My friend has an interesting morsel to share about the 2009 elections. A walk down a lane full of closed shops and lonely streets on what should have been an otherwise busy weekday, led him to the closest sign of humanity in sight, all queued up and off the street. Turns out it was the date that Mumbai was to cast its vote, and business owners were expected to shut shop, in order to encourage people to make a line to the polling booths. He talks about that day with a mock reference, especially when comparing it to the high levels of social consciousness the last few months have seen.
Today, at Homegrown, we dissect one of the most critical aspects of a democracy--freedom of expression--with the help of several prominent speakers on the subject in an effort to understand it through our current political context.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, India has been far from gracious in its implementation of this right. Various activists, authors, cartoonists, painters and just about anyone with a critical opinion has been labeled with sedition or has had their work banned. As journalist Geeta Seshu puts it, “It is absolutely crucial and it’s extremely worrisome that the climate for free speech is shrinking. In fact, in the quarterly report of the free speech hub, of which I am the consulting editor, we track freedom of expression on a daily basis across india and have found that one of the areas it is prevalent is the increase in cultural censorship. Attempts are made to block and ban films, books, such as the recent example of Wendy Doniger’s book on Hinduism. Not just the publishing industry, literature and art in general has taken a huge beating. Artists are forced to emulate a kind of self-censorship and release disclaimers for their audience. This is unprecedented.”
Anti-Wendy Doniger's Book Protests
But does this freedom of expression find itself violated under a particular party’s ideology?
“Every single political party tries to suppress free speech but the BJP in particular; its ideological base leans strongly towards this sort of cultural policing with many members of the Hindutva group supported by the party taking law into their hands as form of protest. They engage in physical attacks and that is very dangerous.”
“There will be suppression of all kinds of freedom, creative and non-creative. I’m talking of freedom of ordinary citizens to say something critical of government or the state. A lot of scams happened under the Congress government, but these scams were exposed by the media and by some whistleblowers. Why don’t they come to light in Gujarat? Not because the state is clean but because the government is fascist and controlling.”
“Can you tell me the name of a single votary of Hindutva who consistently fought for Independence? In fact both the Hindu right and the Muslim right supported British rule, trying to get favours by opposing the mainstream nationalist cause. The RSS and Hindutva forces didn’t even believe in the Indian flag. Before Independence when the flag was being decided, they wanted an orange flag, very much like the ones they sport now. They are busy trying to rewrite history. When the BJP was in power in 2002, the censor board of the day did not want me to say that Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic, killed Gandhi. In fact, the government of the day changed history books to state that a mad man killed Gandhi. They would not divulge the religious identity of the mad man. Censorship was accompanied by large scale rewriting of history. Today the corporate media is in their corner to aid this disinformation campaign.”
“My play got banned from Prabhodhankar Thackeray, which is managed by the BMC, simply because they did not know the difference between the two. While Prahaar and Saamna carried advertisements of my play, Sakaal Times, which is run by a senior leader of the government refused to carry ads of my play. They kept questioning me over how I could write a play on such a perverse subject and even in the Marathi theater scenario, there is a whisper campaign that I am maligning Marathi literature.”
“As an artist I believe any kind of censorship is ridiculous. People should be given credit for intelligence and efforts must be made to educate and cultivate awareness and independence of thought and expression so people can be truly free. People should not be told what to do by a state as that is not only regressive, but demeaning to their intellect. Sadly, the idea of censorship is used as some sort of moral leash by political and religious organisations to restrict matter that is available to the public to read, to experience and to think about and debate."
Anti-Curruption Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi Arrested
"There are certain front-runners who are known to quell detractors and opinions that differ from their own. They try to restrict the expression of any independent opinion and deny the public the right to ask them questions. If these forces come to power then the country is in grave danger. The artist who insists on expressing himself in spite of such a government would have only two options. He could continue to express his mind and fight the good fight for his freedom. Or he could choose survival, and leave India. We have lost a number of our greatest writers and artists to the violent tendencies of dangerously narrow-minded people/parties. That violence and intolerance, that uneducated petty point-of-view is what really should be censored.”
