We're arguing the freedom of speech debate wrong
The times get more perverse than ever before. The "nation" is conflated with the state and the state positioned as superior to its citizens. Veneration of state authority and championship of its tyranny is treated as "nationalism". The exercise of constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to question or resist the tyranny of the state is considered anti-national. Sacrificing democracy at the altar of this virulently bigoted form of "nationalism" is seen as just and natural. Peaceful dissenters are jailed for shouting anti-India slogans and the goons who attack these misguided and angry young dissenters are given protection and encouraged in their hooliganism. Perversity rules.
The incident at JNU and the subsequent hooliganism of state-sponsored actors has brought out the ugliest face of the government yet and exposed the hollowness of its commitment to democracy and the democratic values enshrined in the Constitution. It has forgotten that the state is a creature of the Constitution and not its creator and that safeguarding its democratic character is its most fundamental obligation. In not doing so it makes a mockery of the concept of a "nation" built on the values of democracy.
Democracy is not just a system of government, it is a way in which evolved and civilised societies organise themselves; an institutional architecture within which individuals live and interact with one another; and, a way in which the values of liberty, equality and fraternity are made central not just to governance but to living in society. Democracy is as much purpose and process as it is system, structure and function.
In systems and structures of governance, democracy may take varied forms, but as a process, as a cultural value it follows universal norms of respect for every individual human being and his/her role in society; it demands that neither rank nor privilege, income nor social status, faith nor ethnicity, make any difference to the ability of an individual to participate in public life; it demands equality before law; it demands respect for individual freedoms and most passionately the freedom of speech, expression, thought and belief, the freedom to inform and be informed; it demands that even as we jealously protect our own freedoms, we fight for the same freedom for others with even greater vigour especially if those others are a minority and represent points of view or beliefs or faiths which are diametrically opposed to those of the majority and could be seen as being extreme.
The only measure of what violates democratic values is whether the act or the practice violates the principle of non-violence. Any violent form of suppression of individual liberty, be it in the interests of the state or the majority which controls the state or a privileged social group constitutes a violation in a fundamental way of inviolable democratic values. As a democracy, human rights are fundamental to our "nationhood", the interests of the state and those who rule it are not.
Freedom of speech and expression is not just one of the rights available in a democracy, it is its very foundation. Everything else is dependent on it. It is fundamental to a democracy in the most fundamentally defining way. Safeguarding the right, conserving it and promoting it is the foremost responsibility of the state more important than anything else that it does.
It is an enforceable Right and failure to protect it amounts to the complete abdication of its most primary responsibility. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to listen, to receive information, to demand information, to discuss and debate. It is therefore a universal right and not just the right of one individual to express himself. Those gathered in JNU to listen to and discuss the extremist points of view of Kashmiri separatist sympathisers had every right to hear such views, however disturbing, however outrageous, however seditious they may have been and the speakers every right to present such a point of view. That is what freedom of speech is all about.
It is a pity that most discussions of freedom of speech and expression in India begin by arguing that it is not an "absolute" right and that the Constitution itself allows limits to be placed on it. This is a fallacious and misleading argument. One has to have a freedom in the first place in order to place restrictions on it. Restrictions are not above the freedom itself. One cannot start with the restrictions and go on to define the freedom. A proviso cannot override the main clause.
To place the limits on a constitutionally guaranteed freedom at a higher pedestal than the freedom itself and then make these restrictions the basis for repressive action is a complete perversion of this most fundamental of fundamental rights. By this logic, arbitrary and completely illegitimate restrictions on freedom have to be treated as sacrosanct but the freedom itself can be trampled upon with impunity.
So the state instead of ensuring an environment where people can enjoy their freedom without fear or peril, supports and abets the creation of an environment of fear to deny them their freedom. Those who threaten to disturb public order with ominous threats of violence find protection and tacit encouragement from the state, their threats and their bullying justified as a natural expression of outrage against "anti-national" elements, but those who organise an assembly of persons with political leanings and views different from our own are sent to jail. This is a travesty.
In a country of such gross inequities such as ours, democracy is the only means of survival with dignity that the common man has and protecting it, nurturing it and resisting attacks on it is the single most important responsibility the government has. By failing in its responsibility and then trumpeting its failure as a triumph of "nationalism" it has mocked the very Constitution it owes its existence to.
'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere, The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity.'