We do our nation a disservice if we're afraid to speak our minds
Sadly there is nothing original I can say about free expression which has not already been said before more eloquently and knowledgably by others. But to paraphrase Arundhati Roy, from her essay "End of Imagination", one should be prepared to grovel, to humiliate oneself abjectly, because in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible. So we should speak out our second-hand lines in this sad second-hand play but let's not forget that the stakes we’re playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us.
Roy was of course talking about the nuclear bombs but I assure you, the stakes for free speech are much much bigger than that.
Let me take you back in time. I think nothing more outrageous, blasphemous or more "seditious" if you will, has ever been said than what Charles Darwin declared in his book, The Origin of Species. That we humans share our ancestry with apes was such a shocking thing to suggest that many of us, even years later, still have trouble reconciling with the idea.
But if we were to do a simple DNA test of a human and a chimpanzee, it would reveal that our DNA is 98.4 per cent alike. What’s more, in terms of the DNA, the chimpanzee is more closer to us than it is to the gorilla or the baboon. But somehow we find it easier to believe, without any shred of evidence, that there were aeroplanes, nuclear bombs and plastic surgery in Vedic times. Three century before Darwin, Galileo backed the Copernicus theory which said that it was the earth that revolved around the sun than the other way around, causing major consternation.
What these two men were saying back then was far more offensive than what is written in the Satanic Verses, in MF Hussain’s paintings, in Charlie Hebdo cartoons, or in the so-called anti-India slogans that were allegedly shouted in JNU last week. Darwin and Galileo were calling into question the very fundamental notions of man’s ideas about himself and his place in the world. They were striking at the very core of human ego.
In an era where you turned to religion for all the answers and where thinkers like Aristotle, who dominated the intellectual space promoting geocentricism and the view that the sole purpose of other animals was to serve man, the theories of Darwin and Galileo were indeed astounding.
But for the first time in the human history these two men, backed by scientific evidence, suggested that man had no exalted place on earth any more than the rat, the mosquito, the penguin or the donkey. That we snapped into being not in six quick days but are a result of millions of years of evolution from the time when we were single-cellular primitive creatures that multiplied in the chemical stew almost 3.5 billion years ago.
They showed that not only did our kind not have any special place in the scheme of things but that even our planet was pretty ordinary and that it was but a "mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam", as astronomer Carl Sagan famously put it.
The findings of both Darwin and Galileo pitted them directly against the Church and they were quickly denounced as heretics. They were both robbed of their freedom to propagate their views more openly. Today we know how much they both have contributed to the advancement of science and by extension our understanding of ourselves.
Free speech has never had a free run. There has always been and perhaps will always be an effort to muzzle, whip and reign it into submission. I guess its in our caveman-ish nature to settle with the status quo and resist the new.
I came here prepared to talk about how free speech should be unfettered and without any limits. But as you have seen in the recent events in JNU, free speech has its hazards. An insecure and non-performing government is always wary of any dissent.
I believe that supporting free speech with boundaries is like trying to mark out a territory for sea waves in the sand. The waves have their own cadence and rhythm. They have their moods and they swing with the tides. King Canute learnt this a long time ago. I wonder if our politicians ever will.
There is no place more fitting than educational institutions where free speech should have a wild run. Because we come to educational institutions not only to learn but also to unlearn and slough off the skin of indoctrination which we are trussed into right at our birth. We come to educational institutions not only to find answers but to fill us with questions. We come to educational institutions not only to listen but also to debate and dissent.
There is nothing wrong in saying Pakistan zindabad or India zindabad or Japan zindabad. What we should we be worried about is cultivating hate, whether it's for India, or Pakistan or anyone else. If indeed there was hate speech at JNU, there should be a deepening of dialogue not suppression.
You don't become an anti-national by shouting a few slogans anymore than you become a patriot by disrupting Ghulam Ali’s concerts or digging cricket pitches. Giving tickets to people with criminal backgrounds is anti-national, failing to deliver on election promises is anti- national, evading paying your taxes is anti-national, demanding a bribe is anti-national, sending in the police to an educational institution to arrest students is anti-national.
What is a nation? By itself it’s just a notion, an abstraction, a myth just like the idea of God. And like all myths, the myth of a nation was created to organise people. Unfortunately, the idea of God and nation leads to such chauvinism that human history is full of bloodshed on their account. We should therefore be really worried when an abstraction is exalted at the cost of individuals.
You must have read recently about scientists finally discovering the existence of gravitational waves. It was one of the most remarkable scientific achievements of our times. New discoveries and new horizons lie waiting for us if we allow free thoughts to flourish, no matter how uncomfortable.
Who knows how many Darwins and Galileos are out there amidst us waiting to come up with something that will shatter our cosy faith in the things we hold dear. Are we ready to welcome them or are we plain scared?