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.