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Nation
Calcutta A fifty-fifty democracy
Bengal
Foreign - Seven threats to freedom of expression
Business Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha
Sports Dinanath Batra India, I have long maintained, is a fifty-fifty democracy. In
Horse Racing some respects - such as free and fair elections, free
t2 movement of people - we are as democratic as any other country in the world. In other
respects, we lag noticeably behind. One such area is the freedom of expression.
Opinion
The first threat to freedom of expression is the retention in our statute books of archaic
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colonial laws. In his now notorious case against Wendy Doniger's book, The Hindus: An
Property NEW Alternative History, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activist, Dinanath Batra, cited six
specific sections of the Indian Penal Code that he claimed the book could be banned
CITIES & REGIONS
under. These were: Section 153 ("Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot"),
Metro Section 153A ("Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race,
North Bengal place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of
harmony"), Section 295 ("Injuring or defiling [a] place of worship with intent to insult the
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religion of any class"), Section 295A ("Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage
Jharkhand religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs"), Section 298
Bihar ("Uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any
Odisha person"), and Section 505 ("Statements conducing to public mischief").

WEEKLY FEATURES The IPC was originally drafted by Thomas Babington Macaulay - a man whom the RSS
professes to despise. The RSS also often inveighs against the contamination of Indian
Knowhow Mon
culture by alien British rule. Yet, when it suits its purpose, it is perfectly willing to use
Jobs Tue colonial laws drafted by Macaulay. That it is allowed to do so is a result of the postcolonial
You Thu State having done nothing to repeal laws clearly unsuited to a democratic age. Apart from
Howrah Fri the sections cited above, there are other provisions in the IPC and the Criminal Procedure
Code allowing books or films to be banned. The State also retains the power to ban or
Salt Lake Fri confiscate publications.
7days Sun
Graphiti Sun The State's powers to suppress independent thought also take advantage of the first
amendment to the Indian Constitution which restricted the sweeping freedom of speech
LEISURE originally granted by the Constitution. This amendment, introduced in May 1951 when
Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister and B.R. Ambedkar law minister, allowed
Sudoku
governments to ban periodicals or books, which threatened "the security of the State,
Sudoku New friendly relations with foreign States, [or] public order" - provisions that give the authorities
Crossword wide latitude to prohibit the circulation of books, newspapers or films they do not like.
Jumble
I was recently reading a book on the publication, in the United Kingdom, of D.H.
Gallery Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. The novel was banned under a section of the
Obscene Publications Act, which permitted the State to stop circulation if the work in
ARCHIVES question was "such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons" likely to read it. The
Since 1 March, 1999 defence was able to get the ban lifted, in part because it effectively used another section
of the same act, which stated that even if some parts of a book were considered
PRESS RELEASES "obscene", it could still be circulated if its publication was "justified as being for the public
Businesswire India good on the ground that it is in the interests of science, literature, art, or learning, or of
NewsVoir other objects of general interest". Alas, no such provision exists in Indian law. Otherwise, it
could have been used in defence of Doniger's book, which is manifestly a work of learning
PR Newswire and of literature.
EXTRAS The second threat to freedom of expression are imperfections in our judicial system.
Travel Lower courts are too quick, and subordinate judges too eager, to entertain suits asking for
films, books or paintings to be banned on the basis of colonial-era laws. Malign or
THE TELEGRAPH mischievous litigants know which courts and which judges are likely to be pliant. A plea
About Us against Caravan magazine, which is published in Delhi, was entertained by a judge in

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A fifty-fifty democracy http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150124/jsp/opinion/story_9857.jsp#.V...

Advertise distant Silchar. Batra himself, in his many and various attempts to suppress works of
Feedback scholarship, has been known to favour the court in a town named Dera Bassi. It is true
Contact Us that high courts and the Supreme Court are in general more proactive in defending
freedom of expression. But once a book or painting has been banned in a lower court, it
may take years for this to be overturned in a higher court. Few publishers, and fewer
individuals, have the money, patience, or courage for such extended legal battles. When
the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad decided to target the great painter, Maqbool Fida
Husain, they had suits filed in different courts across India. Eventually, Husain's lawyer
was able to get the Supreme Court to consolidate all the cases, but by this time, the
painter, already in his nineties, chose in sorrow and exasperation to go into exile.

The third threat to freedom of expression is constituted by the behaviour of the police
force. Even when the courts are on the side of writers and artists, the police take the side
of goondas and bigots. After the ban on James Laine's scholarly book on Shivaji was
overturned by the high court, the publishers were too fearful to distribute it, knowing that if
Shiv Sainiks or Nationalist Congress Party goons came to attack the publisher's Mumbai
office the police would stand and look (if not cheer). When the visionary Hussain-Doshi
gufa in Ahmedabad was vandalized by Bajrang Dal activists, the Gujarat police did
nothing to stop them. The police inhibit freedom of expression in other ways. In my home
state of Uttarakhand, a brave young journalist named Umesh Dobhal was murdered in
1988 by the liquor mafia. There had been previous threats to his life; but the police
remained indifferent, and after he was killed made no attempt to arrest and try his
murderers. More recently, another Uttarakhandi journalist, Hem Pandey, was killed in a
fake encounter. One could cite such cases from every state of the Union, where the police
have striven to impede or throttle the freedom to work and write of independent-minded
journalists.

The fourth threat to freedom of expression are pusillanimous politicians. No Indian chief
minister or prime minister has ever come out strongly in favour of freedom of expression.
Many chief ministers and a few prime ministers have actively taken the side of fanatics
who wish to have books or works of art banned. The Congressman, Rajiv Gandhi, was
instrumental in banning Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. The Left Front in West
Bengal banned the works of Taslima Nasreen and then refused to let her even live in the
state. As chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi had formal or informal bans placed on
books, films and exhibitions of paintings. The recent silencing of the Tamil writer, Perumal
Murugan, is illustrative here. No major political party in Tamil Nadu was willing to stand by
Murugan's right to free expression. The local administration played an even more
pernicious role - rather than protect Murugan, it coerced him into issuing an "unconditional
apology" to the mob that sought to hound him.

A fifth threat is the dependence of the media on government advertisements. This is

especially true of the regional and sub-regional press. Newspapers and magazines in
state and district capitals often depend heavily on the largesse of state governments. As a
consequence, they cannot be frank or fearless in exposing the misdeeds of the ruling
party or its ministers.

A sixth threat to freedom of expression is the dependence of the media on commercial

advertisements. This is especially pertinent in the case of English-language newspapers
and TV channels, which cater to the affluent middle-class, those who buy automobiles,
smart phones, flatscreen TVs and washing machines, and consume a massive amount of
oil and gas. Companies that make these products and advertise them in the media are
often given a wide berth by reporters, editors and, especially, proprietors. This form of
self-censorship operates extensively in an area I know reasonably well - the environment.
Detailed and first-hand reports by intrepid journalists of environmental degradation caused
by mining, chemical and oil companies have been "pulled" for fear that they will offend
advertisers. More often, editors simply do not commission such reports at all.

The seventh threat is constituted by careerist or ideologically driven writers. George

Orwell once said that a writer must never be a loyal member of a political party. In India,
too many writers and journalists identify with particular parties and even with particular
individuals, pushing their patrons' agenda at considerable violence to the truth. Once
again, this betrayal of intellectual freedom occurs across the political spectrum. There are
writers who are propagandists for the Bharatiya Janata Party, writers who are spokesmen
for the Congress, writers who are apologists for the Communist Party of India (Marxist),
writers who are useful idiots for the Naxalites.

These seven threats to free expression eat away at the moral and institutional foundations
of Indian democracy. To be sure, our writers, artists and film-makers enjoy greater
freedom than their counterparts in semi-totalitarian countries like China or Russia. Yet,
they are distinctly unfree when compared to their counterparts in thoroughbred
democracies like Sweden or Canada.

ramachandraguha@yahoo.in

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