Faith and the Right to Free Speech

Ayush­man Jamw­al

The free­dom to express is an innate human attribute that peo­ple have fought and died defend­ing through the ages against var­i­ous insti­tu­tion­al forces. The right to free speech has strug­gled against reli­gious and polit­i­cal dog­ma, and con­tin­ues to do so even as the tenets of democ­ra­cy, sec­u­lar­ism and human rights have been indoc­tri­nat­ed in the con­sti­tu­tions of democ­ra­cies across the world. The case of India and Pak­istan is no dif­fer­ent. This ‘uni­ver­sal’ free­dom remains elu­sive because polit­i­cal con­ve­nience tends to deter­mine its scope. There are plen­ty of cas­es in India where the free­dom of expres­sion ceas­es to exist as an apo­lit­i­cal right, being irre­spon­si­bly slapped with seri­ous charges like sedi­tion or the incite­ment of hatred. Activists like Binayak Sen who demand­ed the cen­tral gov­ern­ment to give the tribes of Red Belt their Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, and writ­ers like Arun­dati Roy who reg­u­lar­ly invoked the polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive of a free Kash­mir have been brand­ed trai­tors for their views. Even the case of Aseem Trive­di, a car­toon­ist who was charged with sedi­tion for remak­ing the Indi­an nation­al sym­bol of the 3 lions with 3 jack­als to high­light polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion, is anoth­er unfor­tu­nate indict­ment of the free­dom we are sup­pos­ed­ly guar­an­teed.

Social sen­si­tiv­i­ties, ide­olo­gies, beliefs, sym­bols all are human con­struc­tions, as frag­ile and imper­fect as their cre­ators. Just like peo­ple, they can­not be exempt from ques­tion­ing, crit­i­cism, even ridicule. There is a very clear dif­fer­ence between crit­i­cism and hate speech. It is the fool­ish­ness and irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the crit­ic to ever espouse hate and defend it as crit­i­cism. Yet at the same time, any belief comes with respon­si­bil­i­ty. The doc­trines of glob­al faiths are as moral­ly potent as the con­sti­tu­tions of sec­u­lar nations, and those who espouse hate, crack­down on free­dom and com­mit vio­lence in their name are pseu­do- believ­ers, believ­ers plagued by an inse­cu­ri­ty of iden­ti­ty, or even an insid­i­ous nature. To them, the vio­lent defence of a belief out­weighs the need for self-reflec­tion with­in a doc­trine of faith, caus­ing a con­stant con­fu­sion between crit­i­cism and hate. If one’s iden­ti­ty is asso­ci­at­ed with an ide­ol­o­gy, that con­vic­tion should exist beyond the spa­tial tem­po­ral bound­aries of the world for the indi­vid­ual to be tru­ly called a pro­po­nent of that belief. In that case, the crit­i­cism of a name or a sym­bol can nev­er shake the con­vic­tion of iden­ti­ty.

I was dis­cussing the case of Dan­ish car­toons of the Prophet with my friend from Pak­istan one day. He crit­i­cised the pub­lish­ing of the car­toons say­ing the free­dom of anoth­er indi­vid­ual ends where his begins. All I asked him was in what way did the neg­a­tive expres­sions of the car­toons shake his faith in Islam? Sim­i­lar­ly, how does a youtube video titled ‘Inno­cence of Mus­lims’ threat­en the faith of half the Mus­lim world where it became the root of wan­ton destruc­tion. In Pak­istan, why does a Mus­lim need blas­phe­my laws to defend the sanc­ti­ty of his or her faith?
Aseem Trivedi’s car­toon ridi­cul­ing the nation­al emblem can nev­er shake my faith in my coun­try. Its ridicule is noth­ing com­pared to trai­tor­ous polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion. Those guilty of polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion should in fact be charged with sedi­tion for betray­ing the state, not a car­toon­ist using shock rhetoric to high­light a cru­cial issue, like all artists have done through the ages.

The health of a democ­ra­cy is derived from how diverse and com­pet­i­tive its mar­ket­place of ideas is. All nar­ra­tives; the lib­er­al, the moral, the real­ist and the insid­i­ous must con­front each oth­er with­out the fear of being gagged by author­i­ties. Nation­al doc­trines can only be strength­ened if the respon­si­ble nar­ra­tive emerges vic­to­ri­ous from that con­fronta­tion. Polit­i­cal fig­ures and thought lead­ers must bat­tle for the vic­to­ry of those nar­ra­tives in the pub­lic sphere and not con­cede defeat by sup­press­ing expres­sion. The con­stant­ly recy­cled argu­ment that peo­ple get neg­a­tive­ly influ­enced is not valid as it assumes the cit­i­zen­ry is stu­pid, and can­not per­ceive the truth behind rhetoric or expres­sion. The argu­ment sets a poor prece­dent, mak­ing some­thing as seri­ous as sedi­tion and blas­phe­my an easy weapon against free speech.
I com­mend the news media and the cit­i­zen­ry of India and Pak­istan who do their part in defend­ing the free­dom of expres­sion. Our democ­ra­cies are strength­ened by our actions. While we can’t per­fect­ly mit­i­gate the polit­i­cal con­ve­nience of clamp­ing down on free speech; we can speak up against it so that such actions do not occur in our name.

Ayush­man Jamw­al is a polit­i­cal jour­nal­ist based in New Del­hi