Can we express ourselves freely?No!
It has been a week dominated by debates on free speech – beginning from the remarks made by social-scientist Ashis Nandy on caste and corruption at the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), spilling over to the protests on the visit of author Salman Rushdie (who was the epicentre of the JLF free speech debate last year) to Kolkata and the ban on Kamal Haasan’s film, Vishwaroopa, in Tamil Nadu.
While these grabbed national headlines, other blips on the free speech radar throughout the last month provided a disturbing picture of the overall precarious state of freedom of expression in India. These included misogynistic posts on Facebook in Hyderabad, a complaint against a student in Kolkata for a cartoon on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee, NSD’s cancellation of Pakistani theatre group Ajoka’s staging of ‘KaunHaiYehGustakh’ in New Delhi and of course, the continuing case against the students from Palghar, Maharashtra, for their Facebook posts on the death of Shiv sena leader Bal Thackeray.
No wonder then, that the JLF, the carnival of literati from all over the world, had a special debate on freedom of expression and the audience, over 5000-strong, were unanimous in stating that there was no freedom of expression in India!
Ashish Nandy’s remarks
It all started with social-scientist Ashis Nandy’s remarks at a session titled ‘Republic of Ideas’. Nandy was quoted as saying, “Some may call it a vulgar statement on my part, but it is a fact that most of the corruption comes from OBCs and Scheduled Castes and now increasingly Scheduled Tribes. And as long as this is the case, the Indian Republic will survive.”
The remarks drew instant criticism from several political parties and sections of the Dalit communities in India. The uproar didn’t stop even after Nandy’s clarification in a press conference at the festival. He apologized if anyone has misunderstood him.
Saying that Nandy is trying to malign Dalits and OBCs, the Bahujan Samaj Party chief, Mayawati said, “His statement is far from the truth, condemnable, unfortunate and reflective of a casteist mindset. The Rajasthan government should send him to jail after lodging a case against him…” An FIR was filed against him and the festival producer Sanjoy Roy under sections 506 and 3(1) of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act by Rajpal Meena, state president of the National Union of Backward Classes, SC, ST and Minorities.
This has led to the debate in India on how much freedom of expression should people have while speaking or writing anything. Blogs, websites and editorial pages of newspapers are filled with both support and opposition to Nandy. While some say that, looking at his career, it is obvious Nandy didn’t meant what people have understood from his comment, other questioned Nandy’s intellectual merit!
Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPWA) wrote, “Ashish Nandy's comment is blatantly casteist. No matter what spin he puts on it, there is no running away from the fact that he branded SC/ST and OBC people as especially 'corrupt', and suggested that govts in which people from these sections of the population are not in power, tend to be 'clean'! Apart from the fact that this is rather glaringly inaccurate (one can compile a rather long list of the savarna corrupt), it also raises questions about the 'merit' of our top intellectuals!”
On his part, Nandy said, "If at 75, I am tried under the atrocities act and convicted then I'll go to jail, I'll not contest it because I have worked for Dalits and adivasis for 45 years and I am not going to take this insult. I will go to jail.”
The debate rages on
Sadly, at the JLF, which was attended by 275 speakers, most of the panellists and listeners expressed that there is very less freedom for people to speak out. In the session “Freedom of Expression”, historianOrlando Figes suggested that there be a market of free ideas.
Saying that the free speech isn’t liked by the authoritarian governments, he said, “We should talk out our different views. Before you have free speech you must give authority to people to have free thoughts. Free speech is centre of democracy. Authoritarian governments don’t like that,” said Figes, also professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.
In the discussion on freedom of expression at the festival, the moderator also asked people how many of them believe that there is freedom of expression in India or not. Most of the people chose “no freedom of expression in India.”
There has been widespread demand that the laws should be eased so that people can give voice to their expressions in more open ways. In Kashmir, Facebook users have had a hard time even to express their views which the state dislikes or calls them “provocative” or “inciting violence”. After the 2010 mass protests, scores of young boys were arrested in 2011 to find who were running the pro-freedom or “anti-India” pages or groups on Facebook.
As writer Bhasharat Peer said, laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Public Safety Act (PSA) and Official Secrets Act (OSA) in India are not the laws of a civilized society. “There is a need to look into these laws,” he said.
The debate continues.