The artifice of free speech

The impression that freedom of speech and expression in India is legally slipping from the grasp of common Indians and celebrities is fast gaining academic and journalistic credence. A broad trend has been made out – assailants on free speech have been identified in the demand for the disbanding of a Kashmiri all-girl rock band, litigation against Ashis Nandy, a renowned academic and the clamour for the ban or alternately, modification of the famous actor Kamal Haasan’s recent film, Vishwaroopam.

While many public intellectuals reserve a special measure of affection for eccentric and creative free speech, they at the same time have pointed out the claim of offended communal or caste sensibilities to be a specious one. What the recent wave of lament over the shrinking sphere of free utterance has not alerted us adequately to is the disparate nature of the stakes, ideas and sentiments disputed in each of these arguments or counter-arguments for free speech. What I mean to say is that there is no homogeneous strand of free speech in these debates. I would go so as to say that sometimes there is only the semblance of or a vague invocation of the concept. Allow me to illustrate this point by attempting the messy task of disentangling the seemingly analogous skeins of the various controversies.
Consider, for instance, the sympathetic defence of Nandy attempted by the veterans of the free speech side of the argument. Free speech itself has been less at stake here rather than Nandy’s complex legacy of critical thinking a key element of which has been his highlighting of caste-based inequities against the historically discriminated scheduled castes and tribes. What is defended is Nandy-as-an-established-academic’s right and Nandy-as-a-known-champion-of-oppressed-castes’s right to free speech rather than the universal concept. These academic figures, many of whom started an online petition in favour of Ashis Nandy, explain that his remarks have been misconstrued given his legacy of academic contributions to social justice. Such an argument expressing solidarity with Nandy is often cited under the refuge of the right to free speech rather than as its unalloyed defence.
In the instance of the Nandy legal suit, there has been a backlash against a purist definition of free speech especially in the instance of the perceived thoughtless remarks of Ashis Nandy that the corrupt spring from the marginalized communities of the SCs and STs. Detractors of this remark, especially Dalit academics, have resented being placed in the dock, and wondered why Nandy’s unenviable predicament and the righteous uproar against the persecution of an eminent academic has involved framing them of intolerance and political rabidity. Dalit rights’ academics/activists in Indian universities are saying, either abandon the construct of free speech or expand its sphere to make room for views that are critical of Nandy’s remarks which cannot be benevolent towards marginalized communities in any pre-given sense.
The Kamal Haasan film, on the other hand, has provoked indignant defence of creative freedom and the unconscionable act of holding a film up to social acceptance when it has secured the approval of a statutory body, namely the Censor Board. Here, again, what has been so passionately defended on popular TV channels like Headlines Today and CNN-IBN is not so much the sacrosanct idea of free expression as the Censor Board’s sole legitimacy to censor free expression. To be sure, some writers are arguing against the indefensible idea that communities can claim the right to be offended. Yet, in the Vishwaroopam fim ban as in the case of Ashis Nandy’s remarks, there is a strong undercurrent of indignation against the repression of familiar icons of creativity even when what is expressed outwardly is a notion of free speech.
A word of caution here, the voices supporting Kamal Haasan and Ashis Nandy are very dissimilar even though they both cite legacy as a plea against punitive action. Kamal Haasan’s legacy is implicitly recognized as an artistic service to the film industry and the cinematic spectator public and not in its inclusive aspect of respecting various religious communities while that of Nandy’s is definitely invoked in the latter sense.
The online targeting of Pragaash, the all-girl rock band forcing some of its members to quit has raised questions of the gendered denial of free speech. Not all arguments here again have involved the defence of universal free speech. Here, there have been many groups, especially women’s groups and political parties who have deemed the fatwa issued by the “grand mufti” to be abhorrent on grounds of freedom of vocation rather than free speech. Some others have sought to reconcile the religious restrictions against musical performances in the Quran with the impulse for creative expression.
What perhaps this commentary seeks to do is to show, through the response to these incidents, the marginal nature of free speech in contemporary political discourse. This marginality of free speech may not necessarily be a bad thing. If anything, the repeated invocation of the right-concept has mired very intricate ideas garbled and presented in instantly recognizable terms.

The writer is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, Delhi