Opinion
Manu Joseph: Where our freedom of speech came from and where it went
Summary
- Politics always had much to do with free speech in India. This is evident even in the row over Kunal Kamra’s comedy. Unfortunately, even politicians seem less keen on this freedom now. How come?
A few years ago, someone got in touch with me asking if I would agree to be part of an interview series where authors are interviewed in front of a live audience by a person who has never read a book. I immediately agreed because I knew that this interviewer had to be interesting just for admitting that he doesn’t read books. That is how I first met Kunal Kamra, who has since emerged as one of the most endearing and consequential comedians in the world. In tribute to his most recent show, a Shiv Sena squad destroyed the venue.
All these years, I was certain that Kamra was yet to read a book. So I was amused when, during his show, he held a book in his hand. It was the Constitution of India. He said he could say what he did, including lampooning the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, because of the book.
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And I sensed he had not read this one either. Because freedom of expression is not an absolute right in the Indian Constitution. It is abridged. It can be denied in the interest of “public order," for example. The thing is, freedom of expression does not make sense if it has subjective caveats that can be widely interpreted. To say that you can say whatever you want as long as public order is not disturbed is the same as saying you do not have the freedom to express many things that are worth expressing.
Since the Kamra controversy, there has been a lot of talk around the fact that India does not have freedom of expression in practice, anymore. People presume there was a time when we had such a freedom. There is some truth to that. But where did the right to free speech come from if not from the Constitution? And where did it go? This is actually an esoteric freedom. Even though people in some countries take it for granted, it is not something innately natural to human beings. For instance, why would a powerful person tolerate a joke or an insult?
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One of the most natural things that happen to people is taking offence. Once you take offence, what you do after you get offended is decided by how much power you have. If you are a petty writer, you will harm the person who insulted you from behind the scenes. And if you are the leader of a political party with street clout, you may want to send some menacing guys over.
In 2015, after Islamist terrorists opened fire in the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, the Catholic Pope said, “If my good friend Dr. Gasparri," referring to a person standing near him on the papal aircraft, “says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."
His view is what most people have on the matter. The most interesting and important thing about free speech is that it actually has no vast public support. Yet, India seemed to have some kind of freedom of expression earlier.
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It came not from any great ideals of the Constitution. It originated from a very practical place—electoral democracy, where there needed to be political campaigns and politicians said nasty stuff about other politicians and the media reported it. From this rowdiness, a system of satire and comedy came about that was largely self-regulated. Thus, our freedom of expression came in a roundabout way from politicians.
A public moral generally rises not from the goodness of human beings, but when powerful people collide. Democracy rose from the aristocracy’s need to rein in the crown. ‘Independent institutions’ rose from the need of social elites to balance the tyranny of elections. Privacy rights originated in an assault on free media, when a wealthy segment of America went to war against its gossip press.
After Kamra aroused the Shiv Sena’s ire, the strongest support for his freedom to speak came from Uddhav Thackeray and his son Aaditya Thackeray (who once pushed for a Rohinton Mistry novel to be dropped from a university syllabus), who had lost control of their party to the very man Kamra had insulted. This gives us a hint at how free speech was created by politicians.
In that way, an esoteric idea like freedom of expression has the potential to be a mass right almost on par with more natural freedoms, like the freedom to live, the freedom to own property and the freedom to practise a religion. But it takes very smart politicians to use it against all odds. If I were with the Thackerays’ political splinter of what was once a united Shiv Sena, or with the Congress party, I would organize an open-mic comedy festival on the streets where people are invited to roast all politicians. The trade-off of making fun of politicians in power is that you have to take some hits yourself.
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That India is effectively losing its freedom of expression means that a wide spectrum of opposition parties are forgetting how to use it, or losing the will to use it. It may also mean that they do not believe in their electoral prospects enough to take on powerful adversaries. Also, it could mean that they are unwilling to grant people the freedom because they are too thin-skinned themselves to tolerate it, even if it is a useful way to take on their opponents in power.
So, without wide political support, it appears that freedom of expression is a niche nuisance, something only comedians and artists want. Actually, even most artists don’t seem to want it; they are just like others who do not wish to offend. Only some endearing delinquents, it appears, want that freedom. This reveals a complete lack of political imagination.
The author is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, ‘Decoupled’.
