Today is Jan 1, 20022 ! Happy New Year!
This is not a day at all to talk about Hate, but only about Love, Joy and human Fraternity!
But then when I woke up this momentous morning in 2022 and turned to the day’s news, the first headline that hits me between the eyes is, unfortunately, about a 4-letter word I hate : Hate.
NDTV News 31 Dec 2021
Beneath the headlines is news subtext:
Quote : “Five former chiefs of staff of the armed forces and over a hundred other people including veterans, bureaucrats, and prominent citizens have written to President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding “open call of genocide of Indian Muslims” at various events, most recently in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar and Delhi. The letter also mentions targeting of other minorities like Christians, Dalits and Sikhs.” Unquote
My first reaction on reading the above news on New Year Day morning was sadness…. which however within a matter of a few minutes quickly turned into an overwhelming sense of resigned inurement.
This was not the kind of start to the New Year I wanted … and when I sighed heavily and my wife seated across the coffee-table, so quick as usual to read my mind, said quietly …. “For God’s Sake! How many times do I have to tell you to stop watching and reading the darned news in this country first thing in the morning!”
Hate News is really much like news about Man bites dog… but then no longer in our country these days does it make even slightly more impact on the mind of an average Indian citizen than as news about Dog bites man does.
Hate News fills me these days with nothing but déjà vu… a sense of exhaustion watching endless replays and re-enactments of election-time mini-Greek tragedies — wherein malice, pent-up communal anger and atavistic, fanatic spite, like so many ghosts and macabre apparitions rising up from the dead taking centre-stage, begin to dance about and enliven the poltergeist vaudeville show that all electoral politics has sadly become in our blessed country in the present times.
The NDTV news report screams from the rooftops about the Hate speeches of Haridwar in December 2021 … Ho hum! So what?!
It is not the first time the average Indian citizen has heard about it; nor is it going to be the last time, not so long as he has got to live, willy-nilly, with the roiling reality of the way popular elections are conducted in the raucous democracy he knows is India.
Let’s jog our collective memories a little and hearken back to April 2014 Lok Sabha election time ….
Go to the Internet and Google on “Hate Speeches” … Most likely the URL below will pop up on your laptop or mobile screen …. Read it please… ! … once, twice and thrice, if needed, and you will then surely begin to understand why I, as just an average citizen of this country, have become rather cynical about and greatly inured to Hate Speeches.
The First Post dt. April 9, 2014
On April 9, 2014, the First Post published an article by a journalist, Arun George and what is its title? “No one thinks twice about Hate Speech”!
In his dispatch from the heartland-badlands of Uttar Pradesh during the peak of electioneering time in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls there, Arun George recounts a series of Hate Speeches made by politicians of every ideological hue and communal pedigree. It’s virtually a free-for-all, no-holds-barred dog-fight between the likes of Imran Masood, Raj Thackeray, Amit Shah, Akhilesh Yadav …. and many, many more worthies of the same ilk who most probably were far too many in number and a tad too minor to be worth being journalistically named and shamed …
The best part of Arun George’s news-dispatch however was in the clinical analysis he provided about what he felt would be the aftermath and the impact of those Hate Speeches . And so I must let his own conscience-stirring words speak for themselves:
QUOTE:
“…… it doesn’t help that we don’t really have a mechanism to deal with the phenomenon of hate speech, barring the prosecution under law.
“…. The Supreme Court has asked the Law Commission to look into clearly defining what constitutes hate speech and what action could be taken against political leaders for indulging in them. The court has, however, refused to put a blanket ban on such speeches saying it would affect the constitutional provision for freedom of speech in the country.
“…..the path to bringing those who make hate speeches to book is particularly slow in most cases and rarely yields a result that would be deemed fair. It doesn’t help that sanction for prosecution often comes from the state government which is not always bound by a model code of conduct.
“….. none of those acccused of making speeches to incite their audiences are even running for the current election. (And yes, not one of the Haridwar Sansad members too most likely is ever going to enter the UP poll fray ti be held later this in 2022). The worst case scenario for any of them is an FIR and arrest, which would be still be a bailable offence. This would at most dent campaigning schedules (of political parties) but will not really affect the party’s performance in any way. Imprisonment, if it should take place, will only be after prosecution which almost everyone knows won’t happen within the space of an election campaign.
“….. Until there is a provision that penalises a party or a candidate for inciting violence, hatred or polarising votes, don’t expect any dilution of the vitriol. The premise that it might polarise voters enough to take them to victory is reason enough for many candidates to resort to it. Unfortunately, this decision lies in the hand of the legislature.
UNQUOTE
If my great sense of Déjà Vu today on reading the news about the Haridwar Sansad Hate Speeches on New Year Day was not as profoundly profound as it nearly is, I know my conscience would’ve been delivered a resounding butt-kick to make it rise up and raise my outraged citizen’s voice to ask questions of myself even if I knew they’s only end up making me squirm very uncomfortably in guilt as any apathetic good citizen should be. Here they are below:
1. The Supreme Court has asked the Law Commission to look into clearly defining what constitutes hate speech and what action could be taken against political leaders for indulging in them. What then has happened on this matter since 2014?
2. The court has refused to put a blanket ban on such speeches saying it would affect the constitutional provision for freedom of speech in the country. Why is so-called “Civil Society Activism” in our country that is otherwise so busy championing the “human rights” of Maoists, Urban Naxalites and Punjab Farming Commission Agents, not lifted as much as a finger to champion Constitutional change and reform in this regard? For a change, M/s and Ms. Civil Society, how about championing the cause and rights of ordinary citizens like yours truly ?
3. The path to bringing those who make hate speeches to book is particularly slow in most cases and rarely yields a result that would be deemed fair. It doesn’t help that sanction for prosecution often comes from the state government which is not always bound by a model code of conduct. So, why then is the Election Commission of India so pathetically helpless in this regard? Should the writ of the ECI run in this country only during that very narrow window of time between the date of announcement of election-schedules and date of poll-results when alone it can , and is expected, to crack its whip against Hate Speeches?
4. None of those acccused of making speeches to incite their audiences are even running for the current election. Imprisonment, if it should take place, will only be after prosecution which almost everyone knows won’t happen within the space of an election campaign long after it has ended. So, why then has the Parliaments of India chosen to remain un-seized of this matter and not been moved to instead act proactively to bring in the necessary legislative changes to the Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Code of Procedure and the Representation of Peoples Act?
5. Until there is a provision that penalises a party or a candidate for inciting violence, hatred or polarising votes, don’t expect any dilution of the vitriol. Unfortunately, this decision lies in the hand of the legislature. If the matter really lies only in the hands of the legislature, why is the citizenry of India at large not severely taking to task the MPs/MLAs who it itself elected to Parliament for gross legislative delinquency, dereliction of duty and professional incompetence?
The fact that there are really no clear answers I can give myself for the above questions of mine only tells me — an average citizen — that clearly there is “something rotten in the state of Denmark”. Alas, Hate Speeches are really no longer “man-bites-dog news” anymore. Hate itself, however, even today is not part of Indian culture at all… it never was and never will be. But Hate speeches are an altogether different matter …. They have become an integral part of the political discourse of India— the creative handiwork of not just this one political party or the other … but of all parties that today stand arrayed in the entire spectrum of polity in our country.
Very, grim, sombre and rather self-flagellating thoughts indeed… but then ignoring them all for a moment, my dear readers, let me wish every one of you today a Very Happy New Year in 2022 with the same warmth and goodwill as I know I did same day last year in 2021! But sincerely, I also rush to say, no déjà vu here though at all… ! 🙏
Sudarshan Madabushi