About Free Speech in India

J. Sai Deepak is a lawyer, self-described 85% commercial litigation, 15% Constitutional Law. He is also an author and public speaker; his detractors call him an Ultra-Nationalist and so on.

The first eleven minutes of this Youtube has some remarks of J. Sai Deepak from a public debate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-UIVvWHyg 

 

 

{lightly edited and annotated Youtube transcript}

 

J. Sai Deepak:  

 

This is the Shri Ram College right, Jai Shree Ram! 

 

So first of all, thanks to the organizers for putting together such a fantastic event and the audience for turning up in such brilliant numbers as usual.

 

I think the aisles have been converted into pathshalas {traditional India school where students sit on the floor}

 

Thank you so very much!   You know, I was wondering - I was just going through the e-mail that was sent to us on the topic.  The topic was "Can western narratives and Indian narratives or western media and Indian media co-exist?"

 

If I were on the other side, I would have stuck to the topic.  This is a textbook instance of

Aa Bail Mujhe Maar {literally, "'Come bull, do hit me!", figuratively , "invite trouble upon oneself"}.  You've opened the Pandora's box by speaking about freedom of speech when instead the topic was slightly different. A good can of worms has been opened,  so,  let the flood gates open.

 

Now we are being told that free speech in this country is almost on the verge of extinction so Anand  {Anand Ranganathan} rightly pointed out the First Amendment to the {Indian} Constitution,  so I'll explain the backdrop to it.

 

So Mr Nehru {first Prime Minister of independent India} seriously was interested in pushing his land reforms agenda {pre-independence promise to break up large "feudal" land holdings and distribute it to the actual cultivators}. 

 

I am not on the question of whether it was right or wrong, I'm just saying that he had a certain policy initiative which he wanted pushed.  You know who was actually raising the red flag to his initiative? The ones who raised the red flag always the Communists.

Okay,  so people like Romesh Thapar started writing against it {well, even more on other matters} and there was active opposition to everything that he was doing. Courts were overturning his judgments {I think primarily because land reforms involve the taking of property} , rather his initiatives through judgments so two consequences happened simultaneously around that particular period which till date affect the Constitution. 

 

The first is the introduction of severe limitations on free speech, the second is the introduction of the 9th Schedule to the Constitution which effectively protects all those land reform legislations from any kind of constitutional challenge.

 

Imagine an elected government in a democracy taking a policy decision and ensuring that that policy decision is immune from judicial review, through a constitutional amendment, for all time to come, and we are being taught democracy by the scions and descendants of this legacy {the opposition party, the Indian National Congress, is run by the Nehru's great grandchildren and allies}.

 

Second today we are suddenly being told, oh, social media explosion is the reason for survival of free speech in this country, otherwise you see, free speech has been bought by mercantile interests and so on and so forth.

 

Who introduced Section 66-A to gag free speech on social media? Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act was introduced by the UPA government {i.e., the Indian National Congress} with the broadest of possible restrictions on free speech where even any kind of offense or hurt that is caused to sentiments immediately attracts the application of that particular section

 

This is what ultimately resulted in Shreya Singhal versus Union of India {the Supreme Court ruled Section 66-A to be unconstitutional} , the sad part of the unfortunate part or perhaps the cynical part of the reality is the BJP defended that particular provision in court when the matter was being heard because by then the BJP had taken over.

 

So what does this tell you?  Ultimately that the nature of power regardless of which party is in power is to appropriate as much space to it as possible and limit the scope for free speech.

 

There is really no one in this hammam {Turkish steam bath/sauna} , I'll leave it at that, who's capable of saying I'm clothed. 

 

Okay so therefore let's not take a moral high ground here, let's be realistic about what is it that we want and what is it that is good in the interest of the public, let's speak of that.  Now let's talk about what's happening in the West and so on and so forth {returning to the topic of the debate}.

 

I think the binary division between western media and Indian media no longer exists for a good reason because it's not a question of who's from the west and who's from India, it's a question for who's batting for Indian interests, that is what ultimately matters, because there are several people several journalists in the west who are willing to speak the truth about Bharat {ancient name for India} and who do not share the colonial cynicism of the rest of their western compatriots. Similarly there are several people from Bharat who are more than happy to be lackeys of anti-Indian mouthpieces from the west. That's a fact so therefore I'm not interested in this binary argument anymore.

 

During COVID there were several fantastic Twitter handles from the west which were actually reporting on the kind of measures that countries such as Bharat with the scale of its population were undertaking to provide resources to its people; while people within were constantly pulling us down. {FYI, Indians were highly offended by Reuters' coverage of COVID in India, especially by the Pulitzer Prize given them.}

 

Now here is the interesting part Mr. Kulkarni {Sudheendra Kulkarni} rightly points out and I would say significantly that holds good that western media. including Hollywood,  so to speak has managed to push the western agenda as much as possible.

 

It's unfortunate that we are aping everything wrong from the west aspect but we are not doing it as far as this issue is concerned and then when we say that there are certain portions of the media there are certain segments of the media who seem to be comfortable constantly pulling India down, we are then accused of being anti-free speech. Okay so we are being told that free speech is effectively under challenge because look at our interest at holding them to ransom.

 

Why don't we speak of political parties owning channels? In the south business interests and media interests merge and they're controlled by {political} parties. You want a standing example - the Sun Group owned by the DMK {one of the major political parties in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu} which has been a partner, not just to the Congress but also to the BJP,  because after all the Commerce Minister during Mr Vajpayee's {Prime Minister of India from the BJP, 1998-2004} , tenure who was leading India at the Doha negotiations with respect to World Trade Organization was Murasoli Maran from the DMK.

 

Neither party deemed it fit to crack down on the holding of media interests by political interests or political organizations, that has never happened.

 

Why just the DMK? Jayalalitha {deceased; one-time dominant politician in Tamil Nadu} also owned Jaya TV, which continues to be run by the ADMK {the other major political party in Tamil Nadu}.  I would say it's much better for a mercantile interest to own let's say a media organization as opposed to a political interest because there's a serious conflict of interest on both sides.

 

That's a discussion that we don't seem to be having here. Now the matter has come down and has become about only the Congress and the BJP. I would say at this point members who are listening to this should actually say we are sick and tired of this nonsense, we'd like to actually have a discussion which goes beyond the BJP and the Congress and we'd like to talk, because until the cows come home this battle will go on;

but nevertheless given the fact the cows, of course pun intended,  given the fact that the

Congress has been in power for a longer period of time, ask any student of constitutional law almost every decision on free speech, involves a clamp down on free speech by Congress ruled governments either at the state or the center, so at the very least the Congress must take a look at its own history before it starts pontificating to the rest, and you're certainly in no position to pontificate today when all the information is out in the public domain through the social media. People have access to judgments, people have access to decisions, files noting so on and so forth, you're in no position to pontificate - 30 seconds? -  

 

yes so I would only request you to ask yourself only one thing - self regulation in Indi is a non-existing word, it's a non-existing concept, there's not a single body that can be trusted to regulate itself. I say this as much of the judiciary when it comes to its collegium system and I say this as much of the media.

 

Now on the point that Mr. Kulkarni raised, that the government is thinking of setting up a center which can crack down on fake news, the Press Guild does nothing, the Press Council of India does nothing, no action has been taken against any organization or any portal, or let's say individual journalist for their direct role in spreading or manufacturing fake news.

 

What are we supposed to do? You can't go to a court asking for directions against a private party in a writ petition, so what do you do then? The government has the task, you know why, because if fake news starts on WhatsApp, particularly in the context of riots or any kind of communal violence so to speak and let's assume that the trigger is a lie, it falls upon the government to have a mechanism to actually trace that lie back and also perhaps nip it at the bud. So if the government were to actually go against all kinds of news, that's a different issue, but to say that the government doesn't even have the right to go after fake news when self-regulation as a concept is completely failed in this country, I'm sorry to say, what are we really batting for?

 

This is exactly what happens when you choose to go after every policy initiative, merely because it's the BJP at the helm or the Congress at the helm without asking what is right and what is wrong.

 

I can pander to the gallery here by reducing this to a television debate, but this is SRCC {SRCC Business Conclave is Asia's largest undergraduate management fest} I think you're better, right, and therefore and therefore I would urge you to put pressure on debaters and panelists to stick to the issue at least in their own interest

 

Thank you, panelists, I'm sorry I've been told there's a shortage of time so I'm just going to leave you with one idea which is that we've spoken about the two parties, the governments, the historical perspectives, present day, all of that we're looking at times of artificial intelligence, right, where technology can make news gathering more efficient but it can also allow fake news to get more creative. I would have liked people to respond to that but unfortunately we're out of time so we'll have to wrap it up here and thank you for being a great audience.