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Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Fighting against censorship
A version of this piece was published today in the Wall Street Journal as "India's Censorship Craze." (Subscription link.)
American pop icon Paris Hilton corrupts Indian minds. That, at least, is the fear held by mandarins of Indian culture. So they’ve barred television channels in India from airing Ms. Hilton’s new music video, “Stars Are Blind,” in yet another example of the censorship fever sweeping the country.
Movie channels in Mumbai were recently blocked because they purportedly showed adult content. That’s despite the fact these channels routinely edit out all nudity and sex. And it’s only a few months since the film version of “The Da Vinci Code” was banned in several states after Christian groups protested.
In such a climate, nothing is too trivial to escape the target of aspiring censors. One Mumbai-based crusader for tighter controls on Indian television, Pratibha Naithani, has even called for an investigation into “violence on cartoon channels.” Why stop at violence? Perhaps Ms. Naithani hasn’t noticed yet, but in addition to routinely knocking things over, Tom and Jerry also frolic in the nude.
Such extreme examples are a reaction to the foreign cultural influences that have flooded in since India began opening up its previously closed economy to the outside world in 1991. That produced a predictable backlash from traditionalists whose sense of identity, and even their political base, is threatened by foreign influence. They seek refuge in arguing that India’s religion, culture and traditions need protecting from the forces of globalization.
Unlike the U.S., the Indian constitution provides little protection against censorship. Although it professes to give all citizens “the right to freedom of speech and expression,” that is qualified by so many exceptions as to make any protection almost meaningless. These include “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”
Naturally, it falls upon government bureaucrats to decide what falls within these exceptions. And the problem is that India has long had a climate where it’s considered perfectly acceptable for the state to meddle in what its citizens can watch, and listen to. In 1968, for instance, “abbreviated skirts” and scenes "suggestive of soliciting” were enough to send “A Tale of Four Cities,” a documentary by KA Abbas partly set in Mumbai’s red-light districts, all the way to the Supreme Court. India’s top judicial body duly upheld its ban , setting a precedent for censorship that is still cited today. It ruled that films had to be scrutinized more carefully than other media because “a person reading a book or other writing [or] hearing a speech or viewing a painting or sculpture is not so deeply stirred as by seeing a motion picture.” In the view of the court, thus, Indians were like putty in the hands of these powerful media, incapable of making their own decisions or using their own discretion.
Such paternalism was quite in synch with the Fabian Socialism that India had adopted. The state was supreme in all matters, and whatever freedom it allowed its citizens—“subjects” would be as apt a term—was at its discretion. In India, we call it a mai-baap sarkar, which literally means “mother-father government,” indicating the all-encompassing authority of the state. Initially, most Indians took this for granted, and did not protest too much. The freedom that mattered to them in the early years of independence was political freedom, which was their source of national pride.
But, in recent years, things have begun to change. The economic growth triggered by India’s opening up has created a much larger middle class. And the intellectual influences that have poured in from elsewhere in the world have made this middle class more alive to the need to fight for freedom of expression.
That means the recent trend toward increased censorship has not gone without a fight. Where once censorship was taken for granted, it is now debated, and the army of news channels that have recently opened shop regularly feature debates on the subject. Online petitions protesting censorship are common, an early example being one four years ago in support of “War and Peace,” a documentary by Anand Patwardhan that was initially banned for criticizing India’s 1998 nuclear tests. Earlier this year, government instructions to ban a handful of (mostly innocuous) Web sites without giving any reasons provoked widespread outrage, especially after local Internet providers overreacted and mistakenly extended the ban to cover a large number of other sites. Bloggers across India filed applications under the Right to Information Act in an effort to discover the reasons for the ban, and some now plan to go to court to continue the battle for freedom of speech.
Such voices are still few, and these protests not yet loud enough to counter the regressive forces that routinely stifle freedom of expression in India. But they are growing, and offer hope for India’s future.
You can check out Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, which deals with freedom of speech, here. Article 19 (1) (a) states the principle of freedom of speech, but Article 19 (2) lays out the caveats to it. The history of how 19 (2) came about after 19 (1) (a) was written is quite fascinating, and was covered in an essay by Vikram Raghavan in a book titled "Reflections on Free Speech and Broadcasting in India" (OUP 2006; I don't have the book, but Vikram was kind enough to email me his essay a year ago). Raghavan wrote about the KA Abbas case in his piece as well, and Anand Krishnamoorthi also had an excellent post on that subject.
Some previous pieces of mine in WSJ: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
American pop icon Paris Hilton corrupts Indian minds. That, at least, is the fear held by mandarins of Indian culture. So they’ve barred television channels in India from airing Ms. Hilton’s new music video, “Stars Are Blind,” in yet another example of the censorship fever sweeping the country.
Movie channels in Mumbai were recently blocked because they purportedly showed adult content. That’s despite the fact these channels routinely edit out all nudity and sex. And it’s only a few months since the film version of “The Da Vinci Code” was banned in several states after Christian groups protested.
In such a climate, nothing is too trivial to escape the target of aspiring censors. One Mumbai-based crusader for tighter controls on Indian television, Pratibha Naithani, has even called for an investigation into “violence on cartoon channels.” Why stop at violence? Perhaps Ms. Naithani hasn’t noticed yet, but in addition to routinely knocking things over, Tom and Jerry also frolic in the nude.
Such extreme examples are a reaction to the foreign cultural influences that have flooded in since India began opening up its previously closed economy to the outside world in 1991. That produced a predictable backlash from traditionalists whose sense of identity, and even their political base, is threatened by foreign influence. They seek refuge in arguing that India’s religion, culture and traditions need protecting from the forces of globalization.
Unlike the U.S., the Indian constitution provides little protection against censorship. Although it professes to give all citizens “the right to freedom of speech and expression,” that is qualified by so many exceptions as to make any protection almost meaningless. These include “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”
Naturally, it falls upon government bureaucrats to decide what falls within these exceptions. And the problem is that India has long had a climate where it’s considered perfectly acceptable for the state to meddle in what its citizens can watch, and listen to. In 1968, for instance, “abbreviated skirts” and scenes "suggestive of soliciting” were enough to send “A Tale of Four Cities,” a documentary by KA Abbas partly set in Mumbai’s red-light districts, all the way to the Supreme Court. India’s top judicial body duly upheld its ban , setting a precedent for censorship that is still cited today. It ruled that films had to be scrutinized more carefully than other media because “a person reading a book or other writing [or] hearing a speech or viewing a painting or sculpture is not so deeply stirred as by seeing a motion picture.” In the view of the court, thus, Indians were like putty in the hands of these powerful media, incapable of making their own decisions or using their own discretion.
Such paternalism was quite in synch with the Fabian Socialism that India had adopted. The state was supreme in all matters, and whatever freedom it allowed its citizens—“subjects” would be as apt a term—was at its discretion. In India, we call it a mai-baap sarkar, which literally means “mother-father government,” indicating the all-encompassing authority of the state. Initially, most Indians took this for granted, and did not protest too much. The freedom that mattered to them in the early years of independence was political freedom, which was their source of national pride.
But, in recent years, things have begun to change. The economic growth triggered by India’s opening up has created a much larger middle class. And the intellectual influences that have poured in from elsewhere in the world have made this middle class more alive to the need to fight for freedom of expression.
That means the recent trend toward increased censorship has not gone without a fight. Where once censorship was taken for granted, it is now debated, and the army of news channels that have recently opened shop regularly feature debates on the subject. Online petitions protesting censorship are common, an early example being one four years ago in support of “War and Peace,” a documentary by Anand Patwardhan that was initially banned for criticizing India’s 1998 nuclear tests. Earlier this year, government instructions to ban a handful of (mostly innocuous) Web sites without giving any reasons provoked widespread outrage, especially after local Internet providers overreacted and mistakenly extended the ban to cover a large number of other sites. Bloggers across India filed applications under the Right to Information Act in an effort to discover the reasons for the ban, and some now plan to go to court to continue the battle for freedom of speech.
Such voices are still few, and these protests not yet loud enough to counter the regressive forces that routinely stifle freedom of expression in India. But they are growing, and offer hope for India’s future.
You can check out Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, which deals with freedom of speech, here. Article 19 (1) (a) states the principle of freedom of speech, but Article 19 (2) lays out the caveats to it. The history of how 19 (2) came about after 19 (1) (a) was written is quite fascinating, and was covered in an essay by Vikram Raghavan in a book titled "Reflections on Free Speech and Broadcasting in India" (OUP 2006; I don't have the book, but Vikram was kind enough to email me his essay a year ago). Raghavan wrote about the KA Abbas case in his piece as well, and Anand Krishnamoorthi also had an excellent post on that subject.
Some previous pieces of mine in WSJ: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
