Category: Freedom of Expression

It’s About Freedom, Not Just About Speech

Here we go again. The UPA government of India wants to dictate once more what people should know and what information is OK for people to handle. It routinely blocks websites, prohibits or limits the use of mobile text messages, and is now threatening to block twitter altogether. The government’s repression of the people is an old habit and it should not evoke any surprise or comment. Yet the fight for freedom of speech and expression is too important to life and liberty that one should not give up merely because one has been on a losing streak for centuries. We, the people, have to win that battle if we have to win the war for freedom.
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Government Censorship

Frederick Douglass (d. 1895), the renowned American abolitionist wrote, “Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them . . . The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” I used that quote in my book, Transforming India, (click for a free download). Indians will submit to a lot, and have done so for centuries. The current oppressors are “democratically” elected. Allow me to quote from the book:
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SOPA, PIPA, and Indian Censorship

Sometimes looking at the way the government does things one wonders whether the lunatics are running the loony bin. But perhaps the truth is not funny at all, and more horrifying: the people running the country are not crazy but rather they are terrifyingly smart and know exactly what they are doing and why. Their game involves controlling the masses through lies and misdirection.
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Kanchan Gupta on the Govt’s Attempt at Censorship

Kapil Sibal’s uncivilized behavior has to have the backing and protection of the Queen Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi. As @vinod_sharma pointed out, “Sibal can’t be head of Gestapo unless there is a Hitler who wants him to do whatever it takes promote & protect him. Why silence about that?” Kanchan Gupta writing in Mid-Day, “A brazen attempt at political censorship” notes that censorship is nothing new: the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family have a history of trying to dictate to the press and muzzle free expression.
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Diapered Goats

I tell you, the things that you find on them interwebs. Well, not diapered goats but a report about them. I am taking a huge risk here but let me put that off till the end. Here’s what I am talking about: violence in the Islamic state of Iraq and some Iraqis’ killing desire to turn it into a fully sharia-compliant state.
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The Asinine Fatuity of Kapil Sibal

Kapil Sibal is an idiot. You may say that the title of this post is brimming with redundancy since asinine means ‘extremely foolish’ and fatuity means ‘foolishness’. But I like the phrase ‘asinine fatuity’ because it describes Kapil Sibal’s idiocy accurately and comprehensively. Hence the title. Now here’s the why.
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India’s Much Vaunted Freedom

I think the reports of India’s independence from colonial rule are severely exaggerated. Indians have been under foreign rule for several centuries and have become accustomed to being treated like irresponsible slaves, demanding to be controlled. Sure they do “democratically” determine who will rule them, but in the end, they are still slaves entrusted with the task of electing their masters. And the masters decide what the slaves will hear, read, and write. Let me explain why I hold the slaves with special contempt — because they acquiesce so willingly to their slavery.
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Ban on the Gandhi biography in Gujarat

The chief minister of Gujarat, Shri Narendra Modi, is a hero of mine. That does not mean that I approve of every position he holds. In the case of the banning of Joseph Lelyveld’s book, “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India,” I most certainly do not agree with Narendrabhai. What is more, I will not hesitate to tell him so. I am a free speech fundamentalist. Banning expression is the start of a journey the destination of which is something akin to an Islamic state which orders the murder of novelists and cartoonists.

Listen: Joseph Lelyveld talking about his book on KQED Forum.

Banning a Book on Gandhi — Part 2

The freedom of speech and expression is not only a good in itself but it is also instrumental in human civilizational progress. It is therefore puzzling that quite a significant segment of humanity is ever ready to ban expression whenever there’s something said or written that goes against their cherished beliefs. What makes it worse is that another segment which does not fully comprehend what freedom of expression actually means. Usually they go, “I am for freedom of speech but . . . ”
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