The Sky Is The Limit

Aseem Trivedi’s take on the all pervasive corruption in the country is no great shakes as a cartoon. It lacks the understated humour of a RK Laxman or the subtlety of a Sudhir Dar. It is anything but imaginative in the depiction of the celebrated lions in the national symbol of Ashoka Stambha in the shape of wolves, the substitution of the Ashoka Chakra with the danger symbol of a skull and bones and the pun on the slogan ‘Satyameva Jayate’. It is almost child-like in the simplicity of its message and in the unpretentiousness of its expression. In fact, it appears more like the work of a student venting out his anger against a particularly stern teacher in the form of a badly drawn caricature of the teacher on the blackboard than the outpouring of a mature artiste pontificating on the alarming proportions that the epidemic called corruption has assumed in the country. But sedition??? The charge is laughable and needs to be dismissed with the contempt that it richly deserves. The Indian State, the Constitution and our National symbols must be on very shaky foundations if they are threatened by the work of a mediocre activist cartoonist. Our national symbol can’t possibly be so fragile as to break at the anguished cry of a young man disturbed by corruption all round him. But then what better can one expect in a country where the Prime Minister’s Office (not the Prime Minister, we are told) gets worked up over an article published in a foreign journal describing the presiding deity of that office as a ‘tragic figure’? While on the subject of sedition, I am reminded of the Laxman Choudhury case some two years back in which the Mohana-based journalist was booked under this relic of the British era and put behind bars for full 79 days for nothing more sinister than the fact that a packet containing some Maoist literature had been sent to him. He was not even caught in possession of the leaflets which had only been addressed to him. But that did not stop the police from booking him for sedition, among other charges, the lower courts from upholding the charge and the Chief Minister from refusing to do anything about it despite a delegation of senior journalists meeting him twice and urging him to intervene. [I remember wondering at the time whether, with the abundance of Maoist correspondence at my residence and the intermittent Maoist calls on my cell phone, I too was not a fit case to be charged with sedition!] For those who do not know, Laxman Choudhury was no closet Maoist or even a Maoist sympathizer. He had been pounced upon by the officer-in-charge of the local police station for his temerity in doing a story for his newspaper on the alleged nexus of the local police with ganja traders. It might be of interest to the readers of this column (I hope there are some) that, in a case of divine justice, the same officer was caught red-handed by vigilance personnel while accepting a bribe of Rs 10, 000 from a ganja trader!! But let us return to Aseem Trivedi and his cartoon. To those arguing that everything, including freedom of expression, has its limits, I would like to pose two questions. First, what use is the freedom of expression, supposedly a fundamental right guaranteed to every citizen of the country by the Constitution, if can’t even allow the innocent, albeit crude, expression of anguish over a phenomenon that is tormenting millions of Indians? Second, who fixes the ‘limits’? Those whose heckles are raised at the mere mention of the Gandhi family? Or those who howl at the Prime Minister being called a tragic hero? On second thoughts, why blame just the Congress variety of politicians? Our entire political class put on televised display a palpable ignorance of the concept called freedom of expression, a brazen disregard for a contrarian point of view and an unhealthy level of intolerance during the debate in Parliament over a cartoon in NCERT school books. Babasaheb and Panditji, the dramatis personae in the cartoon, must be turning violently in their graves!! The danger with keeping the bar low in the matter of such a precious thing as freedom of expression (not for nothing did Indira Gandhi feel the need to abrogate this fundamental right during the Emergency) is that it would keep coming progressively down till it reaches a point where any utterance that casts even a minor aspersion on a politician could land somebody in jail. It would be the freedom of expression of the mute. The litmus test for curbs, if any, on the freedom of expression of an individual or an organization has to be whether it incites violence, communal or otherwise. But curiously, no government has mustered the courage to put restrictions on the ‘freedom of expression’ of the Bal Thackerays and the Badruddin Ahmeds in the country even as the ‘long arms of law’ homes in on the Aseem Trivedis, the Binayak Sens and the Laxman Choudhurys. Nearer home, a Jagdish Tytler can get away with instigating a crowd of boisterous Congress supporters to go berserk and launch a murderous attack on a police woman. But all governments would move heaven and earth when someone lampoons their ‘honourable’ leaders as the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal showed a few months back. If such intolerant curbs on the freedom of speech are condoned, the day is not far off when the government machinery, with all the powers and gadgets at its disposal, would eavesdrop even on roadside, drawing room or office gossip (some of which could invite calls for death sentence, given the level of intolerance of our politicians) and haul up both the speakers and the listeners on the charge of ‘sedition’ or ‘waging war against the State.’ The sooner the sedition charge is banished from the IPC, the better it would be for Indian democracy. As for that most precious gift called ‘freedom of expression’ given by the Constitution of India to every citizen, THE SKY IS THE LIMIT.