Both India and the international community have been engaged in a heated debate over whether the decision of a New Delhi magistrates court to suspend exhibition of the film, Indias Daughter, is a violation of freedom of speech. Such was the ire against this order that the director of the film Leslee Udwin called it suicide by India. One of the leading news channels, in a never-before protest, kept a banner of the film playing for the duration of the proposed screening. The British Broadcasting Corporation, of course, simply ignored the order and not only broadcast the film, but also uploaded it on YouTube, only taking it off after several hours.
It surprised me why people were defending hate speech in the name of free speech. I couldnt understand why a 60-minute film, which devoted 41 minutes to victim-blaming and propagating misogynistic ideas, was being defended so vehemently? The only rational explanation that I could find was probably because Indias hate speech laws, inherited from our colonial masters whether in our criminal statute or the exceptions incorporated to the freedom of speech in Article 19 of the Constitution, have always been concerned with maintaining public order and not offending mainstream morality. These laws have, therefore, naturally been used to silence dissent, sexuality and the voice of the marginalised. Whether it was the protests and banning of the film Water as immoral; the works of MF Hussain as obscene; and the statement of two little girls on Facebook against the public inconvenience caused by a bandh after Bal Thackerays death as spreading religious hatred. Public order and morality always enables perpetuation of the dominant discourse. Therefore, until the law defines hate speech as antipathetic to public order rather than as an offence to dignity, misogynistic speech that perpetuates structural violence against women, though it may maintain public order, will never fall within its purview.
A Facebook post shared a few days ago put hate speech into context for me. It read Women are not killed in a bubble. Theyre killed in a world that disenfranchises them, positions them as the other and disadvantages them. They are killed in a society that sends the message clearly and repeatedly that they are sexual objects for mens glorification and possession. The cultural elements that help to create this message arent the cause of violence against women but they are the contest in which they happen.
From khap panchayats, judges, police commissioners, religious pundits, to friends and family, women are told everyday, if you own a mobile phone and are seen in public after sunset, you are going to be raped, because the primitive male brain gets aroused! We are told everyday through television programmes, cinema and advertising what a good woman does and what a bad woman deserves! In this background, when a few weeks ago, the daily papers, advertised a sensational new film to be aired exclusively on a leading news channel on Womens Day, featuring a rape convict blaming the victim for this rape, I couldnt understand the purpose for this. Was this to titillate, present an excuse or just simply get eyeballs? There is nothing new or earth shaking in victim-blaming; we live with it every day, in various forms fictionalised and real and despite advancing technologically, we are simply becoming a more and more misogynistic society, unleashing newer forms of violence against women each decade.
There is, no doubt, that hate speech contributes exponentially to perpetuating patriarchal values in society and these values create the context in which violence against women occurs and is justified. It is no surprise that the German constitution gives human dignity primacy over competing values, because it is a society that realised social re-engineering from an anti-Semitic to an egalitarian society mandates the law silence ideas that validated and amplified values that are sought to be eliminated. Unfortunately, in India despite the mandate of Article 15 of our Constitution providing for positive discrimination in favour of women and Article 21 which has been defined by the Supreme Court to mean a life with dignity, words that take away the dignity of women, that encourage and validate violence against them are still being defended in the name of freedom of speech.
Free speech is a myth like the free market. Ideas of the majority and those that benefit commerce will always pervade society more deeply and if we have to change the context in which violence is perpetuated on women by replacing patriarchal values with progressive ones, we have to privilege the safety and dignity of women over the freedom to broadcast hate speech.
December 2012, India Gate, the power corridor of Delhi, was filled with protestors, after the media reported the brutal rape of a young girl. This girl was soon named Nirbhaya (The Fearless) by the crowds. For days people fought water cannons demanding answers, demanding justice, demanding safety. Such had been the courage of this young woman whose only crime was that she boarded a city bus at 8.30 at night despite being brutally raped on the bus, Nirbhaya fought from hospital, reporting what she could recall and refused to be defined by this violence. The crowds fighting on the streets demanded the state ensure that the city was safe for women. People wanted street lights, public transport, police patrols, community spaces that were safe for women, gender audits of communities and public places. People wanted actions not diagnosis; 60 years of diagnosis and excuses for rape culture had exhausted India. In December 2012, the discourse had moved, from Why rape happens, to What the government is not doing to make the city safe! Until in 2015, Leslee Udwin sent it back by giving a platform to misogyny. Lets not defend this in the name of freedom of speech.
The author is a practicing lawyer at the Delhi High Court
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Platform for brutality
