Opinion Our Scissorland

The most common argument for censorship is the phrase “cultural sensitivity”. This is not so much an argument as a fig leaf. What is this thing called “cultural sensitivity?” Let us state this clearly. “Cultural sensitivity” is not a pre-given fact about Indian society. It is something manufactured through the exercise of power. It is the structure of the law that gives incentives for mobilisation. P. Ananda Charlu,as early as 1886,had prophesied how mischievous Section 153 of the IPC would prove to be. He described it as “a dangerous piece of legislation by necessitating the government to appear to side with one party against the other. In my humble judgment it will only accentuate the evil which it is meant to remove. Far from healing the differences which still linger,or which now and then come to the surface,it would widen the gap by encouraging insidious men to do mischief in stealth”. Groups mobilise because they know the law and state will cave in. If the law and state were different,the cultural sensitivity would be different.

In the case of new social media,none of the regulation ayatollahs has noticed an interesting dialectic at work. Let us admit that there is often very offensive stuff posted on Facebook or Twitter. But what we paid less attention to is this: in a country where people supposedly resort to violence at the drop of a hat (or an image or a word),there has been almost no violence associated with this content. In fact,the irony is that purveyors of hate speech have become supporters of a regime of toleration. They all want the protection of the law to express what they want to express. The content of what they say may be offensive,but precisely by letting them all loose do you make these distasteful people supporters of freedom. In fact,the claim made by politicians that this kind of content will lead to violence is insulting doubly over. First,it is just a plain lie to justify censorship. Second,what is offensive is that politicians continue to treat Indian citizens as if we were colonial subjects. They infantilise us. They say to us,“you are unable to control your passions,so we have to protect you by censoring”. The truth is the opposite: they want to construct our passions in such a way that they can use that as a pretext to censor.

Most communal violence involves state complicity through commission or omission. Most violence supposedly sparked off by speech has state complicity behind it. When politicians send a signal that those who attack artists will be justified on some grounds of cultural sensitivity,or when they blame the victim,they purposefully embolden those who will attack artists. Why can’t the Rajasthan Congress say: “We are proud of Jaipur as a cosmopolitan city. We may have our individual views on Rushdie’s work. But we will take pride in the fact that he can come without fear”? The so-called Indian sensitivity is constructed through operations of power. In the case of Rushdie,the self-appointed guardians of minority interests maintain their power by projecting a community as a victim of some impunity a free speech regime licenses. Last time,the Rushdie affair exacerbated a tragic cycle of communalism. We can only hope this time it will be limited to a farce.

This backdrop explains the fear over the government’s attempts to censor various new mediums like social networking sites. These mediums pose new challenges for the ethics of expression. Many states are trying to use these mediums as tools of discipline rather than platforms of expression. But remove the fig leaf of technicalities. Holding them pre-emptively responsible for offensive speech is like requiring a profit-making road operator liable for every crime committed on the road because they did not pre-screen every car and driver and let potential murderers drive. But the issue is not technology. Given the Indian state’s record,it is but natural that any whiff of regulatory control is seen as threatening. A measure of this is the fact that a platitude like “no freedom is absolute” sounds more like a threat when the state utters it.

All of us,who are Nehru’s great admirers,have to acknowledge that his stance on the First Amendment was scandalously callow. It set in motion the instrumentalities of state censorship. It also legitimised the insidious idea that it was not the state’s job to protect freedom,but to discipline that freedom in the name of some conception of propriety. It was the likes of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who resisted Nehru on this score. It was K.M. Munshi who had proposed the deletion of sedition from the exceptions to the right to freedom of expression. This history is important. The defence of the spirit of the Constitution cannot be understood in simple ideological terms. The Congress has,for too long,used the ideological secularism card to justify its assaults on freedom,or justify its timidity in the face of small groups who want to hold freedom to ransom. All those who easily use the word “fascist” for the Sangh Parivar let the Congress go scot-free. The Congress’s brand of pluralism is homicidal for freedom and individuality.

There is also another historical amnesia. Justice Markandey Katju waxed about people who write for the media being ignorant of Paine and Voltaire. I doubt the judiciary has internalised their message. But more to the point,Enlightenment was not spread only by sober,non-offensive philosophers. It was created by the most scurrilous lampooning of religious authority,often debasing it. A liberal democratic society can allow us to do that peacefully. But what creates conflict is not offensive speech; it is those using it as a pretext to exercise power over others.

The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi,express@expressindia.com