Is Mumbai against Freedom of Speech?

With what started as one of the rarest of incidents of violation of Freedom of Speech, Mumbai is now gripped in an intense debate about where our rights lie and where should we draw the line.

A High Court judge criticized the Mumbai police for having arrested controversial cartoonist Aseem Trivedi on “frivolous grounds”.

His cartoons used metaphors like a commode for the Indian Parliament and Wolves for the Indian Emblem.

More recently, on 18th November in Mumbai, 2 college students were arrested on charges of hurting ‘religious sentiments’, after a Facebook status spoke of the death of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and the Mumbai Bandh that followed his death.

Shaheen Dhada was the prime accused whose status on Facebook triggred a massive debate in Mumbai about the purview and limitations of Section 19(A) of the Indian Constitution, which protects Freedom of Speech and Expression. Her friend was arrested too, for having liked the status.

Not only that, Shaheen’s uncle’s hospital was vandalised by supporters of Bal Thackeray’s political party, Shiv Sena.

The original Facebook status read, “With all respect, everyday, thousands of people die, but still the world moves on. Just due to one politician died a natural death, everyone just goes bonkers. They should know, we are resilient by force, not by choice. When was the last time, did anyone showed some respect or even a two-minute silence for Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Azad, Sukhdev or any of the people because of whom we are free-living Indians? Respect is earned, given, and definitely not forced. Today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect.”

In India, a businessman and active participant of IAC (Indian against Corruption) in Puducherry, was arrested in October, for comments made on Twitter against finance minister P. Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram.

Mr Ravi, 46, was arrested by Puducherry Police for tweeting on October 19 that “Mr Karti had amassed more wealth than Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law, Robert Vadra”.

In relation to the recent arrests in Mumbai and Puducherry, a PIL against Section 66A (Sedition under IT act) has been filed by 21-year-old student Shreya Singhal from Delhi. Her lawyer Mukul Rohatgi has requested the court to give an interim order so that arrests under the section are made only with the permission of a senior police officer.

“Apart from the incident at Palghar involving the two girls, Singhal’s PIL referred to an April incident in which a professor of chemistry from Jadavpur University in West Bengal, Ambikesh Mahapatra, was arrested for posting a cartoon concerning chief minister Mamata Banerjee on a social networking site.

She referred to the Puducherry case as well as the May arrests of two Air India Ltd employees, V. Jaganatharao and Mayank Sharma, by the Mumbai Police under the IT Act for posting content on Facebook and Orkut against a trade union leader and some politicians,” says an article published in Livemint.com, dated 30^th November 2012.

Sharma and Rao were arrested and jailed for 12 days after their colleage Sagar Karnik’s complaint in May, alleging that the two had posted “derogatory” remarks against the Prime Minister’s Office, the national flag and the Supreme Court, while commenting on a strike by Air India pilots.

The duo was charged under Section 506(2) of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 66 A and 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, besides relevant sections of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971.

In a recent follow up to this case, Karnaik himself is arrested for ‘Misleading the Police’.

In other attempts to sabotage Freedom of Speech, Bollywood movie Shanghai, in June, was under the scanner for its song ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’, which used sarcasm to critique the shortcomings of India, mainly in civil matters. Also in January this year, Indian-born author Salman Rushdie was asked to give a miss to the Jaipur Literature Festival for fear of 'Security Risk'. This is a spill over from the controversy surrounding his book The Satanic Verses.

All this, points at the regressive nature of people in Mumbai and in India. People are becoming highly intolerant towards anything that hurt their Personal feelings, and protest against them in the name of community/religion/national sentiment, etc.

Indeed, people must be reasonable and abstain from publishing any content which is blasphemous, derogatory or largely hurtful and insulting.

However, stopping, banning and protesting against any new expression or opinion, without due consideration of the author/maker’s point of view, is a very unsophisticated response to creative expression, as a whole.