Why Free Speech Loses in India

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/02/wendy-doniger-free-speech-india.html

by ad93611 • 12 years ago

38 50 12 years ago

sarfaraz• 12 years ago

Irony abounds. An article that downplays the status of free speech rights in India and mocks Dr. Subramanian Swamy to make its point conveniently sidesteps the double standards of US institutions (for e.g., the same Dr. Swamy was sacked from Harvard because of his free speech rights). Better explained in a comment by Pradip4.

EdwardDiego2• 12 years ago

Pointing at America doesn't lessen the issues in India though. It's like me saying that homelessness in my country isn't a problem because there's way more homeless people in the US of A.

sidcool• 12 years ago

You might be right about US double standards, but that does not mean India can be allowed to trounce free speech.

cshenoy• 12 years ago

Harvard is a private institution. The US government does not (and cannot) control the actions of Harvard. The first amendment protects our rights to say what we like but that guarantee does not extend to your place of employment. There is no irony or double standard in that.

xmonkee5• 12 years ago

Penguin India is also a private institution. The book isn't banned, simply withdrawn by Penguin for what are likely commercial reasons.

elnate• 12 years ago

Question as an outsider: How does this interact with your right not to be discriminated against in the workplace based on religion or political views?

sn41• 12 years ago

There is. I, as a free speech supporter in India, think that it is ridiculous that you are not allowed free speech in a place where you spend majority of your waking hours.

Violations of free speech by private institutions should be a crime, just like labour violations are. It should only take an amendment, there is no fundamental irony.

Notice that the state infringes on private parties anyway - the most obvious example is when the state decides to take away children from families if there's harassment of the child at home. I am not debating whether this is right or wrong, but I am just pointing out that the state is not so hands-off as it is generally made out to be.

r0h1n• 12 years ago

No, irony does not abound.

No court or executive or politician or big business intervened to stop Swamy from teaching at Harvard. Instead, its faculty voted [0] to remove his course after he wrote this hateful diatribe [1].

[0] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/12/12/swamy-racism-di...

[1] https://janamejayan.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/how-to-wipe-out...

Edit: corrected minor typo

xmonkee5• 12 years ago

I agree with you on the hypocrisy of US media on this one. But I still don't understand what Dr swamy finds so objectionable in the book. I've started reading it, and it seems like a very scholarly treatment of the ignored sections in the history of hinduism. Surely Dr swamy understands the importance of protecting controversial academic works?

EdwardDiego2• 12 years ago

How accessible is the book to a layman?

jetru• 12 years ago

Should that matter? Even if he finds something objectionable, it's not his business what others should think. Let others make up their own mind.

cubancigar113• 12 years ago

What seems scholarly to you looks extremely offensive to most Hindus. And ultimately it should be Hindus who get to decide the meaning of Hinduism. The over-the-top reaction to what is effectively a caricature in the likes of 'Innocence of Muslims' is enabled because such treatment of Hinduism by Christians has a history, a history that still plays its part in everyday life of Indians (not just Hindus). Point in case, the article talks about the 'criminalization of homosexuality', but fails to mention that it was criminalized by British-raj. Indian judiciary just rejected to get involved into executive branch, a very sensible approach IMHO.

The article itself refers to such treatment by naming Edward Said, for example. But then swoops in with personal judgements, calling Rajiv Malhotra's essay as a right-wingist parody and trying to link everything with rise of business-friendly nationalist Modi.

This is to be expected. Economical rise of any non-western country has historically correlated with doom-and-gloom about it in articles in western media, whether it is liberal or conservative. Even now it is hard for me to read an article about China in The Economist. Just today I saw an article about Chinese government cracking down on sex-racket, and how it is fomenting unrest and civil disobedience among Chinese.

bruceb2• 12 years ago

@cubancigar11 "And ultimately it should Hindus who get to decide the meaning of Hinduism."

Why? Cause I doubt they would agree. To say unless you are X then you can't comment on X is foolish.

primitivesuave2• 12 years ago

I've seen some crazy shit go down on CSPAN, but definitely nothing as crazy as senators pepper spraying each other.

einhverfr6• 12 years ago

In many countries, fist fights in parliament are not unheard of.

ekianjo• 12 years ago

Even in the UK. Which is regarded as a civilized country. And even in Japan, too. Well, it confirms my views that politicians are usually just a bunch of monkeys in suits.

DerpDerpDerp• 12 years ago

There was at least one beating with a cane related to a speech about US slavery that happened in the senate building, if not while the senate was in session.

kjs3• 12 years ago

The South Korean congress seems to have a throwdown every month or so.

greyfade• 12 years ago

In a way, it's kind of a shame that we don't see this in the US Congress.

It really would get more Americans engaged in politics.

abraham_s• 12 years ago

The news from India these days is rarely cheery.. This sentence pretty much sums up my feeling about my country, these days..

kushti• 12 years ago

Probably because your feeling is based on news?

chimeracoder2• 12 years ago

Sounds like you've been hanging out too much on /r/worldnews.

Don't let that distort your mental model of the country.

z3phyr2• 12 years ago

The news from the earth these days is rarely cheery.. PRISM and Ukraine and ....

bruceb2• 12 years ago

What you have to understand is India is in someways many little countries pushed together. Different languages a religions. So politicians play this up and do BS such as banning books.

einhverfr6• 12 years ago

It's hard to know, really, what to make of the stuff in this article. On one hand, functioning society, business, and government requires a relatively uninhibited flow of information, and it is particularly dangerous when a government, which monopolizes force, also decides to restrict dialog about issues.

But on the other hand, the limits of free speech are ones that must be decided close to those affected. Brandenburg got off with calling for (and stating he wanted to be a part of!) genocide against African Americans at a KKK rally not because this speech contributed anything to the public discourse worth saving but because the US government had made a series of serious overreaches in prosecuting Communists. Since one couldn't draw a principled line between arguing for eventual genocide and arguing for eventual overthrow of the government, Brandenburg had to be set free.

In the end, I think, that communities have a right to make mistakes, and since free speech can't be unlimited (handing someone a gun and saying "I hope someone shoots so-and-so" isn't protected speech anywhere in the world), the peoples affected get to make this discussion.

One thing that bothers me though: there are a number of fields, like historical linguistics which are malaigned by some in India as colonial (and in fact historical Indo-European linguistics arose from the colonial experience historically) but are argued against as straw men (thinking that the Indo-European hypothesis means Europeans invading India, which it doesn't). I do have a concern that by moving towards a more insular culture in this regard, that it is harder and harder for Indian scholars to make their voices and perspectives heard internationally. It would be tragic if in the interest of protecting the Indian cultural experience, these sorts of things lead to the denial of an Indian perspective in these sorts of disciplines.

srajbr• 12 years ago

Here is the report from New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/indian-publishe...

ajju• 12 years ago

It's a sad day when my country sacrifices freedom of speech, yet again, in response to a mediocre* book from a largely ignored author which would have faded into oblivion on its own.

* or worse - Read the Amazon reviews, specifically the ones by the author's fellow academics http://www.amazon.com/The-Hindus-An-Alternative-History/dp/1...

fuhrer1996• 12 years ago

IMHO, It is Penguin's fault. There are religious extremists in every country. If you are going to release a book that does not agree to their view of the religion, they will complain. This matter should have settled in court. It is wrong to blame the country for Penguin taking of its book just because an organization asked it to.

Why Free Speech Loses in India

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