The Free Voice Read online

  Abuse is a part of the culture of India. Abuses are exchanged during marriages; there is societal sanction for abuse in some relationships. But never before today has abuse been a weapon at the hands of Power. When the mob which stands in support of Power hurls abuse, it becomes so much more. That mob wants to terrify you. This, then, is the decision you must make: do you want to be terrified? Even when an entire system exists, complete with abuse, and when there is no one to stand with you?

  What I cannot understand is: what is it that one is doing that is so wrong? Why is it that for asking a few questions, one should be punished so severely that a mob is set loose after one? I have been at the receiving end of people’s anger in many places. Men have chased me sometimes, sticks in hand; at others, people have grabbed me by the collar. There have even been incidents of pushing and shoving. I have grown more and more alone in the course of this process. I started speaking out to combat my loneliness. That was the only act which would shatter my isolation.

  Each of these acts has made me less and less wanted in my profession. It has become normal in all conversations about journalism with friends for them to tell me that I will lose my job before anyone else and I won’t find employment anywhere else either. As the advice about doors slamming shut—in the professional space, upon life itself—has poured in, speaking out is the only window that I have sought through which air and light—though they may be in limited quantities—stream in.

  In 2015, Aamir Khan expressed his concern, though in a muted fashion, about the climate of insecurity he and his family felt in India and he was instantly attacked by the IT Cell mob. That same mob remained silent at the Karni Sena’s call to Kshatriya personnel in the army to stop eating in their messes to protest against the release of the film Padmavati. One man openly talked about instigating communal rebellion within the army and the entire government stood before that man, heads bowed in supplication.

  The mob has established a government of fear. It can scare Aamir Khan, claiming to be acting for others, because he practices a religion different from the one practiced by the mob. If it wants, that mob can strike fear into the heart of Sanjay Leela Bhansali too, who is of the same religion. There is just one law in operation, the law of fear.

  Every mob is based upon the foundation of fear. Responding to external fears, many people started becoming part of the mob. These individuals first feared their own fellow citizens because of their religion; then, once they joined the mob, they learnt fear from the masters and controllers of the mob. The reason for their silence was simple. They understood, ‘If the mob can do this to these people, it can do the same to me.’ People joined the mob to silence others; what they did not realize was that they had also learnt to become and remain silent.

  On social media too, people have stopped speaking out because of the terror of the IT Cell. Women, especially, have stopped commenting on political matters in large numbers. They don’t express their opinion in the ‘comments’ section but do so in messages sent to inboxes. Not just women, many other people now do the same.

  When I set up my page on Facebook, @RavishKaPage, many women inboxed me to say that after having commented on my posts, they were trolled by people who would tell them the different ways in which they would be defamed and assaulted. Frequently, there are a thousand comments on my posts but the women among them don’t number even one hundred. The abuses which depend upon Power to propel themselves work like bullets. Everyone is afraid of bullets. Even many boys have told me that they have been forbidden to comment on my page by their parents. The socialization of fear is complete. To be afraid is to be civilized in this new, enfeebled democracy. But I find it uncivilized and impolitic. It is an impoliticness that is inflicted upon democracy.

  The IT Cell has accomplished the task of laying down fear with ferocious detail and efficiency. The language of the IT Cell has become the language of the ministers of the government as well as that of the supporters of the government. It was the government which used to strike fear into the hearts of citizens; now the mainstream media and social media are its active allies.

  My phone number is frequently made public on Facebook and WhatsApp. The language of provocation that accompanies the act of making my number public should be part of a special study. Sentences are written in such a clever manner that on reading, it isn’t clear if a death threat is being issued or if it is being ordered that I should be verbally abused. ‘This is the number of the Pakistani Ravish Kumar, please call him and give him a lesson in nationalism.’ The posts are in this tenor. All of this is enough to scare a man. The good thing was that as soon as my number was made public, some people became exceedingly happy. They called to say where they had got the number from, but also clarified that they weren’t trolls but fans. These same people also later sent me screenshots of those pages which expressed hate.

  We seem to living in a climate of fear and suspicion. ‘Hang on, not over the phone. I’ll call on WhatsApp.’ Talk to any official and you will find that he thinks that some minister is getting his phone tapped. Ministers think that their seniors are recording their calls. Journalists feel that their conversations are being listened to. In every other conversation, reporters mention phone tapping. No one has proof of these things, but everyone fears that their calls are being recorded. This fear is so pervasive that it makes even routine meetings suspicious. The suspicion engendered by fear has cast a deep effect on meetings and on the act of speaking.

  Ask yourself: Has speaking out become fraught with risk? Does speaking about the government make you afraid? Who are you scared of: the government or of that mob present around you in different avatars? Do you speak out up to a point and stop, or do you continue and finish whatever it is that you wanted to say? Do you seek a society in which people crawl around terrified of the government and some mob for no reason, and only those who sing praises of the government night and day strut with their chests puffed out? And why is it that those who criticize the government should be faced with fears and doubts? Only because there is no faith left in institutions, is it not? Who knows which case one will be embroiled in, and then one will be forced to make the rounds of the courts for years. This is very easily done in India.

  In Delhi, which is the centre of India’s power politics, the effect of suspicions and doubts has changed the way in which people have conversations. Some refrain from making photographs public on Facebook, while others don’t communicate on WhatsApp so that texts can’t be used as evidence. Whenever I meet people I come away with yet one more new code word whose only purpose is that the government should not find out in case it tries to snoop. This statement is becoming ever more common: ‘We should not talk about this on the phone.’ If politics transforms society to such an extent that it calls the dissenter a traitor, putting a barbed wire of intimidation between itself and citizens, then that is a form of violence too.

  For those people in Delhi who are connected with governmental work, for those who assess and analyze the work of the government, cellphones—even the most expensive models—have become a source of great insecurity. They carry their phones upon their person but have no faith in them. Things have reached such a pass that when politicians from the ruling party call, the word ‘unknown’ flashes on the screen. Politicians, too, are very alert that no word of criticism should roll off their tongues.

  ‘That finger which is raised against him, that hand which is raised against him; we will come together to break that hand or, if necessary, to hack it off.’

  These words emerged from the mouth of Nityanand Rai, the secretary of the Bihar unit of the BJP and a Member of Parliament, because it has now become normal to strike fear into people’s hearts. This is not the first statement of its kind in Indian politics. Nor is it the last. We will hear more of its kind in the future. All you can do is to don metal armour on your fingers—and on your neck because matters have now gone upwards, from cutting off fingers to hacking at necks.

  During the contr
oversy surrounding the release of the film Padmavati, now Padmavat, an official of the Haryana unit of the BJP, Surajpal, announced a reward of ten crore rupees to anyone who would bring him the heads of Deepika Padukone and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. A man from Meerut had earlier declared a reward of five crores, which Surajpal upped to ten, as if upgrading someone from economy class to business. In that same Meerut, in 2006, Yakub Qureishi of the Bahujan Samaj Party had announced a reward of eleven crores, which some media reports pegged at fifty-one crores, for the head of a cartoonist from Denmark. (I do hope there isn’t a bank in Meerut which gives out loans on EMIs for cutting off heads!) Back then such criminality was still abnormal. Now it is routine. On 12 April 2017, a politician from the BJP Yuva Morcha, Yogesh Varshney, declared that whoever brought him the head of the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee would be given eleven lakh rupees. It is a sign of the times that the amount sounds paltry. Could it be that the demonetization of November 2016 had an effect? Perhaps the man had run out of cash.

  If you think that the threat to cut off a hand in response to speaking against the Prime Minister is an uncommon one, you should pay attention to one more statistic which I have collected from Google. Between 2014 and November 2017, more than forty people were either arrested or had cases slapped against them for criticizing Prime Minister Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath or sharing posts about them.

  It isn’t easy to speak out against Power. Before you speak, you will have to choose between jail and amputation. Or a lynching. For mobs have no fear of the law.

  There are many different kinds of mobs: One mob might set out on the issue of cow slaughter; another on the equally spurious issue of love jihad; yet another because a certain film was made. The social structures of different mobs are distinct in themselves, but they all have one thing in common: the cloak of religious fervor. The fear of these mobs is silencing many a young person who wants to speak about politics but is now staying away from Facebook altogether. This is how an atmosphere of silence is created. You don’t speak when you should.

  The social sanction for speaking out is lessening. This isn’t happening only because of the fear of governments or the mob but also because devotion to religion has been strongly established in a large section of the citizenry. That devotion prepares the ground for the majority to remain silent. And because of that devotion, they are comfortable with the joke that is being made out of democracy in the name of their religion. More precisely, given the behavior and discourse of the present dispensation, one should call this devotion to the Hindu religion. The unfortunate thing is that this devotion is not born out of Hinduism’s capacious and generous traditions but out of the fear of a handful of goonda organizations. That citizen who is laid siege to by the fear generated by these organizations might believe himself to be, at least on paper, loyal to the Constitution, but his behaviour is contrary to everything that the Constitution stands for.

  If Indian democracy is to be modernized, it is vital that devotion to the Constitution of the land be widely promoted. Blind devotion to any religion will always run down and deem inferior this devotion to the Constitution. Which is why, when the secretary of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, Mahipal Singh Makrana, called out for the Kshatriya soldiers of the Indian Army to boycott food in their messes to protest against the film Padmavati, the common man did not understand what that implied and none of the political parties had the courage to unreservedly denounce this call. The Rajputs protesting the film could have registered their protest using Constitutional means. Instead, they were out on the streets, unleashing violence. What emboldened some of them so much that they could stone a bus full of school children? Why did the government and the opposition not unite to condemn them and ensure action against them? Why was there no public outcry? The majority population did not demand action. Was their devotion to Hinduism stopping them? Would they have stayed silent if people of a different faith had stoned a school bus? How has a shared religious identity come to mean this?

  It is this blind religiosity that gives licence to the mob. The mob is greater even than the Constitution.

  A powerful fear is created over maniacal debates on TV channels. Many news anchors swarm like fearsome attackers all over those who ask questions. The common viewer of TV channels sees this and starts losing confidence. He can see what becomes of those who raise questions. He feels that there is danger in standing apart from the mob. So he stays quiet, and by his silence he becomes a part of the mob. Fear has seeped into people’s consciousness.

  This has had the greatest effect on the minority community. It has begun to keep out of every kind of debate. And the space which has been vacated by the community has been filled up by those maulanas, who do represent Muslims, but speak like those very majority institutions in whose communal agendas these maulanas are caught up. These maulanas have made Muslims even more insecure. To the extent that Muslim friends advise me that I should avoid platforms where issues related to their community are being debated. So this is the extent to which they have been made to feel politically irrelevant. Most Muslims now feel that if they were to take to the streets with their demands, the media will see only their beards or their sherwanis, and it will not talk about their issues. This is what the acceptance of one’s status as a second-class citizen means.

  The status of second-class citizenry has fallen not just to the minority community, but also to people from the majority community. In this democracy of fear, religion is not the only determinant of minority status; the act of questioning the government too can transform you into a minority.

  ‘Ravish-ji, aren’t you afraid of speaking out?’ ‘How do you speak out in such an atmosphere?’ ‘Doesn’t your family forbid you?’ I have no substantial answers to these questions. What is it I am saying, after all, that I should be specially praised for it? I am only expressing the views of the people. Why should anyone feel that I possess an ore of courage within me which people can mine by repeatedly asking me how I do my job? Are people afraid?

  Everyone who asks me these questions feels that Ravish will give a fitting reply: he will say that he drinks a glass of Bournvita before leaving home. Or that he offers a laddoo to Hanuman. I have no magical mantra as far as the act of speaking out is concerned. I know that Power will make my life such hell that it will be difficult for me to survive in my profession. There are many Hindi-language newspapers already which do not accept my articles. Before 2014, I would be irritated by constant phone calls from these same newspapers asking me to write for them.

  What I say isn’t very brave in itself. Those who hear what I have to say are so terrified that my speaking out at all seems courageous. They ask how it is that I speak when they are rendered mute by fear. There are many who joke that Bihari people feel no fear. Which Bihari would not feel chuffed hearing good words about his home? But this is not a question about being Bihari. Marathis speak out, Bengalis do. Gujaratis speak out, too. And those who speak out in Gujarat have heard and seen much worse. I am not the only one doing the talking. Many other journalists are writing too. But now newspapers in their respective languages don’t publish what they write.

  To speak out is not difficult. What is hard is to walk through the tunnel of fear before the act of talking. That fear is not always the fear of Power. One is scared of making mistakes. The fear of possible reactions to what one has to say also bothers one. The battle with fear begins once you have said what you wanted to. It is then you understand whether you have the courage to face that which you have said: when friends call, exhorting you to stay alert. To stay quiet. That times are bad. There might be just one call out of ten in which the caller might say, ‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry. Keep speaking.’ Most of the rest have faith neither in the institutions of the land nor in society. And everyone feels that the world doesn’t care at all.

  Advice given by friends and family also creates fear within you. I was giving a speech at the Press Club after Gauri Lankesh was murdered.
Many of the people present there were looking at me as they might have looked at Gauri. Their eyes were filled with a sense of warning. They put their hands on my shoulder as they left, as if to tell me, ‘You’re next.’ They were loading their fears on to me. Many viewers called me after they saw my speech at the Press Club. For a few days I kept walking about like a living corpse. Messages were arriving in my mobile phone inbox urging me to take care of myself. Get some security, they said, at least register an FIR with the police. Viewers who were watching me were very stressed. The IT Cell had performed its task of striking fear well.

  That you live amidst such well-meaning advice is enough. In today’s time, we are giving our fears away to others. People are sharing their fears by becoming supporters of the government too. I frequently meet people who tell me, ‘Stop digging around Modi-ji’s foundations. Reform yourself.’ Is all this fear which surrounds us because of Modi-ji? Really? Will it go away if we stop being critical of Modi-ji? I don’t think so. The jinn is out of the bottle.

  And what am I writing, or broadcasting in my programmes, that a supporter of the government should fear that some game of the establishment will be disrupted? I, at least, harbour no such illusion. All the rules which once governed the media are destroyed, after all. Ninety per cent of the media is filled with praise. Wherever there are critics, they are being attacked. They are called upon to be more than impartial. But those who break all rules of journalism to play in the lap of power know no definition of impartiality.

  Just as an individual seeks a way to free himself from fear, an alive and conscious society wages war to emerge from its fears. If you live in fear of being killed, you aren’t really alive, even though you may be physically so. You can be sure that you are alive only when you speak out. He who cannot, misses out in life. So everyone should speak. It is very important also that we begin teaching our children to speak up and to speak out right from a young age and at home. Don’t stop them. We keep forbidding our children at home and, one day, the fear they feel spreads out of the home and into the world. Most of our fears are created and sustained in our homes, where we are taught to keep silent.