Munavvar Farooqui: Regrettable, but not Unexpected

Since the rest of the article is going to be in more-or-less opposite direction, so let it be said at the very onset: Freedom of Speech (including freedom to offend, and offend on religious sensibilities as well) is indeed a completely desirable, necessary right in a civilized society. A quasi-divine one, one could even argue.

In that sense and under that lens, the physical violence that happened with the otherwise-detestable standup-comedian Munavvar Farooqui was not just regrettable, but outright condemnable and even possibly illegal. He has the prerogative to file charges against that under the appropriate sections, and law enforcement should take its fullest course on that.

But that being said, there do exist a couple of pre-requisites that are necessary to be fulfilled, if one wants to translate the ideal “absolute free speech” to a ground reality- and those are true for probably every single society in the world. It is important to know them because no ideal is ever completely implemented in the world. It also takes constant effort to maintain a delicate, precarious set of pre-conditions to push the envelope of an ideal in the real world.

Trust in State, Police, Judiciary and Due Process

In any society, free and offensive speech can be tolerated only when the general public (especially the overwhelming majority of them) have a certain level of trust in the legal systems. They need to be convinced that in the odd case free speech going too far, and transgressing the legal limitations upon it, the law shall not only act, but act swiftly. They need to have an assurance that their complaints shall be not rebuffed but written down, and the police officer will take it as seriously as he does the next complaint of a triple murder.

(Call it irrational and unreasonable, but human nature is what it is- and the police have to work with it. Paraphrasing Dale Carnegie, our aching tooth means more to us than hundreds and thousands of children dying of starvation.)

He needs to know that his case will not be deliberately pushed down in the courtroom clerk and registrar’s offices, and the sessions court judge will not turn to him and mock him for exercising his lawful right, if he is reasonably expected to restrain his strong impulse to slap and pull hair of a Munavvar Farooqui mocking his Gods.

So far, Indian judiciary, police system, bureaucracy, government, and political class have spectacularly failed to arouse such faith in a common Hindu. Much as this writer is against the very existence of 295A, as long as the law exists on the books, the job of police is to assist a person wishing to file complaint under it, not discourage them- as they do. A Hindu needs only to walk into a police station near him and tell the constable on duty that, to see how the dissuasion ranges from mocking and ‘advisory’ discouragement to open threat, depending on the party in power in the state.

Goodwill of the pusher of envelope  

No law is stronger, and trumps in the mind of an enraged, offended man, than the laws created by nature to govern his own (nature). A person with goodwill among the people he’s about to offend is far more likely to get away with it than someone the audience is already hostile towards.

Simply put, an Ahmed Shariff or a Manu Joseph is more likely to get away with an off-colour remark about Hindu Gods and religion than an Agrima Joshua, a Munavvar Farooqi, or even a Kunal Kamra or a Dhruv Rathee. The first two do not have a historical baggage of wilful association with deliberately provoking Hindus, just for the sake of it and to goad Hindus.

People, all of us, are much more forgiving, and givers of benefits of doubt, to people we have a favourable outlook towards. We might also end up actually enjoying the same thing coming from a welcome source, rather than an unwelcome one. Unfortunately, because humans are emotional, post-facto-rationalizing creatures, the messenger is indeed as important, if not more than, as the message itself.

Why does it matter

As mentioned already, humans are not rational creatures- they are rationalizing, highly emotional creatures, that too post-facto. Ergo, in the moments when our emotions are strongly roused, our motive of acting, the place of reasoning is not logical and rational- it’s emotional and instinctive. In that moment, the urge to slap and hurt the one who insulted our Gods, and whom we know, by their past history, to be doing it precisely to humiliate and belittle us is overpowering. In that moment, that urge matters more than any and all later-considered rational aspects like free speech right of the offender, the rule of law, available legal recourse (which Hindus have little-to-no reasons to trust anyway), etc.

It matters also because unlike the free speech haven (at least until the moment these words are being scribed) US of A, India is not a first-world, industrialized, modernized society- we’re a third-world, agrarian, largely pre-modern society (especially psychologically).

(A large share of anthropologists concurs that first-world, industrialized societies are not actually characterized by machines and large industries- those are the consequences, not the causes. A first-world country is actually slotted thus when it fulfils certain social markers like efficient rule of law, people’s trust in it, high amount of social trust in the society, a basic agreement on the common, shared philosophical underpinnings of the society, high per capita investment in human resource enhancement, etc. When such conditions are met, industries and socioeconomic growth automatically happen consequentially.)

If Munavvar Farooqi’s case is examined in the light of the factors mentioned above, it becomes amply clear that in response of what he did, his malicious and deliberate provocation and insulting of the Hindu community, in such tensed and disturbed times, such distasteful, undesirable, violent reaction was inevitable- even though not in the least justifiable or worth condoning.

Free speech, even in its most offensive, absolutist form, is certainly an ideal worth cherishing and striving for, a principle worth having and basing public policy and laws upon. But it’s also a very delicate, fragile ideal, that needs constant tending to- not just by the members of the audience, but also by those wishing to exercising it as well.

(Feature Image Source: Newsbust India)