Free Speech Utopia In Economic Dystopia:
A Rejoinder To The Rushdie Debates In India
By Siddharthya Swapan Roy
13 April, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Replying to a question from the audience at the India Today conclave about what he thinks of article 153 of the Indian Constitution, Salman Rushdie said he is not in favour of laws that curb hate speech. Laws like this, according to him, share the same vein as the rationale with which the bullies work – of hurt religious/cultural sentiments. Every other day some book or work of art be it paintings or sculpting or cinema or theatre, is attacked on the pretext of hurt sentiments and citing a potential law and order problem, however tenuous, the Indian State clamps down on the freedom to express and write books. And Rushdie points at his own brush with the vendors of political Islam on the eve of the Jaipur Literature Festival and the hounding out of painter M F Husain as proof of this abuse of the “hurt sentiments” principle. Instead, he says, he prefers the American model; which through its First Constitutional Amendment defends free speech at all costs, and defends it so strongly that it allows hate speech. The abundance of free speech, he believes as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is the best defence against the un-freedom of blocked speech – whether by bigots and fanatics (according to him embodied by the ayatollahs and mullahs) or by an authoritarian regime (according to him embodied by the Soviet Union ). A “simple yet grand” idea, as Rushdie labels it, that two competing ideas fight it out in a fair competition with an end that reads “may the best idea win”.
The logic is all fine and good with apparently nothing that can be opposed – at least for those who find themselves on the side of democracy and freedom and opposed to bigots – until we are faced with a different form of bigotry vended by a different set of bigots – pro-market bigotry. Opposed as they are, in public view, to both the Ayatollahs and the Soviet Unions for being worshipful of an unquestionable authority, the market bigots instead offer their prayers to the fundamental sanctity of the market.
“Either with us or with them”
The underlying assumption,or perhaps statement, in Rushdie's position is his that the competition is fair; that the two contesting ideas are posited with equal visibility by its beholders who in turn match up in strength. This assumption, in our times – the age of unbridled disparity of opportunity – is a fallacy.
Putting his wordsmith skills to use,Rushdie adorns the Statue of Liberty with an elaborate metaphor calling it the “bronze goddess who holds up a torch of enlightenment for us [world citizens] all. Even if we ignore, for the sake of brevity, the factual inaccuracy of the “strength of the First Amendment” in ensuring freedom of speech for American citizens – despite the overwhelming evidence of the intrusive and hostile nature of the American State; we can't ignore the larger truth about the failureof the liberal doctrine that freedom of the market trickles down to freedom for all in all walks of life.
For example America, saw the number of imprisoned citizens go from under 500,000 in 1980 to over 2000,000 in 2001 (a 300% jump), i.e. the same two decades American free market evangelists (and this while America's population grew by only 1.24%). We cannot take cue from fine liberal conclaves where ideas, pure and untouched by the dirt of reality, savagely slug it out, and persist in examining freedom of speechin isolation of the realities of our neo-liberal world.
Truth is, even though the trickle down of goodness from the rich to the poor does not happen, the disparity of income and capital holding between the poor and the rich grows into other disparities encompassing every aspect of our lives – intellectual debates included. So the simple yet “staggeringly threatening” question that undoes Rushdie's fine proposition is,how do we even begin to ensure that the two debating parties are on an equal footing?
For example, can the millions of impoverished Afghans, liberated from “evil” Islam by being bombed to smithereens, ever match up to the debating, or perhaps broadcasting, might of the imperial powers? Can they tell the world that American liberation is as violent as the mullahs' subjugation? In our times of sold-to-the-highest-bidder media, can marginalised identities across the world afford to match up to the bottomless pockets of media moguls and their political lackeysand lay bare the truth that neo-liberal economics and religious fanaticism are equally blind and hostile to the greater common good?And not only that, the two work in unison at exploiting the masses?
Rushdie mocks Imran Khan's resemblance to Gaddafi – both of face and adherence to Islamist theocracy– but doesn't draw the parallel about how both had wonderful relations with the liberal glitterati of US-Europe and it's only a later clash of interests that soured the bonhomie. Can the battered people of either Pakistan orLibya get enough broadcast time or pages of print to underscore how the western, neo-liberal flag bearing liberators have only worsened their condition? Can there be space to say thatcapitalism and the litter of crass consumerism forms the very substrate on which cultural and political fascism breed? That the excesses of capitalism and consumerism, such as destruction of indigenous cultures and religions in the mad pursuit of oil and minerals, form the very reasons around which a lot of theocracies build themselves up?
Both, stones under the orders of mullahs and bombs under the orders of NATO, their difference in cultural content notwithstanding, when rained down upon people, kill them. So to be seen clearly on the side of freedom the liberal person needs to be above board on both accounts.
Liberals' Apathy
In his speech Rushdie laments the apathy of the larger public in India and Pakistan towards the violations of artistic freedom of the liberal artists - and when Soli Sorabjee asks what he thinks of un-freedom in the US/UK he's asked to stick to India and Pakistan for the time being. True. India (today) and Pakistan (from a long time) has shown little public concern about the violation of the freedom of speech. But even a cursory glance at India will show that those aggrieved by hunger today in India – a direct fallout of West led neo-liberalism – far outnumber liberalsaggrieved of censorship. From farmers who kill themselves to huge herds of immigrants robbed of homes and identities on to tribes of people killed for what lies underneath their lands – the pillage of neo-liberalism is omnipresent in these nations.
Firstly, a nation of sick and hungry would find it difficult to have an opinion about a book's merits. So it is very much in the interest of writers and artists to speak on behalf of emancipation and economic empowerment. Secondly, being sick and hungry is far more distressing than being denied the opportunity to attend chic lit fests. And yet, the apathy of well-heeled liberals towards the harsh realities of the impoverished masses remains more or less undented and few speak out against the vileness of the current world order. While in all fairness it must be noted that Rushide sets a fine example by supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. But many, if not most, on the contrary defend with all their arty might the indefensible crimes of the empires or at best ignore the real and burning problems which imperialism has thrown up.Recall for example ChristopherHitchens (a name Rushdie brings up in his speech) defending the American “War on Terror”. Or how in the aftermath of the London riots, many liberal Knights of the British Empire – both anointed and self-appointed – rushed to defend the British government staying resolutely blind of the dismantling of British social welfare schemes. Very much against their love for nuance, the well-heeled liberals relegated the swelling numbers of underfed and under-clothed urban poor of London to an undetailed “rioters” label. Despite their acclaimed sensitivity they remained blind to the fact that they broke into restaurants and shops for food and clothing.
How then, or rather why then, do they expect the masses to come out in a groundswell of support for them? What good will a few million more in book royalties mean to the masses? Will the masses ever make it to the invitation list of fests and conclaves and dine with the fine gents and ladies?
When talking of victimisation by hoodlums in India Rushdie, drew a parallel to himself in the Rohinton Mistry referring to Mumbai University's banning of the latter's book at the behest of Aditya Thackeray – the latest kid on the bloc of Maharashtra's first family of hate. An absolutely deplorable act no doubt. But truth is this is now a routine act in cities like Maharashtra and Pune and has an identifiable pattern to it.
‘Local boys' attack some swanky pub or discotheque or other symbol of liberal values and do some insurance recoverable damage. Thereafter the ‘local boys' leave with their wad of cash and a swig of expensive liquor from the pub in question – with may be a few hours of lockup thrown in. The hoodlum leader does his nationalist act and the liberal his crying for human freedom and soon its business as usual. The nationalist goes back to his mansion the liberal to his country of residence and the local boys to their grimy slums. The routine has made both, the news and its readers jaded, caring neither for the cries of the nationalist (flexing muscles is his profession) nor the liberal (who stays in ivory towers far from the ground).
The other, somewhat hidden, side of the story is that the symbols of liberal values (pubs, malls, expensive lit fests et al) are placed in milieus seething with abject poverty. Whether the physical location of swanky pubs, Worli Gaon for example or malls in Mumbai mills, or the metaphorical placement of expensive lit fests in poor countries, these become an ethical eyesore. The temples of neoliberals and their rituals, often of consumerist excess, amidst heaps of squalid poverty are an open invitation to be attacked. Even if not under the banner of emancipation, then certainly under the ruse of morality and other fascist tendencies, they will be attacked. The differential pressure is just too high to be checked by flimsy walls like liberal lip service to freedom. Attacking these establishments is the only way the ‘local boys' get a slice of the liberal's hedonist cake and/or settle scores with them.
Even for the conscientious members of the middle class or those in the intelligentsia, very often there's little point in standing up for the affluent liberals' right to have his cake in peace since the liberals in turn don't speak for the masses' right to have their breads in dignity.
For the masses to be responsive to the liberals' woes it is only right that in their rich arts and colourful letters they speak of the woes of the masses andtalk about their hunger, their sickness and their poverty and concretely engage with the reasons for their hunger and sickness and poverty.It is inane to expect the masses to come out in support of the liberals when they are clearly on the other side of the class war.
Freedom and Economics
Rushdie hypothesizes that the origin of religion is from the two major questions which humanity asks of itself. One, where do we come from? And two, what are we to do? Despite the literary merits of this mysticism and philosophical history, this is not even by far the sole origins. Before the advent of wholly money based economies and the emergence of the modern state to officiate the transfer of wealth from lower layers upwards, religion played the part. The Churches, the Temples and the Mosques had their own elaborate networks of taxation, governance, legality, yardsticks and templates for social norms and art and expression and the like. They had their police and armies to control their subjects and wage their wars. Religion was a world order before this one and far from the mysticism that evangelists attribute to it; religion dealt far more with the mundane lives of people and concerned itself with the running of the economy than it did in the search for our origins and purpose. It locked the basic needs of humankind, food clothes and shelter in places of worship much like they are locked up in the market today. So people were religious in the past not by choice but by compulsion (as we are made to obey the market today). So at the very onset this liberal attempt to try and theorise about religion in isolation of its economics is futile and misleading. Moreover divorced from material history it is a useless weapon in trying to negate the ills of religion or its fanatical derivatives.
Similarly we must note that not just the freedom of speech and expression, the Indian Constitution, much like other modern books of law, codifies many other forms of freedom. For example the freedom to reside anywhere as one chooses. But say for example an indebted farmer form Vidharba chooses to resides in the Antilla tomorrow, can he? Or given that s/he has the freedom of right to equality; can every young boy or girl from the poverty/caste ghettos of Mumbai get a fair chance at entering the good colleges that dot the city? Neither.Nor any other freedoms codified in law.
So what we have is freedoms codified by politics (or even liberal religion) but rendered useless by economics. How then can we ever seek to be liberated or discuss the path to liberation if we discuss in isolation from the most glaring and constant aspect of subjugation – economic subjugation?
When he talks of the diminishing freedoms in India , Rushdie will go nowhere if he refuses to acknowledge the simultaneous reversal of socialistic governance in India . The sharp dismantling of social welfare schemes like public distribution of food and domestic fuel, public healthcare, publicly owned industries and banks and the steep rise in intolerance is surely not a coincidence. When he laments (pokes fun at actually) the complete absence of freedoms in Pakistan it makes no sense if he refuses to accept the historical truth that Pakistan's founders (unlike Indian ones) completely accepted the fetid and exploitative culture of feudal landlordism ( zamindari ) and bonded labour.
It's not just that the two streams are related – the latter (economic exploitation) is the source of the former (fascist intolerance). Consumerist and neo-liberal excesses provide the moral basis on which the mullahs and the pundits base their call to cultural intolerance. For example the proposition that fully clothed women are more moral is based on the market proposition that would like to make women a mere sum total of their sexual organs and hence dress them scantily. The extremism of the market works to justify the extremism of the bigots.
Truth is like all tangible material things in the universe, their intangible derivatives too, the many freedoms included, are inter-connected to and dependent on everything else akin to an ecosystem. The freedom of expression is irreversibly and critically dependent on the freedom of the human who wishes to express herself. The quality and ideology of his speech is directly connected to his physical and intellectual health. Without the real and working freedom to be free of sickness, hunger, poverty,under-education and under-employment, freedom of expression is not a real possibility. In short there is no building a free speech utopia in economic dystopia.
In trying to stand up for this freedom of expression he claims to espouse, Rushdie would do well to actually go back to the philosopher he calls “discredited by history” – Karl Marx. For it is only then he, as Engels explained, would know the simple fact “ hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc. ”
Siddharthya Swapan Roy is an activist and freelance writer. He is reachable at [email protected]
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