thx :-)

India’s biggest problem (extremely difficult to articulate this .. in a quick comment :)) is lack of law and order. When people break into newspaper offices, arrest innocent couples .. and do all the fun things .. they are essentially breaking the law. The only reason they do it .. is because they know they can get away with it. If the BJP or ShivSena .. break into the offices of a channel or newspaper .. Advani, Vajypayee or Thackeray should be immediately arrested, since they are the main people of that party.

I would love to throw more in here .. but have to head back to work.
Nicely writ, Anshul !!

Some blah about it:
http://www.shivamvij.com/200…of-the-nanny-state.html

There’s nothing lovable about Maoist or Hindu (or any other kind of) extremist site, but blocking them is gonna hurt you and me, in the long run. They’re jobless enough to simply move.

Btw, this live preview’s kinda cool :)

Without a very objective and accurate definition, the right is almost useless. For instance any reasonable definition of obscenity must exclude anything that has substantial artistic merit. Checks and balances like that are absent in India. As a result, censorship in India is way outside of any reasonable limits.

I didn’t quite see Abhishek’s post before posting the previous one because I was typing mine. Anyway, I have no idea how well my ideas align with western ideals or his but I hope that these are universal things. Thanks for your comments Abhishek. In fact thanks everyone for participating in a very insightful discussion, specially Sucharit, Samik, Abhishek and Arghya.

San, Kamesh, Soumendra and everyone else, I am glad that you liked my post. San, thanks for linking back.

Kamesh, thanks for your comment. I haven’t read State of fear and actually wanted to lay my hands on it before responding to you but I guess that will have to wait. Yeah, the Indian blogosphere seems to be reaching a critical mass of sorts and will likely play a very significant role in the years to come. Oh and I did read the civics textbook. :)

No, I am not asking for that “complete” a freedom of speech. Even if I stay clear of your extreme example, a complete freedom of speech will mean that one be allowed to shout fire in a crowded hall and that libel and slander be leagal. I am not an anarchist and that is not my point of view.

I want a reasonable freedom of speech - both in the law and in practice. And my claim is that this is not available to me in either form in India. And that it is unlikely to become available to me till at least, the legal part of this situation is corrected. A reasonable freedom of speech for instance must give you the right to express your view without censorship or the fear of it. The exceptions to this right should be both minimal, well-defined and objectively testable (in courts). These “can-hate laws” need to be abolished. I have already argued most of these.

Samik said “Even if it is, its exactly the thing someone in America would do. People do file lawsuits when they are hurt by some guys in media.”
Wrong. No one has ever been sued for merely saying things that hurt others in media. People have however been sued for ‘defamation’, which is expressly different from causing hurt. Defamation means you publicly make a *false* statement about someone else that denigrates him. Expressing an *opinion* on any matter, however hurtful it may be (for instance cracking jokes against blacks, or saying that christianity is a stupid religion) has never been grounds for a lawsuit. However because mass media is watched by everyone including children, there are certain codes they need to follow. So if an American family channel shows someone stripping, the channel will be fined, the person stripping however won’t be.

Sucharit said:”If someone gives a speech which instigates violence, will that be a part of his freedom of speech? If someone orders people to murder a race of people, will that be a part of his freedom of speech?”
My position on this matter(which perhaps is different from Anshul’s) is, if someone directly instigates others under him to commit a crime, say murder jews, then he should be penalized. For instance if a political leader eggs on his supporters to go and burn Muslim homes, then he should be arrested. The logic is, he is then part of the conspiracy and legally liable for any damage that the Muslims suffer.

On the other hand, if someone expresses an opinion, say in media (without a direct instigation to anyone to commit an illegal act) that a certain act should be done, or that a certain community is a nuisance, then that is his freedom of expression and he cannot be prosecuted by law for exercising it. For instance, if I write an article saying that Muslims are dangerous, or Sikhs are stupid, or girl-children are an economic burden, (without actually directly instigating to readers to go and burn Muslims, or harass Sikhs, or drown their girl-children) then I cannot be penalized. Of course it may happen that someone reads my article and decides the proper way to deal with dangerous Muslims is to go kill them, and he bands up with like-minded people and goes and burns some Muslim homes. That would be his liability alone, and I should not face any action on the matter (for I wasn’t part of the conspiracy).

I believe my stand is consistent with laws in almost all Western countries

btw, I am against all laws against free-expression wherever they exist, for instance Germany has a disgusting law that prevents you from declaring that the Holocaust did not happen. It is one of the most outrageous (indeed the only example I know of) anti free-expression law in the Western countires.

To quote an extreme example, was Hitler’s Nuremberg speech an example of your complete freedom of speech, the right (and not hopefully the content) of which you will “defend till death” in an “ideal world”?

If that be so, then we really have nothing to discuss. I hope to live in a world where the right to live is more important than the right of free speech, and I believe that if any speech violates someone else’s right to live, such speech should be banned.

Anshul- Firstly I want to say that my point here is not that freedom of speech is a lesser problem. It is a problem at in India as much as it is in the rest of the world.
I don’t know about the social freedom in the rest of the world but I only know about the social freedom in the 2 countries I lived in- India and America. In America, if you make racist comments then you are branded as racist and in society that means that there is a big problem with you. In India people make racist comments all the time and they are accepted as part of life. Everyone is racist in his thoughts and everyone makes judgements on people and their habits by their race. This becomes wrong when you feel that your race is more superior and deserves to have more priviledges than others. Although the reactions to racist comments are not written down in law it is ingrained in the mind of the people. And to me that is more important.
Secondly about the constitution- I never said having a constitution is wrong only that our constitution is bullshit. It is something framed by looking at the constitutions of the western world, not at our needs and problems. For example the word secular. It was very necessary for the western world to be secular when the church was doing all its atrocities, when there were all the crusades. But there was never any such problem in India- India has never faced any religious war. And your comments about sati- remember that sati was banned in India after the bhakti movement, it was reestablished by the British.
And lastly I would say that you cannot deal different cultures using the same ideals. It is natural that freedom of speech in America, Europe and India will all be different because all the people are different.

It is the necessary counterbalance and protection provided by the laws and the constitutions that allow societies and cultures to grow and move forward. Without them, the western world would still be living in an apartheid racist regime and ours would still have widespread child marriage and Sati.

The power of these minor things like constitutions cannot be undone. They are social contracts that say that go ahead and do whatever you want. Even if it’s unpopular, we will protect you just as much as the next guy. Through this, constitutions can and do change people’s mind. They are slow but they do work.

These ideals of freedom of speech that we are discussing are not western ones. They are human ones.

And the existence of bigger problems does not mean that we shouldn’t discuss these. As Hans Rosling said, wealth and education are not the goals of progress, they are the means. The goals are culture and human rights.

So while criticising Advani, are you supporting total freedom of speech, or are you opposing it?

In a better India, I would criticize Advani for what he said in that speech but defend till death his right to say it.

In the present India, he enjoys no such right that I can defend.

I would much rather live in that better India. Wouldn’t you?

A complete freedom of speech in India (or anywhere else) will lead to this:

Cocksucking arseholes support a fuckload of freedom of motherfucking speech.

And I would gladly live in that world. I would have the complete freedom to not hear/read that and ignore it if I heard/read it anyway.

And yes, if for expressing my opinions I have to choose between a) prosecution by the law b) disapproval of people who believe in ostracising those whose opinions dont match theirs, I will choose the latter. Always. But you know what- cultures where the law is firmly on the side of freedom of expression, tend to have a lot of people who see the beauty of it.