Speech has special significance for human beings. One who cannot express herself or himself in words is a piteous creature. Anyone who is not free to express herself or himself is a slave. They who dare not express themselves are cowards. On the other hand, he who expresses himself adequately is a civilized person. She who expresses herself with clarity and confidence is an educated mind. Those who express themselves with power and persuasiveness prove to be good leaders. One who expresses himself powerfully with a devious intent is a demagogue. One who refrains from expressing himself, because of the sublimity of his vision is a genius. He who forgets to express himself in the face of the mysterious and the tremendous is a saint.
The right to free speech is enshrined as fundamental in all national and international instruments of human rights. On the other hand, sedition via the spoken word is distinguished from other modes of human communication by an intention to incite citizens to violence against the government in power. An essential feature of sedition is violent animosity towards the Constitution of a country. It cannot be, therefore, that exercising the fundamental rights conferred constitutionally on citizens amounts to sedition. Incitement to violence is the essence of sedition, while the right to criticize and resist the policies of a government is basic to democracy.
Such criticism is also crucial for the economic and social health of a country. Where citizens are not free to express their dissent in relation to what the government of the day pursues and propagates, democracy becomes an elected autocracy. In all civilized societies, the right to dissent has been held sacrosanct. This was best expressed in the attitude attributed to Voltaire by the historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall, ‘I do not like what you are saying, but I will defend with my life your right to say it.’
However, the right to speech is not absolute. When people live together in a body-politic, they consent to have their rights modified to the extent of making their shared life harmonious. There is a problem here, which stems from the asymmetry of power. Those in governance roles are always freer to get away with saying whatever they want, while enjoying the authority to try to fix the limits to what citizens may say. Naturally, demagogues who attack their adversaries with vitriol are least tolerant of dissent.
Recall, for instance, any of the recent pre-election speeches. Vituperative words were freely used. Electoral adversaries were killed with words. Criticism bordering on calumny became public entertainment. Or consider the talk shows on any of our TV channels. Measure the civilization-quotient of the statements deployed. When issues are raised, it is not the issues that are addressed; instead, those who raise them, or the parties they represent, are attacked.
Most TV anchors are pre-democratic deities. They cut you short if you deviate from the line they have in mind. They also like, with an eye on TRP ratings, to encourage and poke discussions to degenerate into shouting matches. It is worrisome that children and young adults across the country are exposed to this ritual of surly intolerance daily. You are called to give your views. But, the moment you begin to do so, you are shouted down. This reaches its ludicrous worst, when ‘the nation wants to know’, and you are willing to let the nation know, but are shut out the moment you begin to let the nation know that you have a mind of your own. Then you know what “the nation does not want to know” because the anchor is clear regarding the things about which the nation should be kept ignorant.
This raises the question of the democratic space. Athenian democracy recognized the right of citizens to participate in the public space. How a person lives his private life has little overt political significance. Citizens and rulers alike must respect the integrity of the democratic space. The public domain becomes democratic when it is informed by the fundamental principles enshrined in the given Constitutional democracy. In the case of the Indian Constitution, these are: justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Citizens and the State are obliged to ensure that these values are upheld in the democratic space.
The recent Greta Thunberg toolkit issue has brought to light an issue of special gravity in this regard. To what extent shall citizens be free to associate themselves with ‘foreign hands’ (a bogey that Mrs. Indira Gandhi and her predecessors invented) in exercising their right to express their views? Every country is sensitive to interference in its internal affairs by overseas interlopers. What is all right for family members to say regarding the affairs of their family is inappropriate for the neighbours to mouth. No country in the world maintains the same yardstick for measuring national dynamics and international designs. That is because attitudes in many nations have not yet caught up with the fact that we live in a globalized world. If the USA decides at any point to pursue a “Buy Only American” policy, we will all suffer as international trade shrinks. If China continues to subsidise its exports, then other countries will continue to be unable to compete. Or if it decides to avoid implementing international agreements regarding health or pollution, that has international consequences because viruses and air don’t respect national boundaries. We all belong together on planet Earth.
The fact that the world is globalized does not mean, however, that cultural differences have vanished. No, they remain; and they run deep. Western cultures have learnt to value personal liberty more than eastern cultures. So, what is legitimate from a Euro-American perspective may not be acceptable from an Indian point of view. Unfortunately, such issues have not been addressed, as they should have been, in the wake of globalization. Could it have crossed Greta Thunberg’s mind that her tweet would create the reaction it did from the Indian government? By now, she might have learned a thing or two about cultural differences and the sensitivities they carry.
The issue here is not merely about what you may, or may not, say. The issue, long-term, is what happens to the genius of a country. Have you watched children who have grown up under tyrannical parental control? Have you sensed the melancholy behind their timidity? The nervousness behind their clumsiness? A people cannot bloom and fulfil their genius, if they have to endure a climate of anxiety and insecurity and watch their steps as if they are in a minefield. The right to err is basic to nurturing enterprise and innovativeness. For the sake of progress, we drool over innovation. But freedom of thought needed for innovation is squashed for the sake of political expediency; and dissent is dealt with the iron fist of a hard State. This will not do. It may take, not the proverbial week in politics, but some years to see the civilisational consequences of such contradictions. But, by then, huge damage would have been done to the genius and destiny of India.
However, there is this one thing that shouldn’t take too long to realize. Sedition, in most cases, turns out to be more of a hype than a peril. Why do I believe so? Look at the conviction rate in such cases. A vast majority of them turn out to be non-est. Cases are indeed filed, but the accused are acquitted. The process of legalised harassment remains in itself the punishment.
It is hard to believe that we are unaware of how this hurts the image of India internationally. Is it that neither our political leaders nor their much less consequential collaborators who actually deliver the harassment have misplaced their conscience somewhere? Is the infantilism of this lost on the people? When we were in nursery school, didn’t we complain against our peers for silly things? Those things seemed major offences then! Crying wolf about perils to national security posed by tool kits, stand-up comedians and human rights activists may seem serious business to a few, but are they not rather asinine to the mature and the dispassionate? We must have greater faith in our country.
No other country has endured a millennia of bleeding and survived as gloriously as we have. Our security environment is robust, even if it is not expedient for some people to recognize this. Geography itself is a formidable security asset for us. A million Raphales cannot equal it. Prime Minister Modi exudes power and confidence. Should he not ponder the incongruity between the new national fizz and the tendency to over-react to pretended conspiracies afloat on social networking sites?
