https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443721994552 Media, Culture & Society 1–12 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0163443721994552 journals.sagepub.com/home/mcs Dismembering media diversity: A tryst with two press commissions Vibodh Parthasarathi Jamia Millia Islamia, India University of Helsinki, Finland Abstract How does the governance of the newspaper business in mid-20th century India enrich our understanding of contests over media diversity? This essay examines the anxieties of media diversity in regulatory debates in India during the decades between the two Press Commissions of 1954 and 1982. I argue the contests spawned during these debates being driven as much by normative standpoints on the press as a modern institution as by enumerations of the actual dynamics in the newspaper business. My purpose is twofold: to highlight the anxieties about media diversity expressed by both press commissions and related policy debates in the interim; and to reveal the desires to mitigate the risks to media diversity being undermined by mobilising unqualified notions of media freedom. Keywords media diversity, media modernity, media policy, news regulation, subdominant press, India Twin desires of media modernity The values of freedom and diversity appear intimately bundled, akin to siblings, in the earliest imaginations of newspapers fostering a media modernity in Europe. For James Mill and John Stuart Mill, the defence of press freedom in the 19th century was not a goal in itself but a means to achieve the circulation of diverse viewpoints (Thompson, 1995: 238). Importantly, these twin desires of modernity in the press assumed free enterprise to be the institutional foundation for protecting the press from state power. Promoting indi- vidual liberty through the press, especially for John Stuart Mill (see O’Rourke, 2001), neatly dovetailed into a laissez-faire approach towards the business of newspapers. Corresponding author: Vibodh Parthasarathi, Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Nelson Mandela House, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110025, India. Email: vibodhp@yahoo.com 994552MCS 0 0 10.1177/0163443721994552Media, Culture & SocietyParthasarathi research-article 2021 Special Issue: Beyond the Desirable: Media Modernity in India