For much of the 20th century, India's government wielded great power over journalists. Most media were state controlled, foreign media were blocked, and freedom of the press was curtailed.
In the late 1990s, however, as India began to modernize, journalism flourished. Controls were lifted, and TV news networks multiplied.
For investigative journalist , it was a blossoming of press freedom – and one that she worries will not last.
Ayyub is best known for her book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Coverup, an undercover investigation into the 2002 riots in India’s Gujarat province that killed more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Narendra Modi, now India’s prime minister, was then the top official in Gujarat.
During a recent trip to Washington, Ayyub talked about the decline of press freedom in India, which journalism rights organization Reporters Without Borders now ranks as 140th out of 182 countries. India has drifted down in the rankings since Modi took power on a wave nationalism by the Hindu majority.
Ayyub told VOA that she has been victimized for her work, and that conditions for female journalists in India have become particularly difficult.
“There is a good deal of self-censorship in the Indian media right now because [journalists] are being targeted and they're losing their jobs for speaking out against the government,” she said.
Critics say Modi and his majority party have tolerated or condoned anti-Muslim violence. Most recently, the government orchestrated a communications blackout after Modi moved to revoke partial autonomy in Jammu and Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority state.
“The second big problem that can get you in trouble is being a Muslim in India right now, because there is a majority in government that is almost making secondary class citizens of Muslims," said Ayyub, who is Muslim. “There are lynchings.”
Ayyub described one instance of such violence in a recent piece she wrote for : A 24-year-old man, Tabrez Ansari, died after being severely beaten by a .
A video of the man being struck and begging for mercy went viral. The killing was by the U.S. , which has named India a “country of particular concern” for ongoing attacks against non-Hindu or lower-caste Hindu minorities.
In her piece, Ayyub wrote that “some 90% of religious hate crimes in the last decade have occurred since Modi came to power.” At the same time, Modi had pledged to protect Indian minorities after his re-election to a second term in May, she wrote.
In 2002, three days of rioting broke out in Gujarat state after a Muslim mob attacked a train of Hindu pilgrims, 59 of whom died when one of the cars caught fire.
In the , Hindu mobs rampaged against Muslim homes, businesses and places of worship. An estimated 1,000 people or more died, . The slaughter opened deep wounds of suspicion and accusation that continue to fester in India’s polarized political climate.
At the time, Modi, a Hindu, was chief minister of Gujarat. Critics maintained that he stood by as the anti-Muslim violence proceeded and failed to pursue those responsible. After years of delay, prosecutors in 2011 won convictions of 31 people for killing Muslims. For his part, Modi denied wrongdoing, and courts and a special task force never found evidence to prosecute.
In 2010, Ayyub had a while working for the magazine . She’d obtained phone records and a state intelligence document linking the Gujarat home minister, Amit Shah, to police officers implicated in the killings of three Muslims who were falsely accused of terrorism.
Three weeks later, according to Ayyub's account, Shah became the first serving home minister to be arrested on charges of orchestrating the killings. He was acquitted after a trial in 2014 however, and now serves as Modi’s home affairs minister and head of the majority Bharatiya Janata Party.
Ayyub’s scoop loosened up more sources and suspicions. That in turn led to a life-changing decision, she recounts in her book.
“To cull the truth from individuals who were in a position of power and had chosen to seal the truth within themselves was not going to be easy,” . “The only way out before me was what every journalist in the pursuit of truth uses as a last resort. Go undercover.”
So Ayyub pretended to be a U.S. film student, using hidden cameras to record a series of conversations with Gujarat police and political officials – Modi among them – that raised new questions of culpability and accountability in the riots.