Totalitarian Govts rely on falsehoods: Justice Chandrachud
Totalitarian Governments are associated with a “constant reliance on falsehoods in order to establish dominance”, Supreme Court Justice DY Chandrachud said on Saturday quoting philosopher Hanna Arendt and asserting that intellectuals have a duty to expose the lies of the State.
He was delivering a speech on the topic “Speaking Truth to Power: Citizens and the Law” as part of the 6th MC Chagla Memorial Online Lecture.
Live Law.in quoted Justice Chandrachud as saying truth is integral to the functioning of a modern democracy.
“Speaking truth to power” refers to an act by a speaker to use the truth to criticise someone who is more powerful”, Justice Chandrachud said. “This act aims to wield the power of truth against power. The assumption is that truth will counter-act power and obviate a predisposition to tyranny, the Justice said.
“One can consider speaking truth to power as a right of every citizen which they must have in a democracy but equally a duty of every citizen,” he added.
Quoting philosopher Hanna Arendt, Justice Chandrachud said that totalitarian Governments are associated with a “constant reliance on falsehoods in order to establish dominance”. He highlighted that truth is integral to the functioning of a modern democracy. “Democracy and truth go hand in hand. Democracy needs truth to survive,” he said.
Justice Chandrachud said since democracies are spaces of reasons, truth is important, as...truth also create a shared public memory on which foundations of a nation can be established. In this regard, he said that the courts can also play the role of recording public truth with the ability to document information from all parties involved after due process has been followed.
“State alone can’t be relied on to determine truth. It can’t be said that State will not indulge in falsehood for political reasons even in democracies. The role of the US in the Vietnam war did not see daylight until the Pentagon papers were published. In the context of Covid, we see that there is an increasing trend of countries across the world trying to manipulate data. Hence, one cannot only rely on the State to determine the truth”, Justice Chandrachud said.
According to Live Law, Justice Chandrachud called for more vigilance and participation by the citizens. Quoting Noam Chomsky, he said that public intellectuals have a duty to expose the lies of the State.
“As responsible citizens, we should put these truth providers through intense scrutiny and questioning to convince ourselves of the veracity of the claims made by them. It is equally important for those making truth claims to be transparent”, he said.
Asserting that citizens must strengthen public institutions and strive to ensure free press, Justice Chandcrachud said, “What we as citizens of India can do. First thing is to strengthen our public institutions. As citizens, we must strive to ensure that we have a press that is free from the influence of any kind, be it political or economic, which can provide information in an unbiased manner. Similarly, schools and universities need to be supported to ensure that they create an atmosphere where students can learn to differentiate truth from falsehood and develop a temperament to question power. Secondly, we must not only acknowledge the plurality of opinions in a country as diverse as India but celebrate this plurality. This allows open space for more opinions. We also need to protect the integrity of our elections seeing elections not only as a right but also as a duty. To do this, we need to ensure all citizens are given basic education to realize the value of their vote.”
“As citizens of a democracy, we need to commit ourselves to the search for truth as a key aspiration of our society”, he said, adding that by “citizens”, he didn’t mean just the elite and the privileged class alone. In this context, he reminded that in India since women, dalits and others belonging to marginalised communities did not traditionally enjoy power, their opinions were not conferred with the status of truth.
“Since they did not enjoy the freedom to express their opinion, their thoughts were confined, crippled, and caged. After the abolition of the British Raj, the truth became the belief and opinion of upper-caste men”, he said.
In his speech lasting for nearly 45 minutes, Justice Chandrachud touched upon issues relating to the manipulation of information through social media and the rise in the phenomenon of fake news. The idea of “marketplace of ideas” faces test in the post-truth world, where citizens are finding it difficult to identify truth, he said. Human beings have a tendency to get attracted to sensational news, which are often based on falsehoods. Studies show lies dominated in social media like Twitter.
“People not being concerned about the truth is another phenomenon in the post-truth world. There is a contest between “our truth” vs “your truth” and tendency to ignore the truth which is not in alignment with one’s perception of truth”, he said.
Justice Chandrachud recalled legendary jurist MC Chagla as someone who consistently upheld the rule of law and advocated for civil liberties. He recounted the heroic opposition made by MC Chagla against the imposition of emergency.
“He illumined justice and humanized the law”, Justice Chandrachud reminisced Chagla. Bombay High Court judge Justice Riyaz Chagla, the grandson of Justice MC Chagla, also spoke at the event.