Even leading politicians are falling victim
Is talk free? It certainly looks not any more in India particularly if the talk happens to be public criticism of big-moneyed interests and those among the ruling elite classes. Frivolous libel suits are a common and heinous tool wielded against those who speak out on everything from corporate activities to misuse of public funds. Costly and often time-consuming, such lawsuits — even their threat — have too often been used to quell whistle-blowers, activists, environmentalists, the media and others.
Arvind Kejriwal, the iconic leader of AAP, learnt that the hard way, put in jail recently for merely defending the right to free speech. The incident led AAP to launch an internet campaign to champion the fundamental right granted by our constitution for free speech.
Journalists living under fear
Given below are extracts of Robert Thane's writing in Quartz.com in an article entitled “What a Modi government might mean for freedom of speech” on the fears now engulfing our whole journalistic community:
"It is hard to imagine anything being chilly as temperatures continue to climb towards the beginning of monsoon, but the frigidity in India is in words, not places. Free speech, or more broadly, freedom of thought, is the foundation of modern India, a foundation that has been slowly crumbling for some time.
This crumbling accelerated alarmingly during the elections. “Free” speech now needs to come with an asterisk in India that reads,
“free, so long as you agree.”
Based on precedent, such a resounding victory by Modi has the potential to dismantle this freedom completely, a worry many journalists have shared in hushed voices amongst themselves.
“I am shit scared for India’s future and I am afraid to stay here,” confided one journalist in Mumbai.
“I will probably lose my job—I am really worried,” whispered another in Ahmedabad.
“Get ready for a much scarier and bleaker media scene in India,” lamented a third over coffee in Delhi.
These journalists, and many others who have all tellingly requested to remain anonymous, have sensed this change in the climate and it is one of the most worrisome trends the election has borne witness to.
India has always been an emotional democracy; Indians defend their beliefs with zeal, which is an admirable trait—no one wants ambivalence. But pathos, or passion, is only one part of Aristotle’s triangle. Logos, or logic, cannot be forgotten.
While Congress has kept Indian discourse chilled, if past trends continue then a Modi victory has the potential to make things truly arctic. An article by Shivam Vij in Scroll a few months ago shows how Modi has dealt with journalists for doing their job. A recent Quartz piece highlighted several more:
Resignations from high-level positions at Indian media houses in recent months have been linked to pressure to cover the BJP or Modi in a positive light, including India TV’s editorial director, the former editor of Open Magazine, a popular talk show host and the former editor-in-chief of The Hindu, whose apartment caretaker was assaulted in Delhi this year, reportedly for the editor’s outspoken comments against the BJP.”
Threat to On-line Media
Meanwhile the threat to curb freedom of expression is even more visible in social media.
In Delhi, activist Sheeba Fehmi's review petition following a court order directing the police to file an FIR against her for "anti-national" Facebook posts was dismissed in Tis Hazari court earlier last week. Back in 2011, she had filed a complaint against one Pankaj Dwivedi, who had sent her e-mails strongly opposing her political views on Facebook, threatening her with
"consequences"
if she did not fall in line. Fehmi says she is strongly opposed to section 66 A of the IT act, under which Dwivedi was booked.
"I had no agency in the matter when the police booked him under 66 A. He was then acquitted by the same people under the section,"
Fehmi told the media. Section 66 A of the IT Act can be employed against anyone who sends any information by computers
"that is grossly offensive or has menacing character".
Meanwhile, political parties and social activists last Saturday protested police action against a Goan youth, who had allegedly posted comments against Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi on Facebook in March when the Lok Sabha campaign was on. All his post said allegedly was that
"There is imminent threat of Holocaust as it happened in Gujarat th(r)ough the garb of cunning government policies of Parrikar,"
The cyber crime cell of Goa Police had moved the court here seeking custodial interrogation of accused Lavu Chodankar unbelievably claiming that his FB post was a larger gameplan to
"promote communal and social disharmony" in the state.
The District and Sessions court had yesterday rejected anticipatory bail plea of Chodankar, who is currently out of station. Goa businessman Atul Pai Kane, who heads the BJP-led Goa government's committee on investment and industrial policy, had lodged a complaint against Chodankar.
The police had filed an FIR under Section 153(A), 295(A) of the IPC, besides Section 125 of the Representation of People Act as well as Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act.
And just yesterday comes the news that a 25-year-old MBA student and Aam Aadmi Party activist from the coastal Karnataka town of Bhatkal has been arrested for allegedly circulating an MMS ridiculing Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi. Waqas Barmawar, son of noted Bhatkal-based Nawaithi and Urdu poet Samiullah Barmawar, was held along with four of his friends from an apartment in Bangalore by the city police’s central crime branch on Saturday evening.
The MMS that got Waqas into trouble shows a corpse morphed with Modi’s face. Spoofing the BJP election slogan
“Abki Bar Modi Sarkar”, the image runs with the headline “Abki Baar antim sanskaar”.
The image was allegedly doing the rounds on a few WhatsApp groups administered by AAP activists. According to sources, it was accidentally forwarded to a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter in Belgaum and he complained to the police.
If freedom of expression is curbed can India still be a democracy?
These cases cited earlier are not an isolated ones but displaying an apparently increasing trend that are currently ringing the bell of alarm among several sections of our population.
Increasingly, the system appears turning intolerant to dissent and forgotten are the great words of Voltaire:
“I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Man began to assert his right to speak since time immemorial. Socrates, in 399 BC, said to the jury that told him he would be freed on condition to never speak his mind that he would prefer death to comply:
“sooner obey the Gods rather than them”.
Protection of speech was first introduced when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. In 1689, the English Bill of Rights granted freedom of speech in Parliament and the French established the protection of speech in their Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789.
Freedom of speech was considered such a serious matter it prompted George Washington to highlight:
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
John Stuart Mill, the greatest advocate of this freedom, was led to say,
“There ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”
In 1948, the UN recognised free speech as a human right in article 19 of the International Declaration of Human Rights. This article guarantees the right to freedom of expression in broad terms as a right that includes
“the right to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) elaborates upon and gives legal force to many of the rights articulated in the UDHR. Article 19 of the ICCPR states that:
Everyone shall have the right to freedom of opinion. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art or through any other media of his choice.
In September 2011, the UN Human Rights Committee (HR Committee), a treaty monitoring body for the ICCPR, issued General Comment No 34 in relation to Article 19, which clarifies a number of issues relating to freedom of expression on the internet.
Freedom of speech and expression is accordingly one of the fundamental principles on which any free society is based. Most of the democratic nations consider freedom of speech a fundamental right. Freedom to express opinions and ideas without any prohibitions and fear is the hallmark of any progressive society and India has ratified all these international conventions and even enshrined the right of free speech as a fundamental right in our constitution.
Free speech is at the heart of creativity, change and progress and if societies want to continue to progress they must rigorously protect everybody’s right to free speech and not sacrifice it on the altar of political correctness. Free flow of ideas is critical to democratic processes and institutions, such as the ability of citizens to vote in an informed way and to hold their governments and other public institutions accountable.
Accordingly, sans free speech we end up sans democracy, sans progress and sans innovations.
PUBLIC REACTIONS
Political Classes
Congress leader Digvijay Singh tweeted.
"Condemn registration of a case under IT Act against Devu Chodankar. Would the same police please look at abusive postings against Dr Manmohan Singh?"
In the same vein, Goa Congress spokesperson Durgadas Kamat condemned the incident:
"We condemn this. This is Hitler model of government. We warn that the Congress party is not going to keep quiet."
Both were clear warnings that if such attacks continue, the Congress is likely to retaliate by using court verdicts as precedence to turn the table by filing cases against pro-BJP pro-Modi sections of society who had for a long time unleashed a nasty unbridled abusive attack of their own leaders like Dr ManMohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi; Rahul Gandhi and others like Digvijay Singh himself.
The Congress in Goa held a protest led by their party chief John Fernandes. Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco, Independent Vijay Sardesai and AAP co-ordinator Walmiki Naik were among those who joined the protests. Samir Kelekar, a PhD from California University and Chodankar's co-villager alleged that police had filed the FIR to 'harass' Chodankar while Sardesai said,
"Modi needs to be magnanimous and should not indulge in such petty things."
Meanwhile, the Bhatkal unit of the Congress has decided to hold a demonstration before the police HQ in the town which was supported by AAP. Raghavendra Thane, who contested the general elections from Uttara Kannada on an AAP ticket, told the media:
“We will hold State wide protests. This is an outrage. The BJP targeted us selectively during the campaigning. In Bhatkal, they consistently picked on Muslim members of our party. Now that Modi is in power, the police have also joined the BJP."
Another AAP activist from Bhatkal said on the condition of anonymity:
"The police in Bhatkal as well as BJP activists started referring to the AAP as Yasin Bhatkal's party because many Muslim youth joined us."
However the response of the opposition has remained by and large lukewarm possibly because the Congress own credentials in championing the right to free speech was equally tainted.
Journalistic Classes
The reaction of the mainstream media had been largely muted though many covered the arrests as lower ranking lead stories. Except for alternative media such as Scroll.in and Quartz.com none thought fit to elevate the issue important enough to warrant proffering an editorial opinion or launching of a media campaign against such blatant transgression of rights to free expression. Being journalists, we would have thought that such a right should have been closed to their heart.
Human Rights NGOs and Civil Society Classes
Surprisingly, we did not see any of the much high profile state, national or international NGOs and human right organizations get involved in the issue. But both in Goa and Bhatkal, local NGOs however played an active role in organizing protests. With the combined efforts of APCR (Association for protection of Civil Rights) and Tanzeem (a social organization and NGO based in Bhatkal), the students were located at the KR Market police station in Bangalore and the issue of their arrest brought to light.
Twitterati Classes
It is ironical that the twitterati class that the BJP so successfully wooed during their election campaign, rather than being rewarded are being singled out most in the current spate of crackdown against free speech.
- Those opposing the crackdown of freedom
@ Sanjeev PrakashYou can stop one Indian, two Indians, three...but you can't stop a billion Indian citizens from mouthing off. I agree about the character assassination bit. But those laws are also misused to silence legitimate dissent. Better to be a responsible citizenry and ignore such obvious nonsense. .
@ AntiDiggiBrain Though Modi is not in any way responsible for this, I dont agree with this action. I think we know that that message is a harmless one without being any indication of a real threat to anyone.
Though I am a Modi supporter, I do believe that BJP suppoters should become a little more mature when it comes to dealing with criticism and disgusting comments. It isn't as if BJP supporters dont talk rubbish about others.
@ man kind we have become a very intolerant society, backed by draconian laws. while it is ok for bjp supporters to abuse kejriwal and AAP with the flightiest language day in and out, but when some tries to question the bjp leaders or makes a spoof mms he is arrested and put in jail. how sad and ironic.
@ YS I guess SC is here to nail these hate monger FEKU party. Let’s see if police heads roll and the minister is arrested before he engineers arrest of more innocents for free speech
@ Karbazia So what's new , I expect things to get much worse ... He's worse than hitler , atleast hitler had a dream, this guys all gas and I'm not even talking of AMBANI here ... Also he has killed , engineered muzzafarnagar riots ... He will again get hungry
@ Vinod What about all anti-Sonia and anti-Rahul messages on Facebook?
@ Shekh There are a lot of online filthy jokes/messages are running against Sonia, So far no arrest has been made in such cases Why these arrests only in Modi's case ?
@ ShutuZ This is what is called suppression of freedom of speech, nobody should be thrown in jail for expressing opinion online against anyone, India is NOT Saudi Arabia or China.
@ kishanreddy2008 Selective use of law on freedom of abuse is also an abuse of law. Why no action on Telangana supporters posting offensive language on Telugu people or MNS supporters hitting north Indians?
@ Ajatshatru Citizen Is it the instruction from PM designate or sycophancy playing out ? Sad that this happens
@ Sammy R how did u know he abused the leaders? the news article only says "anti-modi" which does not necessarily mean "abuse".
@ revoltman I am not. I cheered when Modi won. But INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM is higher than Modi. I will fight for it.
@ A B Mehta There were thousands of comments in social media against both Modiji and Congress Leaders by name. Almost all of us received congress and Gandhi family abusing and comic mails including cartoons. We just read and either forwarded or deleted.Why this sudden intolerance?
@AntiDiggiBrainAt least let us know what the message was. Else it leads only to one conclusion that anything against Modi will lead to arrest which is further ammunition for the "liberals".
@ NaMoOnA Hmmmm anything Anti-Modi becomes Anti-National...... Acche din aa gaye
@ nikhilsheth Clearly this Devu was quite disturbed.. in a more civilized society this would have been simply considered as something posted in a state of heightened fear and mental imbalance; the post would have been deleted, apologies given and the state at the most would have made the person mandatorily attend psychiatric sessions, or admitted him to mental care.
Most importantly, the reaction to the person would be to give reassurances that nothing of the sort will happen. Instead, this act of starting a witch-hunt after a visibly disturbed and frightened person will only go on to create the exact communal disharmony that the person is being charged with causing.
Just think : how will the targeted community mentioned here feel if this guy is made "an example of" ? To all Modi supporters : Do you actually want to prove that all these people were telling the truth? No? Then back off... you are already all powerful.. now focus your power on making this country a safer place for all Indians. Jai Hind.
@ vijaythis is patently wrong, i was previously under the impression that the goa incident was a one-off but this is taking discomfiting proportions.
@Abhijeet () It’s wrong to use offensive language about any one but is jail a solution don't we have the freedom to express our views what we think #freedom of speech is given to every citizen of india by the constitution.... I am a die heart fan and follower of respected Narendra Modiji but this is not the right punishment what I feel it's against the law
@Saurabh malhotra Oh my God! What has India done.
- Those supporting the crackdown of freedom
@ Peace for all If you have a family, have a job and want to stay in India please don't tell anything against Mr. Modi, BJP or any other members of BJP. Citizens have no rights. Freedom of speech to aam janta is not guaranteed. Free speech is guaranteed till the point it is not against BJP or Mr. Modi. No criticism is allowed against our dear Prime minister.
@ rajesh kumar I really don’t understand if hatred, communal tension, provoking, abuse language usage is FREEDOM of EXPRESSION and SPEECH then sure India will be banana republic country. A Christian guy promoting tension telling Holocaust if BJp/Modi. These 5 MBA Students sending abusive Images of BJP Party men, common guys there is a limit to such a low checp act and shame is these thugs been protected by bunch of Low leveled Modi haters in name of FOE/S shame shame shame
@transformer1 I did think during the election season that elements such as 'Peace for All' would somehow derail Modi's campaign but they have been washed out. Now they can resort to this form of cheap exhortation in their helplessness by playing some sort of victim by invoking pseudo-sensibilities - oh look freedom of speech getting smothered/ minorities not getting a voice and getting arrested... Fact is what us relevant is the substance of what is being said which is at all times subject to the legal process if this country whether you like it or not.
@ Red Wood IBN is still reeling under Antonio Maino spell. Time to either show allegiance to Bharath or get the H*ll out of India and pack up its bags. IB will be monitoring all paid media closely. Any hint of communal news will either lead to arrest of the news editors and / or ban the channel. This is no joke. This is happening soon.
@ imwaiting do u think BJP govt in center ordered this? they have not even formed the govt. moreover congress is ruling in karnataka. if BJP had ordered then congress would have made an issue out of it. so grow up and stop supporting criminals.
@ k.madhukar These five students should know that majority in the country already feel they lost their identy under UPA and before that congress rule..They hope to regain their identity under Modi's rule. Anything wrong with that?
@ Saikat This news channels are trying hard to create case of Modi is a dictator and look at the article where it does not publish the name of the people released but mention a muslim name of the accused who is not released. They are trying hard to create perception that Modi is persecuting Muslims. All these are well thought and calculated orchestration and team work against Modi. IRONY IS KARNATAKA STATE GOVT IS OF CONGRESS.
@ Pee Gee Where did all the advocates of freedom of speech go now? Oh, wait! They are justifying the arrest.
@ KashmirIsINDIANState Bangalore and South India as a whole is FULL of sleeper cells!! To be activated when islamic terrorists need them!!
@vivekananda.g Completely paid article. After 8.30 everybody on this earth will become Hindu. After taking food he has to sleep. From 5.30 am only his mind will be induced with separatism. Then all these Muslim and christian starts. That is why there are more than 100s of christian and muslim countries. Why can't egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi can be united to a single democratic country. Why there are areas ruled by kings in Europe. Why all of the Europe can be united as a single democratic country? Divide and rule policy has spoiling our country.
@AntiDiggiBrain Had this been some Pakistan and a Hindu had written corresponding rubbish, police would have willingly given your IP address to radicalized mobs to come and find you and you know what next. It is people like you who simply consider yourself victim without ANALYSING the real problems of your community and then spread hatred.
In Mumbai, the maximum no of useless vellas in the trains and roaming around in areas like Bandra doing nothing but vellapanti are Muslim youth. Who asked them not to study? Who asked them to waste their entire childhood and youth doing time pass and then cry that no one did anything for them? Who asked them to vote for Congress which for so many years has been seeing to it that the such people remain poor and remain afraid of the majority and do nothing useful in life? Answers all the questions to yourself and you will know why your community is still the most backward in our country.
@<a href="http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bangalore-fiv