As the dust raked up by the election campaigns across the country settles, a crucial question that emerges is whether the freedom of expression will improve or suffer after the NDA government is formed in New Delhi. The NDA will have Narendra Modi led BJP as its major partner and its record on freedom of expression is known to everyone. But what happens in such cases is a natural phenomenon. Whenever there is a hard-line Hindu government at the center, it is bound to automatically encourage other Hindu fundamentalist groups to push their agendas. In fact, just on the basis of pro-BJP exit polls, they had begun exerting their pressures on Modi regarding the Rama temple in Ayodhya and Article 370 on Kashmir. BJP leader Giriraj Singh’s comment about minorities is an example of the same phenomenon. And experience tells us that some of them even took to the streets to burn shops that sell Valentine’s Day greeting cards.
This is even more significant because in recent years the fundamental right of freedom of expression enshrined in the constitution of almost all democratic countries has suffered several setbacks. In USA, known as a champion of freedoms and civil rights, persons like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, who are basically promoters of individual freedom, are being called criminals rather than whistleblowers. A recent PEN survey of American writers found them not only worried about the NSA surveillance revealed by Snowden but also, in some cases, feeling the need for self-censorship. In other words, the effect has been chilling.
Authorities in Turkey recently defied court orders and reaffirmed a ban on YouTube. The ban was imposed in March in the run-up to local elections, after weeks of leaked wiretaps which had emerged online, allegedly uncovering corruption in the prime minister’s inner circle.
In the Middle East, the constraints on freedom of expression remain horrendous. This year, Saudi Arabia has issued new laws which treat atheists as being on par with terrorists. In Egypt, three Al-Jazeera journalists are still in jail. The New York Times recently reported about a man who served more than 19 months in prison in Indonesia on a charge of inciting religious hatred after he declared online that he is an atheist.
Amnesty International says reporting in Pakistan is increasingly becoming perilous, citing 34 working journalists killed in the last six years as their reports antagonized violent forces ranging from the fearsome intelligence agency ISI to the Taliban and other armed groups, as well as powerful political factions out to muzzle media criticism. An Amnesty report based on interviews with more than 100 journalists was issued last week, just days after Hamid Mir, a leading television newscaster, was shot six times by attackers while stuck in traffic. He survived, but the attack deepened fears among Pakistani journalists about the wave of brazen murders, abductions and threats that have become a serious occupational hazard.
China, which is poised to be the largest economy in the world in the near future, is already the largest censorship apparatus. In contrast to the Islamic countries, China’s communist party goes after anyone who tries to organize along religious lines without its approval, be they Christians or Falun Gong. The Chinese censorship apparatus is expanding every day because there is much more ‘speech’ to be monitored today than 25 years ago, simply because of the World Wide Web.
In India, even the Congress-led UPA government was bowing to pressures from the hard-line Hindu groups. Penguin India recently withdrew the respected American scholar Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History, under pressure from a Hindu protest group led by a former schoolmaster. India’s world renowned painter, MF Hussain, died in exile after fierce attacks on his irreverent, modernist depictions of Hindu deities.
In the run up to the elections dominated by the RSS-backed leader, Modi, one of the editors of The Hindu newspaper had to allegedly resign because the paper’s owners felt he wasn’t pro-Modi enough. A leading anchor of CNNIBN, Sagarika Ghose, was ordered by her bosses to stop posting tweets critical of Modi. In response, she tweeted what many journalists were already feeling, “There is an evil out there, an evil which is stamping out all free speech and silencing independent journalists: journalists unite!”
So the concern over freedom of expression under the Modi government seems genuine. At the moment, there are two opposing views. Some analysts say he is strong enough to ward off any unnecessary pressures from the diehard Hindu groups because he is close to them. Others say Modi reminds them of late Mrs Indira Gandhi who also could not take her criticism with grace and was always suspicious of the opposition. They are concerned because Modi has ruled Gujarat for more than a decade without any strong opposition.
New Delhi, they say, is not Ahmedabad and it might be very difficult for him to face tough criticism and questions by the opposition and the media with grace.
Author/news analyst Ravi M. Khanna is a free lance reporter who covered India’s six previous general electionsfor Voice of America, Washington D-C.
Feedback: ravimohankhanna@gmail.com
