Opinion Vandita Mishra writes: On free speech, pushback and its limits

Days after a mob of Sainiks vandalised the studio in Mumbai where comedian Kunal Kamra performed his show, in which he took lurching aim at a wide assortment of the powerful, including Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, the court spoke up.

On Friday, while quashing a Gujarat Police FIR and granting relief to Congress Rajya Sabha MP Imran Pratapgarhi for uploading a video and a poem “Ae khoon ke pyase baat suno”, the Supreme Court said that “even if a large number of persons dislike the views expressed by another, the right of the person to express the views must be respected and protected”. And that “Seventy-five years into our republic, we cannot be seen to be so shaky … that mere recital of a poem or for that matter… stand-up comedy can be alleged to lead to animosity or hatred amongst different communities”. In Chennai, the same day, the Madras High Court granted interim anticipatory bail to Kamra until April 7, allowing him time to approach the appropriate court in Mumbai.

The judicial declamations and interventions are reassuring — somewhat. For, even if the courts were not to be held to account for their own selectiveness and inconsistency in upholding the principle of free speech, there is the problem of their proven inadequacy, and the related matter of surrounding silences.

In April 2023, for instance, the SC directed states to register hate speech cases on their own, suo motu, without waiting for complaints. Hesitation to do so, it warned, would be viewed as contempt of court. In September 2024, the SC took up petitions against “bulldozer justice” and in November, laid down pan-India guidelines setting up guardrails to ensure that bulldozer demolitions by state governments are not arbitrary and violative of due process.

And yet, across states, hate speech is louder and more frequent. And governments, borrowing the morbid template set by Uttar Pradesh’s “Bulldozer Baba” Yogi Adityanath, continue to target the homes and properties of people accused of crimes in the guise of acting against “illegal encroachment”. They arrogate to themselves the power of judge, jury and executioner, and disproportionately target the poor and members of the minority community. They violate the citizen’s fundamental right to shelter and dole out collective punishment to entire families. Neither the court’s strictures on hate speech, nor its directives on bulldozer injustice, have made a visible dent in these circles of impunity.

It was no coincidence, then, that amid the noise over Kamra last week, a wider silence rang out — of politicians of the so-called mainstream. Uddhav Thackeray, leader of an outfit that has long courted a reputation for lumpenism and intolerance, spoke out for Kamra because he was speaking against Shinde. But that’s about all.

The threat to the fundamental freedom to lampoon and satirise in a democracy didn’t seem to get an audible rise out of the BJP’s prime opponents, Mamata Banerjee or Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal or M K Stalin. There are reasons for that, of course. They include the TMC/Congress/AAP/DMK governments’ own record of ambivalence and worse on freedom of speech, and the difficulties of making the free speech argument in a time of winner-takes-all politics. Whatever the reason, the effect, last week, was telling, and chilling.

In Parliament, too, last week, a letter by the united Opposition echoed a Congress allegation and took up an issue of free speech: “Whenever Opposition MPs raise a point of order, their microphones are switched off preventing them from expressing their concerns… This one-sided control undermines the spirit of democratic debate.”

The letter is a step forward for an internally divided INDIA bloc, in which the Congress’s smaller allies have, of late, worn on their sleeve their disregard for its presumption to lead. After all, successive elections have underlined the Congress’s dwindling ability on the ground to take on the BJP in comparison to the stronger challenge by regional parties.

And yet, even if an Opposition driven to the wall by the BJP’s insatiable will to dominate were to unite, its next challenge would be to convey to the people that it is not just coming together because it is self-serving. Its task will be to bring home to them, in ways that are urgent and evocative, a sense of Parliament as an institution in-crisis.

That will be a tall order. This is because, over the decades, Parliament has shown growing wear and tear amid a general institutional fraying, and the nation has turned an unseeing eye to it. Most of the big issues pass Parliament by, play out outside its precincts. During election campaigns, political parties across the spectrum seldom speak of their performance in the highest forum of deliberative democracy. There are few visible political or electoral rewards for the conscientious and effective MP, and little or no penalties for MPs who stay away or only attend the House to disrupt it. When Parliament shuts down because of the “pandemonium”, then, you might well ask: Does anyone miss Parliament, really?

The government would rather use it as a showcase for its “achievements” or as the Great Leader’s backdrop, and mute the rest. But does the Opposition have an imagination of Parliament to counter this? Over the years, there is no evidence that it is willing to commit itself, as a matter of urgency and priority, to the fight to restore and resuscitate the House as a crucial forum of accountability.

In the absence of a larger sense of the House, and given the lack of a language to convey it to the people, the letter to the Speaker by Opposition parties is in danger of being labelled as the losers’ side-show, and being drowned out by the government’s rehearsed whataboutery.

Till next week,
Vandita