In the last month, India has witnessed a great deal of debate with regards to the topic of freedom of speech. Unfortunately, as is often the case in states and societies with an authoritarian tilt, the free speech debate has been hijacked and turned into a proxy platform for party politics—accusing one another of being a “traitor”. This not only highlights the greed for power and control imbibed deeply in Indian politics but also goes on to show the great strength behind the student movement created around the status of free speech in India, thanks to Kanhaiya Kumar and others at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
The repressive legacy of sedition laws date back to the colonial empire of the British. The primary purpose of the sedition laws were to silence any dissenting opinion and suppress opposition within the British empire, so that they could carry on exploiting the natives in their colonies. For the British, the main concern was not human liberty and freedom—rather, it was profit, power, and dominance. If we are to accept the fact that, being the world’s largest democracy, India has as its top priority human freedom and liberty, it is a mere logical consequence that sedition laws have no place in our society. In fact, United Kingdom—the very country that instituted the sedition laws—has repealed the Sedition Act in 2009. In 2012, a petition demanding the repeal of the sedition law was sent to the Congress-led UPA government. As you may have guessed, the petition went unnoticed in the eyes of the government. The Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code says, “Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visual representation, or otherwise brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in India, shall be punished.” Writing about Section 124A in 1951, Jawaharlal Nehru stated, “Now so far as I am concerned, that particular Section [124A] is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in any body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it, the better. We might deal with that matter in other ways, in more limited ways, as every other country does but that particular thing, as it is, should have no place, because all of us have had enough experience of it in a variety of ways and apart from the logic of the situation, our urges are against it.”
This is not the first time an individual in India has been tried under Section 124A. In 1922, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was charged with sedition and sentenced to six years in prison for protesting against the British occupation of India. In 1962, Kedar Nath, a member of the Communist Forward Party in Bihar, accused the Congress government of corruption and tyranny and thus, was charged under Section 124A. In 2003, the Congress government in Rajasthan charged Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia with sedition for defying its ban on tridents. In 2010, Arundhati Roy, a Booker prize winning novelist and human rights activist, was quite close to going to jail for delivering “seditious” speech at a seminar held in Delhi. In 2011-12, facing incredible resistance in the form of an anti-graft movement, Congress appealed to the devil’s toolbox: Section 124A. To illustrate, pun intended, a cartoonist by the name of Aseem Trivedi was arrested for representing in his work the massive overt corruption within the political elite of India. The list goes on.
If one is to look at the reactions of various political entities to the case of Kanhaiya Kumar, one would wonder as to why there are no restrictions to free speech as far as the government is concerned. Home Minister Rajnath Singh warned, “Anyone who raises anti-India slogans or tries to put a question mark on the nation’s unity and integrity will not be spared.” Education and Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani said, “The nation can never tolerate any insult to Mother India.” The HRD ministry also issued a resolution to fly the national flag on a 207 feet high mast at all central universities to signify “strong and united India”. It seems to be the case that the political elites are pushing forth their nationalist agenda by framing Kanhaiya and those involved as seditionists, “anti-nationals”. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley questioned and foolishly answered his own question by saying, “Can hate speech ever be free speech? Obviously, it can’t be…The core question is are we going to give respectability to those primary ideology is that they want to break this country.”
This only adds to the increasingly hostile environment that the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and its allies, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have created as far as dissent is concerned. The mainstream media has been complicit in contributing to such an atmosphere, too. None of the mainstream newspapers in India even bothered to question whether the charges put forth against the students at JNU were legitimate or not, whether the trial administered was fair or not. They simply forwarded the standard government line to all their readers, in order to keep the public in the dark about the matter and prevent a popular protest movement against the elite in the government from gaining large traction amongst diverse groups in the Indian society.
A great deal of support for freedom of thought and speech at JNU has been shown by various institutions and individuals in India and abroad. About 379 Indian scientists and academics have signed a petition expressing “the fraternity’s deep disappointment with the actions initiated by the Vice-Chancellor of the university” and further “demanded that he take measures to ensure the arrested students are released.” Quite correctly, the petition said, “A university is a site where contesting ideas are explored and where students should be able to freely debate and discuss various views, including controversial ones, without the threat of state action.”
Article 19 of the Indian constitution guarantees to every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, and residence. There are a few unfortunate restrictions to the above mentioned right but those restrictions do not take away the fundamental right. The state of India is required by law to guarantee the citizen his or her freedom, irrespective of any limits imposed on by social institutions and authorities. This is one of the most basic aspects of a well-functioning democracy with an established constitution recognized by law. It is extremely disheartening to see the Delhi High Court order that granted bail to Kanhaiya state that people of India are “enjoying this freedom only because our borders are guarded by our armed and paramilitary forces.” The court order further states that, “The thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of JNU, who organized and participated in that programme, cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic. Whenever some infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure the same by giving antibiotics orally and if that does not work, by following a second line of treatment. Sometimes it may require surgical interventions also. However, if the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it becomes gangrene, amputation is the only treatment…To enable [Kanhaiya] to remain in the mainstream, at present I am inclined to provide conservative method of treatment.” For a high court order to compare Kanhaiya’s alleged actions with a gangrene limb infection is extremely disgusting and worrisome. A high court is an institution for ensuring justice as per the constitution— which it has not done in the truest sense—and not to compare alleged actions with diseases that need amputation. Enforcing “mainstream” ideology onto people brings back memories of heinous dictators in countries like Germany and Indonesia.
It has been clearly established—something that the submissive media has also reported without noticing the inherent contradiction it created with their regular reporting on the issue—that there is no credible evidence as far as the “anti-India slogans” heard at the program at JNU was actually by Kanhaiya or those involved in the sedition case. We also know of the fact that two of the seven video clips, which allegedly captured the events at JNU, have been tampered with. The entire sedition case has been based on faulty evidence, further pointing to the government’s intent to impose “mainstream” ideology on the public—by mainstream, the government means patriotic, nationalist ideology based upon extremely racist and orthodox Hindu doctrine. As per Arun Jaitley, BJP has won the “ideological war”. He said, “We have won. Those who were once shouting slogans for dividing the country are now raising slogans of Jai Hind and waving the Tricolour after their release from jail.” He has gone on to accuse leftist parties of being “anti-democratic” and “anti-national”. The BJP Member of Parliament (MP)
Anurag Thakur has gone on record to say that the youth wing members of the BJP would spread across the country carrying the national flag to spread the message of nationalism. It is quite astounding but M.J Akbar, a BJP MP from Jharkhand, mentioned in an opinion piece in the International New York Times that, “Mr. Afzal, whose rights the JNU students were rising to defend, was involved in the 2001 terrorist attack on India’s parliament. I wonder how Americans, after 9/11, would react to a “cultural evening” celebrating Osama bin Laden.” I think it would be a blow to rationality to give a response to such wild and jingoistic statements.
To see if one truly adheres to the idea of freedom of speech, one simply needs to see if one can tolerate opinions that are different from those that one harbours within. If it is the case, then one believes in freedom of speech. This was something that von Humboldt recognized in his book “The Limits of State Action” back in the 19th century, so why can’t we come to terms with it today? The political elite have done their best to turn the program organized by Kanhaiya et al at JNU as one that was a pro-Afzal Guru but it is not difficult to find the truth—it was a program in solidarity with Kashmiris, who have been on the receiving end of oppressive policies enacted by both India and Pakistan. There is a great deal of difference between questioning the legal status of state- sponsored execution of Afzal Guru and being pro-Afzal Guru. I think we need to remind our politicians about it, nevertheless. Freedom of speech is a right that every true democracy that holds liberty and freedom to be the utmost right of its citizens ought to have, and if it ought to have it, it must have it in its entirety. To demarcate the line of tolerable opinion is to snatch the very right of free speech away from people. Disagreements within society indicates the level of diverse opinions and thoughts but to grant someone the authority to silence those whose ideas and opinions are different and unconventional is a clear violation of their individual liberty and freedom. The current BJP government of India is conducting a Stalinist style repression of dissent and “undesirable” opinion—undesirable for the elite, a reality for those at the receiving end of the policies drafted by those very elites. The only way out of this is to oppose the nationalist agenda set forth by the central administration and spread the movement of fundamental liberty and freedom across India to make the political elites realize that this is not the USSR, and that the power lies with the people of India and not with those who are passing resolutions to ensure that the tricolour is flying high in every central university in India.
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