya? Indians of all hues and cultures – it’s an easily defendable generalisation – moral police and nonchalantly so.  On August 14, the Mumbai Police decided to raid a few hotels in Madh and Marve. They were apparently following an “unverified” tip-off that “prostitution-like activities” were taking place in the hotel.  The police booked 13 couples and registered 54 cases for “indecent behaviour”. Here the important bit is the “unverified tip-off” part. What it really means is that people in the neighbourhood had complained about “couples behaving indecently in public”. These are undoubtedly well-educated people who in all likelihood believe in the ideas of gender equality and caste equality. So why do they have a problem with consenting adults being together in a hotel room? Precisely because why Assamese news channels have for so long got away without as much as a whimper of protest from their viewers: the utter disdain for the idea of personal liberty. As long it’s not affecting us, it’s all right.

With inputs from Amlan Das