Ritu Menon: Freedom of Expression in India - 'Mind our language' . . . Mobs decide whats right

Indian Express
November 27, 2007


Is this a mobocracy?

by Ritu Menon

Taslima Nasreen, it seems, cannot do anything right. Her attackers, however, are deemed to be in the ‘right’.

Looking back on the events in Kolkata over the last week, one may be forgiven for thinking that we had stepped right through Alice’s looking glass into her topsy-turvy wonderland. A writer, sitting in her home and minding her own business, suddenly becomes the focus of out and out criminal activity on the city streets, ostensibly because of some connection to the goings-on in Nandigram — but nobody quite knows what. To the best of my knowledge, she hasn’t opened her mouth on that issue, in fact she has been remarkably low-key for several months now, having earlier been the direct target of a similar criminal attack on her in Hyderabad. Taslima Nasreen, it seems, cannot do anything right, not even if it means doing nothing.

Her attackers, on the other hand, are deemed to be in the ‘right’, even though they have broken the law, damaged public property, caused grievous losses and wilfully acted against the public good. They remain free to spring yet more violence on the public while Taslima is unceremoniously shunted out of the city because she’s a ‘threat’ to public security and peace.

Yet she has not uttered a single word, let alone cast a single stone.

The Queen of Hearts would be well pleased. As are assorted I-told-you-so politicians of various hues in our benighted polity. Like AIDWA’s Shyamali Gupta, who sanctimoniously declared, “We respect freedom of expression but one has no right to hurt the sentiments of others. One should exercise restraint.” Or, like NCP’s Farooq Abdullah who has decreed that if Taslima wishes to stay in the country, she should say sorry. Sorry, India, for being who I am.

These days, one could be forgiven for thinking that the only people whose freedom of expression the state is willing to protect are those who resort to violence in the name of religion — Hindu, Muslim or Christian. (Let’s not forget what happened in progressive Kerala when Mary Roy tried to stage ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’ at her school. Or when cinema halls screened The Da Vinci Code.) Indeed, not only does it protect their freedom of expression, it looks like it also protects their freedom to criminally assault and violate. Not a single perpetrator of such violence has been apprehended and punished in the last decade or more that has seen an alarming rise in such street or mob censorship. Not in the case of Deepa Mehta’s film; not in the attack on Ajeet Cour’s Academy of Fine Arts in Delhi; not in M.F. Husain’s case; not in the violation of the Bhandarkar Institute; not at MS University in Baroda; not in the assault on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad this August. I could list many, many more.

We would do well to remember that the more regressive the state is in response to attacks like this, the more aggressive the mob will become. The simultaneous absence and presence of the state at these moments entrenches the vulnerability of the individual while at the same time ensuring the ‘invincibility’ of the mob. By their very nature, mobs form and dissolve, disappearing as an entity that can be charged; individuals, on the other hand, are isolated and easily targeted.

Does this mean they should be removed from the scene, like Taslima Nasreen? If say, Mahasweta Devi or Aparna Sen or Sunil Gangopadhyay were under threat, would the West Bengal government have sent them packing? Would we have been told that ensuring their protection is the Centre’s responsibility? (We shouldn’t be too surprised, though — remember, West Bengal has the dubious distinction of being the only government in a good long while to have actually banned a work — yes, Nasreen’s Dwikhondito in 2003).

So what are ordinary people to do, if we cannot depend on the state to protect not only our freedom of expression, but our freedom of movement and of association as well? All three rights are subsumed under the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution, but it seems we will, once more, have to move the courts in order to reinforce them.

In August 2007, Women’s WORLD (India), a free-speech network of writers, publishers and critics, and Asmita, a women’s resource centre in Hyderabad, filed a writ petition in the Hyderabad High Court against the four MLAs who led the attack on Taslima Nasreen in that city and against the two parties, the Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeen and Majlis Bachao Tehreek. The petition sought the removal of the four legislators and the cancellation of the registration of both political parties with the Election Commission of India. The grounds are misconduct, and the primary issue is the public conduct of elected representatives. The case is being heard, although — and this is a matter of some concern — there is no code of conduct prescribed for elected representatives during their term of office, in India.

The issues before us in this, and every other case of street/mob censorship that has come up in the recent past, are those of public misconduct, vandalism and criminal activity that no government so far, either state or central, has dealt with summarily and effectively.

Rather than safeguarding and upholding the fundamental right to freedom of expression, all of us who try to exercise that freedom are told to mind our language. In much the same way that women who are vulnerable to rape are told to behave themselves, or stay at home.

The writer is a publisher and founding member of Women’s WORLD, India