Democracy, free speech & secession

Democracy is a funny thing which is more coveted in its absence. India enacted the first amendment to its Constitution barely eighteen months after it was adapted. It was intended to - among other things ‘place reasonable restrictions on the freedom of speech and expression.’  Surprisingly, it was piloted by Jawaharlal Nehru who is considered to be an epitome of democratic values. It was enacted not to ward of anything as serious as secession or external aggression but because Nehru felt that 'free speech' was an impediment to something as mundane as abolition of the Zamindari system! 

Contrast this with the first amendment to the American Constitution. It prohibits the making of any law that ‘abridges the freedom of speech, infringes upon the freedom of the press, interferes with the right to peaceable assembly, or prohibiting petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.’ However it must be noted that the American Supreme Court did not recognise obscenity as a part of freedom of speech and generally refused to give obscenity any protection under the first amendment.  

The following article entitled, Democracy, free speech and session appeared in The Hans India, an up and coming English newspaper published from Hyderabad and other centres, in its issue dated November 3, 2011. 

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For the middle classes who toasted Prashant Bhushan as a champion against corruption till only a few days ago, he suddenly became a ‘villain’. They were able to willy-nilly excuse his ‘demeanours’ in defending certain ‘elements’ in court room battles, because of his association with Anna Hazare and his movement against corruption. The reason for the disenchantment of the middle classes with Prashant Bhushan is quite obvious. He uttered the social and political equivalent of a four-letter word by calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir. In his defence, Bhushan of course says, that he did not actually ‘call for a plebiscite’ but only opined that the people of Jammu & Kashmir had a right to it. It makes no difference to middle India: he crossed the Rubicon or in Indian idiom, crossed the Lakshman Rekha, as Kashmir is a sensitive issue with a bloody history attached to it.

This is not the first time that someone openly took a position against India’s historical stand on Kashmir. Other bleeding-heart liberals spoke about the ‘occupation army’ and human rights violations in Kashmir. Pakistan could not have asked for more.

It is because of the sixty-four year bloody history since the state’s accession to the Indian union, voices like Prashant Bhushan rankle the majority of Indians. To the majority, it appears, these people are oblivious to the sufferings of one section of the state’s populace. Have they forgotten the half a million Kashmiri Hindus who were exiled in their own country? Have they forgotten the thousands of soldiers and policemen killed in defending the state since 1947? Have they forgotten the thousands of crores of rupees that were spent as aid on Kashmir?

Kashmiri separatist leaders like Mirwaiz Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Jeelani have been openly advocating secession from India. In the perception of a majority of Indians, Prashant Bhushan is taking sides with the separatists, by talking of a plebiscite in Kashmir. Bhushan being an erudite advocate practising in the highest court of the land could not have been unaware that a plebiscite in Kashmir is untenable in view of the UN preconditions attached to it. Even Pakistan, the other party to the dispute, had abandoned this position long ago. From all indications, Pakistan would be happy to agree to recognise the ‘de facto’ border between J&K and PoK as ‘de jure’ international border. When asked a hypothetical question, Prashant Bhushan could have apprised the questioner of the situation on the ground and the position of the UN and more importantly that of Pakistan.

It might be argued that free speech is the essence of democracy and hence Prashant Bhushan has a right to voice his opinion. But then, democracy is a funny thing. When you don’t have it you yearn for it. When you have it you are not happy with it. True. We had fought for nearly six decades to attain independence from the British. Yet, ask anyone who was born at about the time of independence and they would remember their elders yearning for the ‘good old’ British days when things ‘were better’. In 1975 when Indira imposed an internal emergency, for reasons that have nothing to do with any internal disturbance, there were sections of the populace – not affected by midnight knocks and summary arrests – who welcomed it, at least in its initial stages. Their reasoning was, there was discipline in government offices and ‘trains were running on time’. It could not be dismissed out of hand as silly, for trains used to run so late, if a train ran two to three hours behind schedule, it raised no eyebrows. In my home town, we used to joke that if the Bokaro Express (running between Bokaro in Jharkhand and Madras) was on time, it was probably the previous day’s train! There was an instance, when a gentleman was asked if his train was on time, he replied ‘yes it was on time; just twenty minutes late’. Funnily enough, ‘trains running on time’, was also one of the reasons officially adduced to justify the emergency. During the nineteen-month emergency Indira’s government used to issue large advertisements in newspapers, with the caption, ‘Let us consolidate the gains of emergency’, whatever it meant.

Coming back to democracy, in essence, it is rule by consensus. In India’s case the consensus was codified into a constitution, to draft which, many wise men expended hundreds of hours; each clause of which was then debated and finally adopted. The process took nearly three years, and produced the longest written constitution in the world, which accommodates the divergence and plurality of the constituents of the nation. 

However, codifying principles of governance is one thing and following it in letter and spirit, is another. Leaders, however democratically minded they are, do not like to be tied down to a code of conduct however sacrosanct it may be, not necessarily because they are selfish or venal but because they have such immense confidence in their wisdom and their ability to determine what is good for their constituents. Therefore no sooner than the ink on the draft was dry we began amending it. The constitution was adopted on November 26, 1949 and the first amendment was enforced on June 18, 1951 barely eighteen months later. It was, incidentally, moved in the parliament by Jawaharlal Nehru, the epitome of democratic values and was intended to, among other things, ‘place reasonable restrictions on the citizen’s right to freedom of speech and expression’!

Jawaharlal Nehru resorted to the amendment for nothing serious like session or external aggression. He did it because he felt that ‘freedom of speech’ was impeding something as mundane as the abolition of the Zamindari system!

TAIL PIECE: During the American Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, a member moved a motion that the standing army of the United States should not exceed 5000 men at any given time. As George Washington was presiding over the convention, he could not move an amendment. So he turned to another member and whispered, ‘move an amendment that no foreign power should attack the United States at any time with more than 3000 troops’.

Does this anecdote from the life of George Washington have a message for our bleeding-heart liberals and Prashant Bhushan?