Free Speech, Anyone?

If India’s democracy has to thrive, it cannot do so if our politicians have such thin skins, where a negative reference to Maharashtra’s deputy CM by a stand-up comedian leads to Shiv Sainiks vandalising the venue of his performance. While opposition politicians suddenly rose up to condemn the vandalism and reaffirmed Kunal Kamra’s right to his views on Eknath Shinde, the problem is that practically no politician in India is able to laugh off a joke or satire. The other Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) claimed Kamra had every right to call Shinde a traitor since he broke the party. But when Uddhav was CM, a Sumeet Thakkar was booked for referring to him as a “modern-day Aurangzeb” and his son Aditya Thackeray as “Baby Penguin”. An independent MP, Navneet Rana, and her husband were booked merely for threatening to recite the Hanuman Chalisa outside Uddhav’s residence, and the courts even found some merit in the police action. Businessman Ravi Srinivasan was arrested with alacrity for accusing Karti Chidambaram, son of former home and finance minister P Chidambaram, of amassing “more wealth than (Robert) Vadra”. In Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal, a Jadavpur University professor was sent to jail merely for forwarding a cartoon lampooning the CM. In Delhi, Tajinder Bagga, a BJP leader, was hounded by Punjab police (till the courts gave him relief from arrest) for alleged negative references to then Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal.And even as Kamra’s comedy venue was being vandalised, some other alleged upholders of democracy in Tamil Nadu were busy attacking the home of YouTuber Savukku Shankar, pouring filth and human excreta on his home when his mother was inside. Shankar has been critical of corruption under DMK-Congress tenure and has accused the Tamil Nadu Congress president as being the man behind the attack.The point of producing such a long (and far from exhaustive) laundry list of attacks on free speech is to show that no political party, no politician, can be trusted to uphold the right of citizens to say their piece. This is a real problem, for the law is meant to protect the citizen from arbitrary action by the state for merely expressing an opinion. But if the people running a state are themselves eager to use the law to silence critics who can do no more than raise a laugh or two, what chance does free speech have? The boilerplate response of the state, when confronted with the need to protect free speech, is that the right to free speech is not absolute. The problem begins with the wording of the law, where interpretations can be so wide that almost anybody can be booked and harassed for speaking his mind. Take the first amendment to Article 19, which came almost as soon as the Constitution was adopted. Proviso 19(2) has this to say about the limits to free speech: “Nothing in sub-clause (a) of clause (1) shall affect the operation of any existing law, or prevent the state from making any law, in so far as such law imposes reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right (to freedom of speech) conferred by the said sub-clause in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”Now, what constitutes a threat to public order, decency or morality can be defined by a police officer differently in different circumstances. Is calling someone a traitor or Baby Penguin defamation? And what if someone were to criticise Russia or Israel, which are India-friendly countries, when this can be deemed to be reason enough to curtail your right to criticise them?And then there is that huge area related to hurting religious feelings. Section 295 of the old Indian Penal Code says that “Whoever destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship, or any object held sacred by any class of persons with the intention of thereby insulting the religion of any class of persons or with the knowledge that any class of persons is likely to consider such destruction, damage or defilement as an insult to their religion, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”Now, how does one know what the intentions of the person criticising a religious entity or the religion itself were, and can anyone claim insult to his religion and feelings based on his own subjective assessment? Is it any surprise that the law and order machinery swoops in to stop anyone from saying anything about any religion claiming that it would have hurt somebody’s feelings and may have led to violence? The truth is there are simply too many restrictions on free speech, and almost anything said by anyone can result in an FIR being filed with arrests to follow. And since, in the Indian system, the process is often the punishment, nothing ultimately needs to be proved against the alleged culprit, for by then he or she would have got the message: don’t mess with politicians, for they can set the law’s watchdogs against you even for flimsy reasons. If free speech has to have any chance of surviving in our volatile democracy, the reform must begin with politicians, for it is they who control the levers of power. The courts, if anything, must ensure that politicians and police personnel who misuse power just to show who’s boss are punished exemplarily. And quickly. Otherwise, we will remain a democracy where we only have the freedom to elect our leaders, but no ability to regulate their conduct once elected.