JNU: The Right to Dissent Must be Absolute

The spectacle unfolding in JNU gives us an opportunity to talk about quite a few things — about dissent, sedition and expression.

For those unfamiliar with what’s happening, students in JNU held an event to ‘stand in solidarity with Kashmiri people for their democratic right to self-determination’ and to question and protest against the ‘judicial killing of Afzal Guru’, among other things. During the course of the event, some allegedly chanted ‘anti-national’ slogans, calling for the ‘destruction of India.’

I am by no stretch a leftist (or a rightist, for that matter). My political commitment is to liberal principles which no party or student union in this country comes close to representing. Neither the left nor the right (never mind what they will have you believe) truly champion and cherish free speech. I do not wholly agree with the cause for which the students were protesting in JNU, and I certainly would not have marched alongside them in their protest. My sentiment regarding the entire affair is best captured by a quote by Evelyn Beatrice Hall: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

The students are being charged with sedition, and for holding and promoting ‘anti-national’ sentiments, even criminal conspiracy!

But is it right to restrict speech at all? What are the bounds of expression in a free society? Must there be bounds? Or must our dissent always be meek and proper, neatly circumscribed by law? Even the British, who introduced the sedition law to stifle dissent in India (like many bad laws, this one too has colonial beginnings), eventually scraped it from their law books in 2009. The sedition law is archaic, prone to be abused by the political class (never mind who is in power) to stifle contrarian voices, and is just a really bad law in a free society.

The right to expression contains the right to dissent: the right to dissent strongly and boldly and to hold and express very, very controversial opinions. The presumption, as always, needs to tend toward liberty — unless one can demonstrate a very strong case for restricting speech, it should be allowed to be. Our present law with its ‘reasonable restrictions’ allows for such discretion that it is certainly not reasonable at all. Do a bunch of sloganeering students with objectionable opinions commit an offence so grave that they need to be silenced?

Here is one way to think about it. If justice is a matter of rights, as it certainly is, then whose rights are violated by offensive speech? Certainly people’s sentiments are hurt, maybe ‘the idea of India’ is hurt, maybe ‘the conscience of the nation is revolted’; but as much as we may indulge in rhetoric, the fact remains that no one’s rights are violated. In the absence of a clear violation of rights, the matter of administering justice is murky, discretionary and often unjust.

On the other hand, when we restrict speech, there is a very clear violation of rights — the person whose speech is restricted is deprived of his or her freedom. It is a problematic notion of justice that seeks to violate rights to protect narratives, ideas and rhetoric. One may feel that it is a dry conception of justice that seeks to merely protect rights instead of aiming at particular outcomes, but it is one that is reasonable.

There are a few other things to consider in this matter.

One, when people raise controversial opinions, there is a response from civil society that condemns it or otherwise engages with it. There are certainly opinions that many would consider are vile and objectionable, but it is properly the task of civil society to engage with these voices, and not for the state to decide what speech is permissible and what isn’t.

Two, the proper course of action in this regard would have been for the JNU administration to have dealt with the protesters. The opinions were made in the campus of JNU, so it is proper for the administration to consider whether these constituted a violation of the rules in the university. Those who are in charge of an institution may properly set the rules in it and decide what is permissible or not permissible in its vicinity. The matter should have been dealt with rationally by JNU’s administrative authorities. It certainly did not warrant a resort to the coercive powers of the state.

I am reminded of John Stuart Mill’s classic essay On Liberty. What he said in 1859 is worth meditating over today:

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

“But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”