Pakistan: The death of free speech
Salmaan Taseer’s assassination is the result of years of political uses of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, says Salil Tripathi
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Human Rights Day: Words without borders
As ideas move freely around the world attacks on writers continue, reports Lisa Appignanesi
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Fundamental differences?
The ever-readable Salil Tripathi, in his column in India’s Mint, points us to a disturbing story in Mumbai. The university there has withdrawn a book by renowned author Rohinton Mistry after a member of the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena group complained it was offensive to his party.
…Rajan Waulkar, vice-chancellor of Mumbai University became the poster child of acquiescence to bullying when he hastily withdrew Mistry’s acclaimed previous novel Such A Long Journeyusing his emergency powers, after an undergraduate student aspiring for political leadership of the Shiv Sena’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, complained that the book made disparaging remarks against his party and his people. His claim to lead the youth wing rests on what he considers his inherent birthright—he is born in the Thackeray family.
Such A Long Journey is a thoughtful narrative about the scarcity-prone India at the cusp of the Bangladesh war of 1971, when Gustad Noble, a bank clerk, gets enmeshed in a conspiracy to assist the Mukti Bahini, the India-backed armed group fighting for Bangladesh’s freedom. He is brought to the shadowy world by an old acquaintance who is an intelligence officer, loosely based on the life of Rustom Nagarwala, who allegedly imitated prime minister Indira Gandhi’s voice and got a State Bank of India officer to hand him Rs. 60 lakh after the phone call, ostensibly for Bangladesh’s liberation.
The junior-most Thackeray’s complaint is vague, and political analysts might see his grandstanding as part of his desire (and his father Uddhav’s desire) to regain political ground, ever since Uddhav’s bête noire, his cousin Raj Thackeray, began wolfing down the Shiv Sena’s jhunka bhakar through his party, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
Salil points out an uncomfortable truth for fundamentalists:
Hindu nationalists get riled when they are compared with Muslim leaders declaring fatwas. But the difference between those who want Such A Long Journey or Breathless in Bombay banned and the clerics who hate Rushdie—and the cartoonists of Jyllands-Posten—is marginal. Their threats chill free speech.
Counter-productive censorship
In Bangladesh a pro-opposition Bengali-language newspaper Amar Desh has been closed down, allegedly because of publishing irregularities. Reports suggest that more than 200 police stormed the paper’s offices. You don’t have to be a cynic to suspect that the content and stance of the newspaper might have been what is at issue here.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, who is Italy’s largest media owner, is backing a draft bill that could imprison or impose heavy fines on journalists who report public interest stories that involve wire taps before the final phase of prosecution. Given the length of many trials, this is a serious block on some kinds of reporting.
Curbing the powers of journalists to report information in the public interest either by direct or indirect means is a significant assault on free speech and on the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Remove their power to criticise government policy or to expose some types of corruption, and journalists risk becoming organs of propaganda for the ruling party.
If Machiavelli were writing his guidelines for conscienceless princes today, then he would no doubt advocate scaring journalists into cowering submission, making them terrified to publish anything critical of the ruler. Luckily, however, journalism attracts some extraordinarily brave people Anna Politkovskaya, who relentlessly exposed corruption in Putin’s Russia, and was murdered for this, is just one humbling example.
One side effect of the Internet’s invention is that today what is suppressed in one place often reappears somewhere else. In fact the more forceful the attempt to clamp down on what is published, the more likely it is that the views being suppressed will be spread widely. Would-be censors take note. You may be sowing dragon’s teeth.