The Politics of Free Expression

The censorship debates in India are not new and Indian state and Indian citizens have been perpetrator and victims of these debates. Recent debates on Wendy Dongier’s book The Hindus; An Alternative History again tried to show the parochial minds of Indian population towards accepting criticism or we can say an alternate view about the religion and the culture. Despite having Fundamental Right of free expression, Section 295A of Indian Penal Code has power to stop and punish any speech which maliciously insults or attempts to insult any religious belief of any class of people. So, basically section 295 A is secular in its nature.  This section was not present in the original Indian Penal Code of 1860 but later in 1927, IPC was amended to have some sort of anti-blasphemy law after the decision of Lahore Court in Rajpal vs. King Emperor 1927. At that time, eminent lawyers, politicians and others debated it vehemently because it was seen as an obstruction to the historical and anthropological research of religions and protection of scholarly work.

The term ‘free expression’ came from the cliché-ridden history of liberalism’s rise from 17^th century Europe's religious war, when secularism was allegedly pitted in a metaphysical battle against theological obscurantism and based on these terms ‘metaphysical battle’ and ‘theological obscurantism’, Faisal Devji tried to write a very balanced essay named Changing Contours of Censorship, published on Monday, February 24, 2014 in The Hindu. But, this is an exaggerated attempt to see everything opposing liberal's view through the lens of ‘religion’. The whole debate has given so much intellectual angles that the original meaning of free expression for a common man has lost somewhere in the midst. Certainly, people have right to have opinions and also they can have platform to show their opinions without any obstruction from state or any other authority or groups. But, also this notion of free expression gives others a right to form different opinion and right to go to court if they feel any speech is hurting their sentiments. One cannot deliberately abjure their right by defining these rights as given by colonial rulers and so draconian in nature. This law has some importance in keeping religious fundamentalist at bay as we have seen in case of Mujaffarnagar riots.

Free expression has wide meanings ranging from right to speech to right to information. Free expressions include the right for people to be exposed to differing points of view and so responses to literature shall be a ‘new’ literature. But these things work in an ‘ideal’ sense. Everyone has the right to free expression but do they have platform to exhibit these ‘expressions’? Obviously not, N. ram can publish his views daily in his newspaper but some other Ram’s view will be termed as archaic, conservative, uneducated, uninformed and not having the potential to get published. So, basically this is a hollow term and this hollowness is also seen in the supporters of the book. Most of the supporters of the book have not read the Hindu scriptures and they are giving people only choice of having sentiments that should not be offended by any writings because one has right to publish her opinion. But, then the demarcation between ‘public opinion’ and ‘private opinion’ will merge. The book also does not seem to be an informed narrative of Hindu Dharma as one will expect from a professor of Sanskrit. But, somehow this book and the debates around it have potential to start a debate about 'true' view of Hinduism.

Most of the self proclaimed liberals in a melodrama felt after this incident that the fundamentalism is rising and fascist groups are regaining power in the polity of India. We cannot have such a bad example of hermeneutics in the recent history of this country. However, Indian written History is somehow a product of such hermeneutics. The tendency of intelligentsia to see everything having an ingredient of religion as religious can jeopardize the whole movement of secularization. This is a debate in the domain of secularization and not in the domain of ‘religion’. Liberals interpolate it in the wrong place and try to reach the conclusion through Freudian techniques. ‘Freudian interpretation’ has to be withdrawn from dealing with such issues. Anything against ‘westernisation’ is not fundamentalism. The different labels should been seen differently. Only then the covariance can be established to reach a fair conclusion. Johnanthan Shainin of The New Yorker rightly pointed the problems expressed by Dinanath Batra.

The plurality of India can only sustain  through the weapon of ‘free expression’ but this expression should be informed and articulate.  Being analytic is not criticized but becoming random in the desire of producing abstraction is criticized. The debate should happen in the label of ‘for’ and ‘against’ but who is ‘for’ and who is ‘against’ should be properly defined. Otherwise, these notions of free expression have capacity to reframe boundaries of fragments and out of the court settlement shall not be seen in the sense of Arundhati Roy. Because she finds every act of Bhartiya Janta Party and Hindu organisations fascist in nature. Her schizophrenia is not going to help anyone in this country. The left liberals first need to define the meanings of these terms so that they will be able to use these terms more prudently and withdraw love for jargon. These debates are educating masses and broadening the term free expressions for common people but different views in these types of debate should be published so that readers will have choice to form their consciousness rather than having consciousness formed by the opinions of others. The dialectics of ideas is the only answer to this kind of problem, where readership is increasing and people are becoming informed.

Also, the publisher's attempt to ban the release of books in the apprehension of any violence questions constitutionalism of nation. The state should ensure safety of writers and publishers to promote critical views in the society. This will lead the nation and its people in becoming more informed. Any civilisation which propounds to be civil will welcome any such debates. Democracy could become  burden for the people of any nation if the democratic spirits will be missing from its act.