IS FREEDOM OF SPEECH ABSOLUTE?




‘...Liberty of thoughts, expression, belief, faith and worship...’

These lines from the Preamble of The Constitution of India state its intention of providing the citizens with the right to express themselves freely. This ideal of the Preamble is reflected in Article 19(A) of the Constitution, which gives Indian citizens their fundamental rights. The right to speech is a basic human right. In India, this right allows the citizens to speak up and share their opinion publically without any fear. However, in recent times, it has been noted that this right has been condemned for many.

Recently, in the USA, Donald Trump proposed to put some restrictions on what people could post on social media. While this appears to be a power move attempting to curtail people's tendencies to spread unverified information, aka rumours, it takes away their liberty to say what they want and what they feel. Obviously, Trump then had to face lots of protests, but that's a story for another day! This incident throws light on how important the right to speech is!  Other ways through which we exercise this right of ours is by publishing newspapers, books, cinemas, songs and broadcasting news. Whenever something wrong happens in our country, we are allowed to protest. All of this is how we use our right. 

Freedom of speech from a social-media pov brings to mind the current 'toolkit' war going on in the country. This makes it very clear: social media and the ability to say what you please is being misused. Obviously, rival political parties won't be praising each other (they wouldn't be rivals otherwise ;] ) but having an eye on what goes on on powerful sites like Twitter seems to be integral. 

In our normal, day-to-day activities, we do not see people being forced to say something they do not believe in or being harassed for saying something in public that is not pleasing to some sections of society. However, journalists and the press are more often than not, forbidden from saying certain things that can tarnish the image of certain people, even when it is true. According to the Press Freedom Index published by Reporters without Borders, India holds the 142nd rank in the world in terms of press freedom. There are countless examples of journalists who are attacked when they air or publish sensitive news. The most recent example is the attack on Arnab Goswami when he had spoken about a sensitive issue on his channel. He is not the first and certainly not the last one to be the recipient of such aggression. Apart from that, we can note that newspapers are also forced to be biased while reporting. All these propositions can only lead to one conclusion: Freedom of speech is not absolute.

What could be the reason for this? All those years ago when we achieved independence, there were countless countries waiting for India to break up. India is special. We do not have a common language, a common religion; we are excessively influenced by western ideas and the youth today is floating away from what might constitute a single nation. Vote bank politics are very real and politicians will go to any lengths to get seats. All of this put together leads to a difference in opinion and that is reflected in our media! 

The Constitution provides people the right to speak their mind, however, 'where the mind is without fear...' still seems like a distant dream...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Old Loves

Image
An odd assortment of English, kesudas and golden showers Agatha Christie once said, ‘Nothing like boredom to make you write.’ It is true. As I write this, I am sitting in the library with my books open in front of me and I, for the life of me, cannot make myself study Hamlet and his sad tale. Like every normal teenager, I turned to surfing the net and suddenly remembered that I have a blog. Here I am, writing on said blog, hoping to make this an awesome entry. English is a funny language. The plural of foot is feet and not foots and the plural of goose is geese and not gooses . All through school and until quite recently, I, like many others, had just accepted this funny quality of the English language and simply followed the rules. English is a wonky tongue, I told myself. But now, for one hour on most days, I get to understand English and the what’s and why’s of the language. Yes, English is a wonky language but now I get to have my mind blown by why it is so wonky. You know, i...
Read more

To Prufrock

Image
  Image Source: Freepik   To Prufrock   He sits across the table Staring deep into his coffee cup, Counting every stir of his spoon. I look at him as he focuses on his coffee, Considering. Deliberating.   He is lean and fair, With honest eyes Lost in some otherworldly thought, His mind calculating some complexity. Something bothers him- Causing him to avert his eyes To his empty palms on his lap, or to the wall behind me. Something that causes him to look everywhere, But directly into my eyes And reveal truths that flicker just beneath; Something that unconsciously Brings him to run his fingers through his hair, As though wanting To hide a part of himself From wicked eyes that yearn to devour.   What is it  That makes you so digress?  What is it  That holds you back, The question dancing right at the tip of your tongue, Waiting to slip right out And exist in the silence before us? Desire stirs, yet dies unclaimed, I feel it, sharp, the pulse benea...
Read more

Time travelling, Doraemon and the Sublime Beauty of July

Image
Time! Aren't you just a daydream! Had I been writing in the pen-paper mode, I would have had a whole mess of crumpled paper balls around me, on the floor. I have a bunch of ‘untitled document’-s with paragraphs of varying lengths in my google docs- a testimony of the number of times I have attempted to talk about time travel. See, the thing is, ever since I read this book called ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ I have been thinking about time travel. I have been wanting to talk about time travel and about the fact that the book is lovely even though it is translated from Japanese. The universe is telling me to write about it, at this point, because wherever I look, time travel is all I see! I must say, for a race without any superpowers, we do fantasize about it too much. Take something as basic as the cartoon ‘Doraemon’. Tell me, what normal, Doraemon-watching kid hasn’t ever dreamt of having a walking-talking robot who is your ultimate panacea? I suppose, feeling annoyed at Nobita a...
Read more