Emphasis should be on checking violence by demagogues, not on further curbing free speech

The Supreme Court’s judgment on Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan’s statement is a fillip to the cause of free speech. Khan had called the Bulandshahar rape incident of 2016 a “political conspiracy and nothing else.” The apex court said that additional restrictions cannot be imposed on the freedom of expression of ministers, MPs, and MLAs, as the existing grounds to restrict free speech are exhaustive. “A statement made by a minister even if traceable to any affairs of the state or for protection of the government cannot be attributed vicariously to the government by invoking the principle of collective responsibility,” the SC majority ruled. Justice BV Nagarathna wrote a separate judgment. On Monday, she had written a dissenting note on the apex court judgment on demonetisation; the verdict upheld the ban on high-denomination currency notes in 2016. She concurred with the majority judgment, accepting that more restrictions cannot be imposed on free speech, but dissented on the question of statements made by a minister. She said that statements are vicariously or by association attributable to the government of the day. “Public functionaries and celebrities having regard to their reach and impact they have on public have to be more responsible and be more restraint on speech since it impacts the citizens at large,” she said.

Justice Nagarathna is vehemently against hate speech. “Hate speech strikes at foundation values of the constitution by marking society as unequal. It also violates the fraternity of citizens from diverse backgrounds. The sine qua non (essential condition) of a cohesive society is based on plurality and multiculturalism such as India that is ‘Bharat.’ Fraternity is based on the idea that citizens have reciprocal responsibilities towards one another,” she said. While her intentions are laudable, her attack on hate speech seems a bit excessive. The reason is that in the last one hundred years, a lot of creative and scholarly works have been banned or curtailed on grounds of blasphemy, immoral, etc. Some of them can be brought under the rubric of ‘hate speech.’ Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824-83), founder of Arya Samaj, was a bitter critic of superstitions and endless rituals that have been the bane of Hindu society for centuries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled him for this reason. In his magnum opus, Satyartha Prakash, Dayananda wrote that “idolatry is adharma.” Isn’t it blasphemous from the perspective of millions of Hindu devotees? Should Satyartha Prakash be regarded as hate speech? Hundreds of years ago, Kabir wrote, “Laying rock upon stone a mosque is made/On this climbs the muezzin to make his call to the heavens, is the Lord deaf then?” By any reckoning, this is deeply offensive to Islam. He also ridiculed idolatry, which Hindus would regard as offensive. Emphasis should be on checking violence by demagogues, not on further curbing free speech, which is already under attack from various quarters.