Freedom of Speech through the Indic lens

Kundan Singh views Freedom of Speech through the Indic/Dharmic lens.

"Rushdie’s participation or non-participation thereafter at the Jaipur Literary Festival has caused a lot of media frenzy and much welcomed debate. It has brought to sharper focus the absoluteness of freedom of speech. Though most people interviewed on news channels like CNN-IBN or NDTV have upheld the absoluteness of the freedom of speech, there have been a few voices like those of writer-diplomat Mr. Pavan Varma and actor Rahul Bose who have questioned the notion of the absolute nature of this freedom. Mr. Varma argued against it saying that no freedom in any country, even in western countries, is unrestrained and therefore, it should not be so even in India. Though I am essentially in support of his contention, I wish he had shed some light on historical and social context of freedom of speech, which is now considered a corner stone of democracy. 

The freedom of speech has attained a godly status in western countries mainly due to the tyrannical conditions that were unleashed by the Church in medieval times in Europe. Given the totalizing control that it held in matters of inquiry and artistic and literary expressions, it was through the sacrifice and struggle of many during renaissance that Europe could win the freedom to inquiry and creative expression. Given this history, it is understandable why “freedom of speech” has such a divinely ordained status in western countries. 

Now India has not had any such history. Through the Varna-system, it was seen that totalizing power never got concentrated in the hands of a section of people in India—if knowledge was in the hands of the Brahmins, the governance in the hands of the kshatriyas, the wealth was in the hands of the viashyas. The four fold order was also a system of checks and balances so that authority never got centralized and totalizing. And given that the pursuit of the divine was always a matter of personal and intimate experience and inquiry, there was no separation between science and “religion” or inquiry and “religion.” There was no central authority to gag an individual if he/she could manifest a new way of approaching the divine or a scientific principle or artistic impulse. Also since it was considered that the entire universe consisted of one “entity,” the consciousness albeit with many different levels and planes, there was not a strict dichotomy between sacred and profane (the dichotomous relationship between sacred and profane is an outcome of transcendent godhead disconnected from the universe that he has created). Therefore one does not come across instances of mystics or artists being persecuted in Indian Hindu-Buddhist history. Given this history, there are a couple of things that we need to keep in mind when we discuss the “freedom of speech and expression:” 1. Indians do not need to uphold it because it is considered sacred in the western world—it is sacred to western people due to the important role that it has played in their history, and we must respect it for that reason alone. It is held sacred in India because of our unique relationship that we have had with respect to inquiry and art. It is important to understand the cosmology which has led to holding such freedom sacrosanct. 2. Whereas Iconoclasm led to the development and advancement of Europe, it led to a destruction of India where Iconoclasm did not remain metaphorical but turned literal resulting in the destruction of the entire Hindu civilization in the hands of invading Muslim armies and later through the British. Consequently, India’s relationship with iconoclasm now conducted through an absolute “freedom of speech and expression” is wounded and fractured. On one hand, given its Hindu-Buddhist cosmology it has an immense respect for freedom of inquiry and expression and on the other, it was an unrestrained and brutal iconoclasm and freedom of expression of foreigners that led to its massacre, loot, destruction and plunder.  The English speaking Indian media does not understand this paradoxical and wounded relationship that India has with “freedom of expression and speech” and thus sees its supporters and opponents respectively on a liberal/conservative divide. The truth of the matter is that one will find many Indians upholding and eschewing the “freedom of speech and expression” simultaneously. It is time the Indian intelligentsia took into account India’s historical relationship with “freedom of speech and expression” and understand why it has such a paradoxical relationship with this particular freedom. "


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