Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Rumpole to the defence

Horace Rumpole is an unlikely hero. He is old, slovenly, loves his port and is not-so-blissfully bonded in matrimony to she-who-must-be-obeyed. But this barrister argues for any case he gets, however unlikely the defendant. His motto: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it.” Besides the sarcastic, very English humour in John Mortimer’s chronicles of Rumpole, this line, vaguely attributed to Voltaire, has stayed with me over the years. It is something I remind myself of when I come across a particularly irritating or bad argument. Whether or not I like or agree with what the other person has to say, he has a right to say it.

The idea behind this line has been the guiding light of liberal regimes across the world. It is a line that divides a life spent in a hovel in Afghanistan, unable to read, watch a film or listen to music from the one we have here in India, enjoying a glass of wine, chatting with friends or watching Vicky Donor with our parents.

This simple idea is now so severely damaged, under so much threat, that one wonders whether anything can salvage the India we knew. In the India I grew up in, we discussed each other’s faiths, ribbed each other about it, but were never conscious of it. In the India I grew up in, films like Mughal-e-Azam and Amar Akbar Anthony were celebrated as art or entertainment. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron became a cult film for its scathing satire on the state of things. Nobody noticed if a Christian man’s dead body clad in a burqa was being taken into a place packed with Muslim women or being paraded around as that of Draupadi in one of the funniest sequences in Indian film history: the Mahabharata madness. It is impossible to imagine films like these going on release today without fighting off half a dozen public interest litigation (PIL) notices.

India is now a nation of people quick to take offence at something or the other. We want to shut writers up, ban books and films, threaten painters, imprison cartoonists, kill young girls who form a rock band ... the list is endless. This rather thin national skin is perfect for anyone seeking to get attention or make trouble. You can see bits of that in the controversy over the release of Vishwaroopam in Tamil Nadu recently. Just when actor-producer Kamal Haasan had dealt with a group of Muslims objecting to the film, a group of Christians began protesting. At any given time, there are hundreds of people with enough time, money and gumption to file a PIL against any celebrity for anything — from the way he held his cigarette to the way he said Jai Hind.

You could argue that if we accept Voltaire’s line in its true spirit then, just like Kamal Haasan has a right to make a movie, various groups have a right to express their displeasure with it. Sure they do. But to quote Salman Rushdie: “Attack the idea, not the person.” If you threaten to bash my head in, and plunder and burn the theatres in which my film is going to be released, then I will simply agree with you not because you have convinced me or we have arrived at something mutually, but out of the fear of violence. With the threat of violence in the air, how can any discussion or debate be equal or rational? This face-off impacts millions of others. For instance, what about the rights of the people who want to watch the film and who find nothing offensive about it?

If we refuse to discuss, debate, question and move our ideas on art, culture, religion or society, we will be ghettoising ourselves in a time, place and mindset much like the Taliban we so like to deride. For a country that is so terrifically heterogeneous, this growing intolerance and this willingness to cosh the other guy’s argument away will be our undoing. Not just culturally, but economically too.

One of India’s biggest attractions is its chaotic democracy. However irritating the bureaucracy or slow the judiciary may be, we have freedom. Many large media companies are now scaling down their investments in the Chinese market because the media cannot grow as a business in a non-democratic market.

And that brings me to the final point. The state plays a phenomenally important role in protecting this freedom. But the Indian state is now busy using the “don’t offend sensibilities” argument, the one that was inserted into the Constitution by the first Lok Sabha to water down the initial, unconditional freedom of expression, granted by the Constituent Assembly.

In 2005, when some Danish cartoons offended Muslims across the world, the Danish government stood firm on its liberal ground. It refused to mediate for either side. Why, then, does the Indian state keep changing the nature of freedom it can protect, depending on who offends and who is offended?

Wonder how Rumpole would have argued this case.

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