“The Statesman” editor, publisher arrested for “hurting religious feelings” of Muslims

Damn it! Had barely finished my last post when I read this post from Sans Serif.

“The Statesman” republished an op-ed from “The Independent,” Britain – “Why should I respect these oppressive religions?”. Some Muslims in Calcutta went berserk like they did in the case of Taslima Nasreen. A case was filed against editor – Ravindra Kumar, and the publisher – Anand Sinha, and they were arrested and lated released on bail. Read more about it here and here.

I never heard about it before; I don’t think the Times of India even mentioned the story. They wrote pages when their Ahmedabad editor was charged with sedition for writing about the city police commissioner. And the Indian media is absolutely silent with even The Hindu issuing a terse two paragraph announcement. But I don’t expect too much from them – its each man for himself, ideology be damned. Rats, all of them!

I am linking to this article again (I did it in my previous post, at the very end) because it is incredibly well written, and talks about the same thing that Kumar is being punished for – the criminalizing of opinion – “hate speech.”

If a State doesn’t allow you to hold an opinion without throwing you in jail, the laws of the State deserves no respect. Compliance maybe – you comply with a thief who points a gun at you – but no respect. And that is my position on the Indian ‘Justice’ System.

Then change the laws

Geert Wilders, who was coming to Britain for a screening of his film Fitna in the House of Lords, was refused entry into the country on standing orders from the Home Secretary who thought that Wilders was a danger to peace and security or some such thing. And Foreign Secretary David Miliband says-

The home secretary made a decision on an individual case as she is required to do…

[The film - Fitna - contains] extreme anti-Muslim hate and we have very clear laws in this country…

We have profound commitment to freedom of speech but there is no freedom to cry ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre and there is no freedom to stir up hate, religious and racial hatred, according to the laws of the land.

Now Miliband is the same fellow who came to India earlier this year, and, before landing here, wrote a column ‘mentioning’ Kashmir in the Guardian (“resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms”), committing a diplomatic boo-boo – actually more than a boo-boo – in the process. Obviously different kinds of hate are to be treated to different standards – deport the one who speaks, agree with the one who kills.

Since crying fire in a theater has got nothing to do with free speech, and acts of speech and acts of physical violence are not the same, Britain should change its laws to reflect the “correct” position, and so should other countries. Unfortunately, freedom of speech has become a major casualty in the post-9/11 world with both political correctness and coercive government policies running riot. Actually Britain’s record on freedom of speech is pathetic – it is one of the favorite spots for “libel tourism,” and it cracks down on “hate speech” like there is no tomorrow (Now that Obama is here, expect the same in America, the First Amendment be damned).

So, the next time round, Miliband might want to take a look at the ranting and raving mullahs in his own backyard, and try to fix the laws before keeping Wilders out, or agreeing with those who want to keep him out.

Its a mad mad world.

Times of Amnesia

One of the reasons I keep bashing the Times of India and not other newspapers (so much) is – its the only newspaper (other than its sister publication, ET) I have been reading consistently for about sixteen years now. I suspect that every mainstream Indian newspaper is the same, but the Times lives up to its slogan – its “The Masthead of India”. Its influential, and its the voice of the “people”. And that’s why its wishy-washy positions on issues are disappointing. But it is unavoidable, I guess – in modern times, you cannot be contrarian (correct and consistent) and influential at the same time. Its position is similar to that of Wynand.

Gail Wynand, in Rand’s The Fountainhead, would have been Howard Roark’s philosophical equal were it not for one major mistake – he gave his newspaper to the people, acquiring power to move mountains as it were, in the process. He thought that such power was his – to use as he chose, which he never felt the need to do; but found out the only time he tried to use it to do what he really wanted to, that he was mistaken – he only had the power till he pleased the mob; the moment he went against them, the power disappeared.

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The Maharashtra government had recently banned a Bhojpuri film – Deshdrohi (Traitor) – in the wake of the anti-”bhaiyya” campaign run by the Thackeray clan, particularly Raj Thackeray. The film could cause a law and order problem, it reasoned. The Bombay High Court has overturned the ban, and the Times has an editorial praising the Court’s decision-

The Bombay high court deserves to be commended for overturning the Maharashtra government’s ill-conceived ban on the Hindi film Deshdrohi. In an order blunt and eloquent in equal measure, the two-judge bench scolded the state for the “arbitrary’’ suspension and for transgressing the fundamental rights of citizens to suit its convenience.

[...]

The order, which forcefully upholds artistic and creative freedoms, will especially gladden the hearts of civil libertarians dispirited by the repeated efforts of Mumbai’s moral police to censor that which they find offensive. In recent months, art shows have faced the threat of vandalism on grounds of alleged indecency, bookstores targeted for stocking the works of Pakistani writers and theatres stoned for showing films deemed to be vulgar, no matter that they have been cleared by the censor board. Depressingly, most of those who have been victimised have taken the line of least resistance and caved in—but then, who can blame a shopkeeper or gallery owner from toeing the line when the state itself abdicates its power or, worse, becomes a covert agent of suppression?

The court has thus rendered a signal service to Mumbai’s long-standing culture of liberal thought and freedom of speech. The message to the ruling class is unambiguous—hate speech is not to be tolerated at any cost nor attacks on the outsider who has chosen to call Maharashtra his home. This deshpremi homily could not have come at a more pertinent time for a city hit so hard by violence from across the border. The need of the hour, to use the court’s wise words, is to “reaffirm rather than revise our commitment to our core constitutional values’’.

The ambiguity in its unambiguity is eye-popping.

Freedom of speech and expression means the right to use any non-physical means to express yourself. In films, that would mean being able to make a film on any subject you chose regardless of how inflammatory or disgusting or titillating or obnoxious the subject turned out to be. I have written about free speech innumerable times – I believe in freedom of speech of an absolute kind – most recently here, and Chomsky’s definition of the same is a clear and comprehensive one-

“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.”

Under this principle, the state government had no right to ban this film. Under the same principle however, the State has no right to ban the display of any film not carrying a censor certificate too. But the Indian constitution is not based on this principle of freedom of expression.

Note the interesting position – the Indian State cannot ban a film – you can make any film you want (as long as you don’t violate any “laws of the land” in the process – you cannot commit real murder on film, or adapt someone’s book without his permission, for example) – it only bars you from a “public exhibition of the film” – displaying the film to the public in a theater, television channel, by distributing cds etc (hitting you financially, unless your motives are non-financial) unless you get a certificate from the censor board. So you can have as many private “non-commercial” viewings of the film as you please, but you won’t be able to make a dime off it unless you prostrate before the Almighty State’s power to place “reasonable restrictions” on you in “public interest.” Its similar to Modi’s method of banning inconvenient or unwanted films in Gujarat – the theaters aren’t interested in “anti-Gujarat” films, his acolytes would say.

About Deshdrohi, if this is a film about the plight of North Indians that get caught in a Marathi web, there was another film, a Marathi one this time – Mumbai Amchich – which was delayed by two odd years because the Censor board took its scissors to the film-

The controversial Marathi film Mumbai Amchich, which targets non-Maharashtrians, has been held up by the Censor Board because certain portions are inflammatory, says its chief Sharmila Tagore.

The film by director Sarad Bandsode tells Marathis that outsiders, particularly from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have no place in the city of Mumbai. And if they still choose to stay on, they do so at their own peril.

[...]

Commenting on the content of the film, Sharmila said: “We couldn’t allow certain portions because they went against our guidelines. India is a democracy with a large number of states, cultures and people. We can’t allow anyone’s sentiments to be hurt.

“Also, there is a lot of violence against a certain group of people in the film. Worse still, the violence is justified by a police officer (played by the director). How can we allow a film to say it’s okay to kill? It’s totally against censor guidelines. However, I was a little preoccupied and the producer, understandably, was in a hurry. We suggested to him go to the courts to quicken the process.”

The film was released early last year after the “objectionable” scenes that “hurt sentiments” were chopped off. Another Marathi film has recently found itself on the wrong side of the board because “its theme and impact was not fit for exhibition.” A similar argument was made by the board when it refused a certificate to Anurag Kashyap’s Paanch a few years back – the film does not have any positive characters, it said.

Government censorship is a disease was introduced by article 19 of the Indian constitution, and perpetuated by the Indian legal system. The Supreme Court of India, in a 1989 judgment allowing a film to be displayed, said “censorship by prior restraint is, therefore, not only desirable but also necessary.” I have previously written about it here.

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People simply don’t understand the contradictory positions involved. And the same goes for the Times which says – “The court has thus rendered a signal service to Mumbai’s long-standing culture of liberal thought and freedom of speech. The message to the ruling class is unambiguous—hate speech is not to be tolerated at any cost nor attacks on the outsider who has chosen to call Maharashtra his home.”

Speech and action are not one and the same. Only actions can be punished because its actions that hurt people. Speech may cause “emotional” harm, but there is no objective standard to measure “emotional” damage. Something someone says may be considered by someone else as having hurt his sentiments. And that’s why the whole theory of “hate speech” belongs in a dustbin.

The amnesia I refer to is this – Thackeray, or the Hindu right, or Muslim fanatics, consider some things to be offensive – that’s why they get violent. The liberals consider these people to be vandals. Similarly, when liberals find something offensive – slurs based on ethnicity or race or sexual orientation or something else – they label it “hate speech” and try to get it legally banned – they use the threat of State violence. So there is no inherent difference in the position of the two groups as far as their opinion on speech is concerned. Therefore the “people living in glass houses…” adage applies. Unless people are willing to support freedom of speech of an absolute kind – support the right to all non-violent speech – they shouldn’t go around calling themselves defenders of freedom.

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Its not as if India is the only country afflicted by this censorship disease. The Canadians are just as crazy, worse in fact. So are the British.

“Human rights” and free speech

Abhishek has another post on how anti-hate-speech and anti-discrimination laws are being used to curb free speech, particularly in Canada thanks to the hyperactive “human rights” Gestapo – the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission. The commission’s persecution of Christians, conservatives and other far-righters reminds one of the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church under Soviet rule and ironically, the Spanish Inquisition, though the targets are only being harassed mentally and financially, if only for the moment. This is political correctness at its maddest extreme. The commission is correctly referred to as a “kangaroo court”, a court where the verdict is a foregone conclusion, because-

It is increasingly obvious these commissions were set up deliberately to lower the standard of proof and get around rules of natural justice, thereby ensuring people who would never be convicted in court are punished to the satisfaction of the activists and special interest groups that hover around the tribunals.

Third parties not involved in the alleged offences may nonetheless file complaints. Occasionally, the plaintiff has been given access to the commissions’ investigation files and given the power to direct investigators. Truth is not a defence. Defendants are not always permitted to face their accusers. Normal standards for assuring the validity of evidence do not apply. Hearsay is admitted. The government funds the plaintiff but the defendant is on his own and commission investigators may attempt to entrap suspects by getting them to say or do hateful things they might not have done on their own.

No wonder the CHRC has a 100% conviction rate on hate speech complaints.

This is legal terrorism, chilling effect and legally sanctioned criminal intimidation, all rolled into one. And Canada is a “democracy” that supposedly protects “free speech”. The following comment by Schopenhauer against Hegel’s philosophy-

The height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had been only previously known in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced, general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, as a monument to German stupidity.

fits the Canadian “human rights” system like a glove. It audaciously takes up nonsensical “hurt sentiments” cases and prosecutes them as “human rights” violations, truly belongs in a mad house, and is a monument to Canadian stupidity.

“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms,” Voltaire said. And the definition of “human rights” is nothing but a perversion of the concept of “rights”. There is only one kind of “rights” that exists in the “sane” world – “individual rights” – the right to life, and its derivatives – the right to property, free speech and expression. That’s all. But the “modern definition” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) of rights replaces the individual with “human” and gives him some of the strangest rights – “right to social security; the right to work; the right to equal pay for equal work; the right to rest and leisure; the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being; the right to education; and the right to participate in the cultural life of the community.” I am surprised the UN did not add the right to rape women to satisfy a sexual urge, the right to have children, the right to demand a Mercedes Benz, the right to be the President of the United States among such synthetic “rights”. By creating magic rights, the declaration adopted by most countries in the world have devalued “natural rights”. Further, the United Nations admits that the “exercise of a person’s rights and freedoms may be subject to certain limitations, which must be determined by law, solely for the purpose of securing due recognition of the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.” So not only do undefinable “human rights” take precedence over the precisely definable “individual rights”, these rights are subject the the whims and fancies of government, society and lunatic human rights activists indulging in vendetta politics.

At the root of the Canadian “human rights” insanity is a section 13.1 of its Human Rights Act, And Alan Borovoy, a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who now supports the scrapping of the said section (and who was involved in the agitation to set it up in the first place), says-

“It just never occurred to anybody that this instrument we were struggling to create would ever be used against the expression of opinion.”

“Although it’s true that they have nailed some genuine hatemongers with it, it has nevertheless been used or threatened to be used against a wide variety of constituencies who don’t bear the slightest resemblance to the kind of hatemongers that were originally envisioned: anti-American protesters, French-Canadian nationalists, a film sympathetic to South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, a pro-Zionist book, a Jewish community leader, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and even a couple years ago, a pro-Israeli speaker was briefed about the anti-hate law by a police detective before he went in to make a speech.”

It “did occur” to those who were clamoring for liberty and jurisprudence based on objective laws. We cannot rely on the “good intentions” of either the public or law enforcement as far as complaints and prosecution under any law is concerned. That is why laws have to be “objective” in nature – an individual has to know what action of his will constitute a crime before he performs the act. “[H]urt sentiments” is not the basis for a sound law; nor is something that is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt”. Such laws can only be conceived of by idiots who don’t know what “justice” refers to, which unfortunately covers most legal professionals as well as framers of most constitutions. “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value,” Dean Steacy, a Canadian “Human Rights” Investigator is supposed to have said. Why not simply declare freedom to be one as well?

A free society cannot exist without the absolute right to free speech and expression. Idiots and people who suffer from low self esteem cannot be allowed to tamper with it in the name of “human rights” and wars against hate-speech, discrimination etc. People who suffer from frequent bouts of “hurt sentiments” and who take recourse to the law should probably get treated by mental health professionals; a few days in a sanitarium will do them good and also soothe their sentiments. If they don’t agree, the government should forcibly commit them, for their own protection of course! If the “hurt sentimentalists” don’t like something, they should bear this in mind – don’t read it, don’t watch it, don’t hear it, don’t smell it, don’t touch it. They have no “human right” to demand that someone stuff a sock down their throat so that their “hurt sentiments” can be soothed.

Stalin must be laughing his head off – why didn’t I think of that? Using human rights to trample on individual rights! Brilliant!

Legalization vs. Decriminalization

For the first time ever, Anbumani Ramadoss is talking sense (albeit in a very restricted manner, since his only concern is HIV-AIDS) when he says “Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises men who have sex with men, must go”. But the article is wrong when it says “the Union Health Ministry on Friday favoured legalising homosexuality.”

There is a big difference between legalizing something and decriminalizing it. And the difference lies in the way these words relate to “rights”. Homosexuality, prostitution, discrimination by private parties, hate speech, use and sale of drugs and weapons, practice of a particular religion, non payment of compulsory levies etc are decriminalized. Murder, rape, theft, fraud etc are legalized. The first category of “offenses” don’t violate the rights of others. Those in the second category do. That is the essential difference.

Laws are meant to protect the “rights” of people, not restrict them based on the personal likes and dislikes of a whole bunch of others.