Successive Governments in India have always been nervous about the abundance of diversity in Indian voice, and have tried to curb it. And so we have on our hands an enduring ugly problem of lack of freedom of expression, not a sporadic one of our times
Supposedly in the past, Eastern philosophies have embraced chaos in the environment better than those in the West have. The latter have instead craved more for establishing order — in the stories of Babylon and the ancient Hebrews, Apollo’s ascendance over Dionysos, or Maxwell Smart’s betterment of the agents of chaos, the human role on earth has been defined as building order out of chaos.
It is out of this need for order that the West created the concept of a modern nation and gifted it to the world. Nation states were presented (and still are) as a way of transforming societies from barbarianism to civilisation, chaos to order. Further, most modern nations emerged in the aftermath of wars and struggles for freedom from tyrannic colonial or dictatorial powers, with a seemingly missionary mandate for harmony. And so these modern nations — in the East or West — have by definition taken on the goal, with success or not, to unify the primordial mess.
In a country as diverse as India, the chaos around us is hard to iron out. There is a chance that every opinion on an issue may be pivoted in an equally legitimate socio-cultural context as another.
Unlike societies that are more homogenous in socio-economic, anthropological, and cultural matters, in India we live surrounded by multiple truths. For instance, poverty in a locality is articulated as much as by the lament of the child begging in the lanes as it is by his growling stomach, and the churn of the rickshaw pedal chain, the gurgling of the sewers, buzz of houseflies near his shanty house. Wealth at the same place can be heard in the gay ruffling of a stack of big notes and in the words of the industrialist, who would soon raze the locality to the ground so he can construct on that spot his factory that will provide jobs to the locals. The opinions of either of the groups — the poor and of the wealthy — on the question of development of the locality may be equally valid. Both truths co-exist, depending on the vantage point you see it from. Often these opinions are easily magnified by the media or by the locals themselves, such that our country’s millions can vociferously take different sides on the matter. Who is correct amongst themIJ And how can a decision be taken on the issue without crushing the legitimate voices of someIJ
Further, citizens with diverse backgrounds have different individual preferences and beliefs. lopsided development — as is the trend in India — has a compounding effect on diversification of tastes, beliefs, and opinions. For instance, the rich get richer often with increasing levels of education and exposure to new ideas, whereas the poor have lesser chances to develop their mental faculty to their full potential.
But a nation state is established based on an aspiration for collective equilibrium. To arrive at a collective equilibrium not every disparate voice is part of the final decision. In a country as diverse as India, politicians have feared that the citizens’ increasingly diverging individual preferences and beliefs, if left to be uncontrolled, can create political chaos. They are wary that unbridled freedom to express opinions will make it harder for voters to remain in harmony with each other, and to ultimately submit themselves to a single leader. Thus, freedom of speech in India has never been perfect. Curbing expression is nothing new; there were restrictions by the Congress Governments since the days of Nehru.
A few examples: In 1950, a leftist weekly journal in English, Cross Roads, published critical views on Nehruvian policy. Not only was the journal banned by the Madras State, but eventually, in 1951, the Nehru administration made the Amendment to 19(1)(a) of Constitution of India against “abuse of freedom of speech and expression”. And so, in fact, the very first amendment made to the Constitution of India included the provisions to curtail freedom of speech and expression in the country.
later this amendment was used by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency in 1975 to cripple freedom of press across the country. Her son Rajiv Gandhi did no better — his Government was quick to ban Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses even before Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against it in Iran.
The Hindutva extremists have been notorious too in the past in this regard — in 2006, MF Husain was forced into exile by a series of court cases filed against him by them, and the Government did not protect him. Ultimately, India’s greatest artist of our times relinquished his Indian citizenship to become a citizen of Qatar, where a few years later he died.
India has been consistently ranked abysmally low in the World Press Freedom Index. Woefully, the country’s rank of 80 out of 139 countries since 2002, when the authors Reporters Without Borders began assimilating this index, has only worsened. India’s latest move in 2017 has been to disgracefully slip 3 ranks more from the previous year, to be now placed at 136th out of 180 countries.
My point here is that successive Governments in India have always been nervous about the abundance of diversity in Indian voice, and have tried to curb it. And so we have on our hands an enduring ugly problem of lack of freedom of expression, not a sporadic one of our times.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd. She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum. miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com