India: By giving in to bigots we are nourishing the soil of intolerance says editorial in EPW

The Economic and Political Weekly, February 07, 2015

The Offenders and the Offended

Editorials

By giving in to bigots we are nourishing the soil of intolerance.

India has now had its own Charlie Hebdo moment – or rather moments. The first over the reprinting of one of the covers of the French satirical magazine, and the other over a group specialising in ribald satire where public figures are “roasted”. In neither instance has anyone been gunned down but the police complaints, threats and hounding are ominous. The two recent incidents remind us, yet again, that the right to freedom of expression in India remains at best ambivalent and at worst a bracketed, highly restricted one. As a result, whether it is “citizens” who take offence and move the law, or those tasked with implementing the law wilfully misinterpret it, we are witness to a farce that would be funny if its consequences for some were not so dire.

On 17 January, when Shireen Dalvi, who happens to be India’s first woman editor of an Urdu newspaper, the Mumbai-edition of Avadhnama, decided to reprint one of the covers of Charlie Hebdo to illustrate an article quoting the Pope’s remarks on the limits to freedom of expression, she probably never imagined the consequences. The next day, she was compelled to issue a front-page apology for using the cartoon. Inadvertently, she had picked the wrong magazine cover off the internet depicting a bearded man in tears saying, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots” and a caption, “Muhammed overwhelmed by fundamentalists”, in French, a language she does not know. Dalvi has lost her job and is struggling to get bail as multiple cases for hurting religious sentiments are filed against her under Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in various police stations in Maharashtra. A widow and mother of two teenage children, Dalvi is hiding, as she knows the consequences are not just legal but could be extralegal by way of physical attacks against her and her children.

The use of IPC Section 295A to pulp or ban books, or hound writers, journalists and artists is neither new nor novel in India. The list of similar instances is long and illustrates the intolerance of Hindutva and Islamist groups. It also includes other narrowly partisan groups, such as those who took offence at a historical interpretation of Shivaji by the American scholar James Laine. Yet the Dalvi episode is worrying because there has been little support for her, like the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan received, who was hounded by right-wing Hindutva groups to the point where he declared his own death as a writer. Why this hesitation in taking on the Islamists and the selective outrage?

The other story, although it cannot be equated with the Dalvi issue, is our reducing ability to accept any kind of satire or humour, even if it is ribald or in bad taste. When a group of stand-upcomedians, who call themselves the All India Bakchod (AIB), decided to hold a public event, a “roast”, where well-known personalities from the film world were publicly insulted and made fun of in front of a paid audience, no objections were raised. Those willing to be “roasted” enthusiastically participated in the event. Yet, AIB is now being accused of promoting immorality andobscenity, has had a police case filed against it, and the inevitable demands that it be banned have surfaced. The provocation was not the live show but the edited 50-minute version of the event on YouTube that got over 4 lakh views. Rather than try and fight this, AIB has taken down its YouTube offering. The reaction, however, reminds them and us that, unlike Charlie Hebdo in France, there is little space for this kind of satire or ribaldry in India.

Should we be worried by actions against an Urdu editor, or the criticism of AIB? Or even of the more absurd incident where the regional office of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in Mumbai asked Mihir Joshi to mute the use of the word “Bombay” from his song “Sorry” without which he would not get a certificate for the music video to be televised? When did the word Bombay become offensive? Under what section of the law? Joshi too decided to comply rather than challenge the CBFC. Perhaps all these incidents add up to nothing new, only a reminder of what we already know, that for our cultural guardians, freedom of speech is nothing more than a licence to immorality and irreligiosity. What should, however, disturb us is the support that such selective outrage receives from the State which is constitutionally mandated to protect freedom of speech.