Democracy – Right to be Wrong!!!

And now it is police clamping on Sanjay Chaudhary for his posts and caricatures of the Prime Minister. The other day it was Viswaroopam, the girls band from Kashmir, the demand by Christians to ban Kadali…. And the list of intolerance (retroquo quality!) can be seemingly endless.
It is tragic that the people and the government is willing to play games with the freedom of expression and the trend if unchecked could eat into the vitals of a vibrant democracy. For all its faults, systemic included, there is no gainsaying that we are truly a healthy democracy and have the right to shout from roof tops, our opinions and viewpoints. Courts in this country have consistently ruled that the right of the media and thereby of the ‘expression platforms’ is not an absolute right. They have also with equal consistence and clarity rejected the plea of governments that they are required to step in and deal with the law and order problem by banning the screening.
Over the years there have plenty of examples of government’s pleading law and order as a ground to interfere. Tamas, Bombay, Ore Oru Gramathille, Aarakshan and many more can be sited. Courts repeatedly have frowned as the Government playing Censors and/or the moral police. In fact I would believe that when anarchical elements threaten the freedom of expression, the government must step in and ensure they are policed with dignity and a sternness suggesting a social bias in favour of the right of expression. We would do well to remember that we have the right to tear to shreds the art and thoughts of an artist’s expression while always protecting his right to be wrong.
One cannot but be reminded of the caution sounded by Justice Krishna Iyer over three decades ago that such power may effect the right of expressive art and “may be asphyxiated by law, if prudes and prigs and State moralists prescribe paradigms and proscribe heterodoxies. It is in this context that one needs to recall a master piece treatise on the power of the government in the context of art and under the pretext of law and order essayed in his inimitable style by Justice G. Raghuram while dealing when the government of AP imposed a ban on the film the Da Vinci Code. It is contextually relevant to quote from the judgement (read treatise): There are inevitably, heterodoxies within orthodoxies. The unity of mankind is an assumption of tolerance, a symbiosis of diversity. Freedom of speech and expression contributes to the richness and the equilibrium of human existence.…… The objectors to the exhibition of the film are not a captive audience. Casual passers-by on the public street, those using public transport or by compulsive exposure to billboards are not involuntarily and forcibly exposed to the contents of this film. The film is a work of fiction and is exhibited for commercial purposes. Those who go to the theatre are required to buy a ticket to see the film. Thus they watch it at their volition and by conscious choice. Those who are offended by the content or its theme are free to avoid watching the film. The objectors are thus not captive audience of the film. Dissenters of speech and expression have no censorial right in respect of the intellectual, moral, religious, dogmatic or other choices of all mankind. The Constitution of India does not confer or tolerate such individualized, hyper-sensitive private censorial intrusion into and regulation of the guaranteed freedom of others. The authority that passed the impugned order has not even seen the film. He mechanically certified the heckler’s veto of a few objectors, on dictation as it were, rather than informed satisfaction of his own, as legislatively ordained. This is not rational regulation of a protected constitutional right – freedom of speech and expression.

It was Irving Wallace who said in the course of one of his works: Times have changed, moral boundaries have expanded, allowing for more candour and tolerance.
Time for this great democracy to relook its premise. Psychotic mayhem is a poor substitute to debate.