WILL FREE SPEECH KILL DEMOCRACY?

05 Jun WILL FREE SPEECH KILL DEMOCRACY?

We know all about the noble ideal of Democracy, of nations’ destinies being guided by their people’s collective will. We know & celebrate Free Speech – every man’s (or woman’s) right to have their view and to say their piece. In the modern era, almost every nation which doesn’t have a name starting with ‘People’s Republic’ has space for the opinions of citizens, and is in varying degrees, governed by those viewpoints.

The idea of this piece is to trend-spot the systematic abuse of this power in recent times, across political discourses.

India & USA are democracies. Real democracies, without ‘People’s Democratic Republic’ as prefix, with institutions that curb the freedoms, and yet, a frank lack of inhibition about letting people express themselves. There are regular elections, and though we hear murmurs about machine tampering & foreign intervention, we find that the source of the grouse in most cases is the sore loser. Everyone votes, and pretty much everyone stands technically atleast, an equal chance at securing office. And while India votes every 5 years to USA’s 4, it is safe to say that the results of these elections honestly depict the collective view of the respective people as to their choice of government. This then, is democracy at work. Admittedly by the People & of the People, though ‘For the People’ is incessantly debated.

The way this should work, and the way this used to work, is that public debate reached a crescendo during election time, when the public made a collective decision, and then the government was permitted to do its thing for atleast a large part of its tenure. The public had a tiny choice in most cases, like a child having to choose between a Beagle and a Cocker Spaniel, but that choice was exercised in full knowledge of the behavior of either breed, issues with grooming & potty training, etc. So, when the Republicans or BJP came to power, it is safe to say that the electorates picked one breed over another. They expressed an uber nationalistic sentiment, wanted a right-of-centre viewpoint, and rejected left-liberal behavior and appeasement politics as something ranging from sissy to seditious.

In an ideal world, or in the world as we once knew it, this was where the penny dropped. People made peace with the outcome and Life went on till the time came to put firewood under the electoral cauldron again. For the protagonists of these dances of Democracy, elections were the report card. The person with the mandate was the person vindicated. He won. That visual medley of the news channels putting up the tally, to the victory speech, till the cabinet was announced, was the equivalent of the Premiership being won. Somebody in some-coloured jersey lifted the cup, and nobody argued with it. This, to my mind, is the essence, nay, the lifeblood of Democracy. If one side has to win, it must then be permitted to be the victor. The people who lost would and should then keep it in their pants till the next gig. This is what has changed.

In India, a new political discourse began towards the end of the last millennium, and though it was trashed by the intellectual classes as bigoted rabble, its sails consistently caught the wind till its culmination in a majority government in 2014. In a general election where the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’) contested as challenger, and where the voting machines were deployed by an independent election commission, BJP won a straight majority. Their premise was simple. India could be great if everyone did their job, kept their homes & streets clean, and looked to grow their skills instead of their beards. The new India was packaged as no longer being ashamed of Indian ways, but of flaunting the good and eschewing the ugly. And though it’s fair to say that the government has flogged that horse mercilessly, the mission itself was not flawed – Toilets, bank accounts, cutting corruption, skill development, and Indic pride. Five acrimonious years later, despite television and online debate being rife with conspiracy theories & doomsday predictions, the BJP returned to power and in fact improved its tally, a rare occurrence in Indian democracy.

In the U.S., the pendulum swung a tad slower, and took its cue from economic factors. For two decades and more, America had been cheerfully ceding ground to China, and everyone was OK with it till a lot of them weren’t. In America as in India, the intellectuals, the left-liberals, the academia, as well as the press didn’t spot the change, and didn’t call out the trend. Universities cheerfully accepted donations from Chinese sources, corporations put up factories in China, and many institutions did worse. When the carpet was spotted being removed from under America’s feet, the intellectual classes in fact objected and made tearful reminiscences of the suave & statesmanlike Obama. A Nobel Peace Prize was also hastily arranged. They had the added benefit of getting to throw ink at a man who isn’t nearly as guarded or nuanced as Narendra Modi. And yet, Donald Trump won. And though it makes one giddy plotting policy through the series of American about-turns under Trump, it would be difficult to identify a period in recent times when America rooted for America this hard. Not everything done by the Trump administration can be defended ethically or politically, but few actions prior to Covid-19 can be assailed as anti-American. For the first time, China has been called out and its glib strategy based on humbug & hubris decried.

For the world, this is a big deal. Over 50 countries today have indebtedness to China bordering on insolvency. Many have been offering up ports, cities, railway contracts, airports, industrial policy, etc., in a manner which in the last century, would have smelt of Imperialism. China has ministers in most cabinets. For the Americans, there is a real risk of losing global preeminence, something they soldiered at for over 30 years after World War II to gain. For the world, there is the even greater peril of surviving in a world where China rather than America calls the shots. And yet, mere years back, none of the suits saw it coming or called it out. America is in an election year, and riding on the Covid-19 outbreak, a class-war is now being stoked in that country.

The common thread – Today, the viewpoint that loses in the electoral race does not accept defeat, with or without dignity. They take to the streets, they incubate conspiracy theories, they milk issues and reinterpret them, they mock data, and maintain a constant rat-a-tat from the usual trenches – universities, academia, press, litigation.

By itself, this isn’t necessarily undemocratic at all. Chutzpah is the soul of democracy. The difference now is two-fold.

From the perspective of the voter, there is today, a sullen rejection of election results. My analogy is as simple as English Football – You may follow one of the Manchester clubs or Arsenal or Chelsea or whatever else, but the premier league answers that debate unequivocally. At the end of the whole circuit, one team lifts the cup and that’s the end of that. So your heart may beat for Tottenham Hotspur, and you may believe they’d beat Spain 10-0, but that visual of Manchester City lifting the cup in 2019, and the debate is over for a year. Elections to my mind, are that premiership. They tell you who won, and that should be the end of it. Except today, it isn’t. Like football fans who can’t see a colour outside of their jersey, across the world’s democracies, there is a scary negation of elections. People just carry on believing and professing that their club won, or atleast that it’s the only club that deserves to win.

Late last year, months after the election in India, one of the contestants did a session in my neighborhood and started dissing government policy even before the microphone was in her hands. She made half-a-dozen references to the winning candidate, called him out for his many inadequacies, and berated the audience for sending a guy like that to Parliament. I watched appalled from the back rows, and after a while, pointed out to the good lady that she had not in fact lost to the M.P. elect, she had come third, and therefore lost to the guy who lost to the M.P. elect. Predictably, conversation turned immediately to my political affiliations, not the lady’s views, but the lady herself was sharp enough to know there was no dodging the blow, and quickly changed the topic.

The former brokers & beneficiaries of democracy are now ready to become its pallbearers. They have graduated from news channel debates to riots on the streets. While they speak of democracy, what they want is to own the place or to burn it down. Their reasons for righteous angst will change like a PPT in slideshow mode, because none of their arguments will bear sustained scrutiny. But until they can make Tottenham Hotspur take the Premiership Cup, they will not let the Premiership run. And this affects not just the political system, but the people as well, because the object of the anarchist is to make the system stop doing its work and merely react to them. That way, they stand a chance of owning the discourse despite losing the mandate. The nuance lies in the manner of the protest and its actual object, to determine whether the protest is to protect Democracy or to subvert it.

It is not a new strategy. In the Mahabharata, Jarasandha, the father-in-law of Kamsa, Krishna’s arch-enemy, had the power to magically re-spawn his army any number of times. He invaded Krishna’s small kingdom with his hordes but was bested in battle. The next day however, the people of Krishna’s Mathura were shocked to find that Jarasandha had returned with his army, despite the previous day’s massacre. Once again, battle was joined and Krishna prevailed. On the third morning, the town criers announced Jarasandha’s return yet again, and so it went on, until the 8^th day, when Krishna met Jarasandha face to face.

“I am God”, Krishna said in his ebullient way. “You can’t win”.

But Krishna was shocked by Jarasandha’s response.

“I know”, said Jarasandha, “that I cannot beat you, and every battle will end this way. I cannot win, but I can keep coming back every day and thus ensure, that all you can ever do, is to engage me. By making it your daily business to rout me, I can ensure you never get your own lifework done”. We’re clearly not in the days of gods & demons anymore, but the strategy hasn’t changed.

Here is my solution. Don’t engage them. Don’t get into that debate. Ascertain the facts of everything and all that, sure, but don’t end up wearing Manchester City just because Tottenham Hotspur wants to win the next tiny one-on-one installment of the premiership. The fraud of the anarchists is in their conditional veneration of democracy and democratic values. When they win, democracy rocks. When they don’t, the battle on the news-channels, on social media, and now on the streets will begin. Knowing that most people aren’t with them, they’re now trying to grow the debate, the discourse, and sadly, the riot, so that people who initially didn’t care about their stuff have to now deal with it too. When they tell you how great Tottenham Hotspur is, or how grievously Tottenham Hotspur have been wronged, or even if they ask which club you think should win next year, just tell them you don’t follow football. If our nations are to progress, governments will need fair & honest critics to call it out. If Democracy has to survive these times, it will need the minds of the people who had the vision to put a system in charge to function without sabotage.

Because a viewpoint in these times is almost always met by a query to credentials, here’s the disclaimer. I’m not telling you who is right here, or who to vote for. I’m only saying that for Democracy to survive, there has to be common cause as to the effect of an election result. The side that doesn’t make it to the podium, no matter which side it is, bears watching today. The access to resources for subverting the process they swore unto, as well as the desperation to win or burn are very real. This then, is a good time, regardless of who you vote for or who you consider worthy or otherwise of public office, to maintain a barrier between who you are and who you back. It’ll help you spot errors in a system you support. It’ll keep your worldview insulated from folk who have done a 3-month interior design course and want to re-do your living room.

Like social distancing, it’s your only defence.