Double standards on free speech
Sangh Parivar members seem to get away with impunity
Freedom of speech and expression, a right guaranteed to every Indian citizen, has been open to wide interpretation under the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule at the Centre. On the one hand, as several recent court rulings have highlighted recently, critics of the state, from journalists and students to activists, have been incarcerated or threatened by the institutions of state. Many protestors against the Citizenship Amendment Act or the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A over the status of Jammu & Kashmir or supporters of the farmers’ agitation have discovered this the hard way. On the other hand, members of the wider Sangh Parivar appear to get away with impunity for insulting statements that they make against people or institutions in the crosshairs of their disapproval.
These double standards were on full display in the recent diatribe against IT major Infosys masquerading as a “cover story” in the Panchjanya, or BJP spokesman Ram Kadam’s demands that poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar’s films be banned. Take the Panchjanya report, which appeared a few days after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman summoned the Infosys brass to explain the multiple glitches in the income tax portal. After a harangue about how Infosys has forfeited public trust as a result of the operational glitches on the goods and services tax and income tax portals, it goes on to state that Infosys’ foundation finances “left wing outfits” and media portals critical of the Modi government. It also questions the safety of data on the upgraded portal of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which Infosys also handles. Despite the scurrilous and unfounded nature of the article, which sparked outrage, the only rejoinder from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was a disingenuous claim that Panchjanya is not its mouthpiece, though it has been publishing the journal since 1948. As for Ram Kadam’s demand that Javed Akhtar’s films be banned unless he apologised for equating the RSS with the Taliban, perhaps the irony of his response escaped him. This is, after all, precisely, how the Taliban would respond to criticism. Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s gratuitous attack on Indian businesses in mid-august singled out the Tata group for opposing his ministry’s draft ecommerce policy. Businesses are entitled to protest if they perceive that policies will harm their interests; to accuse them of putting narrow interests before the “national interest” is unwarranted. Yet no one from government has come forward to underline this point or defend the Tatas, though the minister did clarify a day later that he had nothing against the group.
This trend of criticism without consequences is not new. Early in the Modi government’s first tenure, then food processing minister Niranjan Jyoti thought nothing of abusing Muslims in the crudest of terms in a public speech. Besides a grudging apology, she faced no other consequence, even retaining her ministry. In 2019, BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur described Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse as a patriot twice, once on the campaign trail and once in Parliament, a remark that earned her no censure from the party, though the comment was expunged from the record. None of this enhances the Sangh Parivar’s democratic credentials.