Freedom ? What were they thinking !!

Its that time of the year when people are out in the street trying to enforce their freedom to oppose even at the cost of some one's freedom to speak. Yes, I am indeed talking about the Sir Salman Rushdie fiasco that happened at the Jaipur literature fest (JLF) last weekend. It got me thinking, even if the Muslim organizations were right in saying that Sir Rushdie's book "Satanic verses" critiqued the practices of Islam and hence caused them immense hurt; were they right in trying to hound him out of the seminar that he was supposed to address. Is this actually a case where freedom to oppose a viewpoint triumphs over freedom of speech or is this a case of misuse of freedom of speech? The more I thought on those lines, it began to dawn upon me that there is a very fine line to distinguish the two and in India we usually don't see the line at all.



Indians are notorious for their hypocrisy. They want the perks of being a free country but still haven't gotten down with the concept of freedom. Incidentally, freedom also has a class bias in India and many times the rich and the mighty seem to be more free than the rest of us down here. The prism with which we view freedom is often political and hence the degree of freedom that we enjoy changes from time to time (based on how far the next elections are and who is currently in power). In Sir Rushdie's case, his plans to address a group of people about his book "Satanic verses" was just too close to elections and hence his freedom of speech got curtailed and the deoband and ullemas enjoyed the higher freedom to oppose. People all around cried hoarse about the unfair treatment meted out to a scholar like Sir Rushdie; even the opposition fought for his freedom of speech - pretty rich huh, for a political outfit that recently hounded noted painter (Late) M.F. Hussain out of India for some paintings that was objectionable according to them. It got me thinking, this is unfair! Are we actually free or does our freedom have political constraints. Can artists have absolute freedom to express themselves or should all freedom be tempered with reasonable restraints.



The maze of thought is very confusing because what rules fit for one case, fails in other cases and there cannot be "one rule for all" and this makes freedom of expression the most complicated freedom to enforce in a multi-lingual and multi-racial society like INDIA. Very recently, the Delhi high court was in the news for pulling up the executives of online content companies like Google, Face book, Twitter, YouTube etc. for showing scant respect for local laws and being unable to effectively monitor the content posted by users on their websites. The case was typical as the websites argued that they have immunity from libel laws for content and monitoring would amount to transgressing freedom of speech of its users. The court put these companies to notice by giving out a stern warning that the websites will be blocked if they don't comply to local laws. No sooner, the headlines read "India going the China way"; unfair? maybe, but certainly not excessive.



In this case, the netizens (as they prefer to call themselves) had taken their freedom too far and sought to use slander as a means to critique. Somehow, due to lack of proper definition, FREEDOM was being (mis)used to justify unacceptable behaviour. There was a big hue and cry when the companies carrying content stated that it was impossible to censor the Internet; yet, at the same time allowing their medium to host caustic views stating freedom of speech and not taking accountability because of laws that disallow libel and slander proceedings against such companies. It basically meant, you are free to use Internet to post anything you want and nothing can harm you as long as you are outside the geographical borders of any particular nation state that you are choosing to slander. This is unacceptable, I mean for God's sake, even the envoys and ambassadors are accountable for the views that they carry and can be declared "persona-non-Grata" by the host country (so much for diplomatic immunity). How can people run away from the accountability and state freedom of speech as a reason?



While I was still concurring with the views of the honorable judge in forcing accountability to the views that one posts online and stating that "No freedom is absolute, it has to be tempered with reasonable restraint", did the Sir Salman Rushdie incident happen. Again, this was a case where the author in question, a noted scholar and winner of Booker prize; had his book "Satanic verses" banned in India in 1988-89. Now, 24 years later, he was invited to a literary fest in Jaipur where he was to read passages from the said book and present his views. It seems that the deoband and the ullemas haven't moved past 1988 and this time wanted the author banned and muted rather than his book. In this case, one party states freedom of speech and the other states libel and slander laws. Dicey eh! You betcha. No wonder we had the Government of Rajasthan cowering under pressure and creating a story or two about terrorist strikes and keeping Sir Rushdie from attending this fest. If you try and go by the letter of the law, Sir Rushdie must be stopped because for one, he plans to read paragraphs from a banned book and secondly his views about Islam was bound to create disharmony in the community. Does it go by the spirit of our constitution? well that's a whole different matter. Indians do not realise one basic thing, we cannot have different laws for different cases, we have to use the statute and temper it with the spirit of the constitution to apply the same law for different cases. Executive does not have this wisdom, as its often laden with the burden to satisfy people's aspiration (however unreasonable), so it should be the purview of the judiciary to take a view in all such cases. Somehow, the executive gets involved every time and the entire drama makes the constitution look foolish.



Instead, the Supreme Court has to read the law and lay down the spirit of the law for all people irrespective of who they are and who they know, to follow. If the executive is in violation of this spirit to gain in electoral battle, it should be termed unconstitutional and the Supreme court should direct the President to dismiss the Government, for an executive that cannot follow the constitution in the letter and spirit (for whatever compulsions) has no right to remain in office. If one such example is made out, maybe we wont have more such dramas being played out in public and maybe people will not mock at the constitution with absolute impunity. On the Republic Day, we had an article making rounds, "Have we failed our constitution or has it failed us?"; I would have no hesitation in saying, we most certainly have failed our constitution and not the other way around.



The spirit of freedom, as enshrined in our constitution and other such documents around the world have the same spirit of accountability. It can be encapsulated by the Miranda rights of freedom to remain silent; and if you choose to give up this freedom, you will be accountable for the words of your mouth. Its as simple as that. It solves both our cases both in letter and spirit. Freedom does not mean Sir Rushdie is allowed to slander any community or religious belief nor does it mean anonymous persons being allowed to post anything on the Internet. It actually means, holding people accountable to the views that they carry. For a truly free man/ woman would not run away from that accountability.



Most importantly, one must distinguish between slander and critique. The judicial contempt laws help us on this one, "ability to critique a judgement without critiquing a judge or ascribing motives". If someone finds a religious practise wrong they must be allowed to critique it without slandering the religion, wholly on merits. If we as a society cannot take criticism and have too many holy cows whom we do not question, then we will have to spend more time filing suits against people for questioning our faith. We must encourage healthy criticism right from childhood and have schools provide a platform to young minds to question everything we do. If we do not embrace criticism, it re-routes itself into our society as abuse and slander. Lets provide a healthy outlet for all citizen to bring out their views and not force them to take anonymous paths to spew venom. Lets truly define and follow freedom in letter and in spirit and not force people to ask "Am I really free in India?"



So long....