The Congress tradition of subverting the right to free speech has not left the Press alone either. A warrant was issued for the arrest of the noted journalist S Gurumurthy when he criticised the mishandling of a murder case that was used to foist false charges against the Shankaracharya of Kanchi Mutt. In Kolkata, history was repeated four decades after Arnold Toynbee’s article in The Statesman led to violence. The newspaper’s editor Ravindra Kumar and publisher Anand Sinha were arrested for reproducing an article from a British newspaper entitled “Why should I respect these oppressive religions?” Just as in the case of Toynbee’s article, Muslims were outraged and the editor was forced to issue a public apology.
Meanwhile in Kerala, at around the same time, four people including the editor-in-chief, publisher, managing editor, and an editor of the Malayalam publication Kerala Kaumudi faced contempt charges for publishing an editorial supporting CBI’s demand in the Sister Abhaya murder case in which two Catholic priests and a nun were the defendants. The lawyers for the investigative agency had demanded the transfer of the application for bail for the defendants from the judge hearing the arguments. The editorial pointed out that the judge had once worked under a person who was considered a pillar of Christianity and had condemned CBI’s intervention in the case. Curiously, despite the editorial being more than three months old, the court filed the charges only after the 2009 Lok Sabha election schedule was announced.
While Christians and Muslims faced kid-glove treatment from the Government over the years, Hindus have faced violent attacks. The peaceful protest against the UPA Government’s corruption by Baba Ramdev and his supporters at the Ramlila grounds in Delhi was dispersed using brutal force. A woman was killed in the attack and Kapil Sibal, a minister in Sonia Gandhi’s Government, justified the murderous assault and made a shocking claim that anyone who decided to extend their peaceful anti-corruption protests beyond an arbitrary limit of forty eight hours, deserved such treatment. This was the first time after the Chinese Government’s crackdown in Tiananmen Square in 1989 that a Government’s use of force on peaceful protesters had resulted in death.
The Government and the Press have also placed Sonia Gandhi on a pedestal along with Islam and Christianity and made her off-limits for critics. During all these years, the media has not criticised Sonia Gandhi much for the violation of free speech rights, despite a long list of violations during her reign.
The English language media has been a compliant supporter of the Government’s actions and has been biased in its coverage. Mint, a New Delhi newspaper, justified the attack on the protesters at the Ramlila grounds and declared that Baba Ramdev did not deserve the right to the freedom of expression as he attempted to escape police brutalities. A few days later, these very same critics of Baba Ramdev flip-flopped and lent support to the British organisers of a literary festival in Jaipur who evaded the police after reading parts of a book by Salman Rushdie.
Throughout the country’s history, after the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution was passed, it has been used selectively to target Hindus and ban statements perceived to offend Muslims, Christians and Communists. These three groups have been the beneficiaries of the Amendment. Books and films that have not found favor with Christians or Muslims have been banned. Communists have been given special treatment even while civil liberties of others got trampled.
While the American First Amendment was created to protect the people from blasphemy laws of Abrahamic religions, the Indian First Amendment was created to protect the blasphemy laws of the Abrahamic religions from the people. The American First Amendment is a step in the right direction as its intention is to remove the persecution of the non-adherents of the Abrahamic religions, but the Indian First Amendment is a retrograde step as it has institutionalised the persecution of those who do not adhere of these religions.
India’s First Amendment has violated our rights and affected the country negatively for the past sixty years. Members of the Nehru family have acted like megalomaniacs drunk on power. Our freedoms should be absolute, without any restraints and it is high time we got rid of the first Amendment and restored our liberties. Those who oppose our basic freedoms should learn from history about the fate of various tyrants and remember that the tree of liberty has been refreshed from time to time in every society.
(Photo Courtesy:World Economic Forum)
