The importance of free speech
This excerpt from a new book looks at the vexatious matter of saving secularism from the secularists
The Indian State has, since the passage of the First Amendment to the Constitution, appointed itself a referee in deciding what is acceptable speech and what is not. The State censoring speech and content of its own volition is bad enough — what makes matters worse is the censorship in response to threats by some group claiming to be offended. But when there is a referee with the power to decide one way or the other, there is no use blaming offended groups for lobbying and pressurising governments to get what they want.
By taking a stand either way, the State exposes itself to several charges, especially when it has a history of seeing its citizens as members of groups rather than as individuals. More often than not, a group’s right to get offended and enforce censorship trumps an individual’s right to freedom of speech and expression.
In 2012, Salman Rushdie was prevented from participating at a literature festival for having written The Satanic Verses two decades earlier. In 2015, Hindu Mahasabha leader Kamlesh Tiwari was arrested and detained under the draconian National Security Act by a ‘secular and liberal’ Samajwadi Party government for making ‘derogatory remarks’ about the prophet of Islam. In 2019, Kamlesh Tiwari was murdered, and those who conspired to kill him confessed that their motive had been to avenge what Tiwari had said. Celebrity TV anchors and the liberal intelligentsia seen pontificating about press freedom also looked the other way when Shirin Dalvi, an editor of the Urdu newspaper Avadhnama, was arrested for reprinting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Dalvi subsequently lost her job and the newspaper had to be shut down.
These episodes, predictable to a fault, are illustrative of the way politics has been conducted and the free speech debate in India has played out over the years. Employing wily statecraft and plausible deniability, the Congress–UPA government achieved its political objective of stopping Rushdie from attending the event. Speaking at the same literature festival in 2012, Outlook magazine editor Vinod Mehta, a self-described Left– Liberal, berated the Congress party for its ‘shameless communalism’ in using the episode to court Muslim votes in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh...
Every time an episode of this nature occurs, television channels conduct debates on the state of free speech in India… It is worth thinking about why the same cycle of outrage repeats again and again, yet nothing really changes. Since Independence, movies and books have been banned under pressure from different interest groups in various states all over India. The list is simply too long to reproduce in full, but it includes movies such as The Da Vinci Code, Jodhaa Akbar, Aaja Nachle and several books deemed offensive to Muslims, Hindus, other identity groups, and even members of the Nehru–Gandhi family. In a new low, in 2011, columnist Anish Trivedi, who had supposedly written an ‘anti-caste’ article was convicted and jailed for six months by a court of law. The world’s largest democracy can take credit for jailing writers like totalitarian States are known to do.
… All these are instances of assault on free speech. No celebrity writer or journalist protested these attacks on free expression. This is because the importance of free speech in a democracy isn’t widely understood or championed in our country... Free speech is about preventing the State from forcing individuals to remain silent as well as not forcing individuals to say some
Harsh Madhusudan, Rajeev Mantri 352pp, ₹799 Westland thing they do not want to. The right to offend is fundamental to free speech. Free speech is also about the State protecting individuals from being at the receiving end of physical attacks from others. Such protection is needed especially for speech considered offensive by some people.
...what is hate speech in some countries qualifies as protected speech in American jurisprudence. The difference in the ways the Indian Constitution and the American Constitution guarantee free speech is telling. Article 19 clause (1) (a) of India’s Constitution states that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of expression, and then goes on to list the ‘reasonable restrictions’ on this freedom. These ‘reasonable restrictions’ were inserted by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru... Nehru... succeeded in pushing through the amendment, including vague generalities like public order, decency or morality, India friendly relations with foreign countries and other arbitrary causes in the interest of which restrictions on speech could be imposed. Time magazine, reporting on the issue, said... Nehru was more interested in muzzling criticism of his foreign and domestic policies from news weeklies such as Blitz and Current...
With the passing of the First Amendment, free speech became constitutionally restricted in India. In stark contrast to India’s caveat-filled constitutional right to free speech, the First Amendment to the American Constitution simply states that ‘Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’. India’s Constitution doles out ‘rights’ to individuals. The American Constitution assumes pre-existing rights and freedoms, and places limitations on the government instead. For India, the State is supreme with practically no constitutional limits because of all the broad caveats. For America, the State is but a constitutionally restricted agent of the individual. In India, the onus is on the individual to show that he or she is within their rights to do something. In the US, the government has to prove that it is constitutionally valid to regulate an undeniable freedom. This is the difference between lip-service to freedom and true freedom...