Gatha: minorities

Law schools in India have remained largely isolated from discussions on the issues of Dalit identity, untouchability, and discrimination faced by students belonging to underprivileged and marginalized communities. The young lawyers to-be of the country have enormous social responsibility by virtue of being the torch bearers of rule of law and potential agents of social change. Alack of sensitization and awareness on issues surrounding caste and a need to extend support in academics to marginalized students in the university, especially those who are unable to utilize academic opportunities provided by the university due to language and other social barriers and disabilities led to the formation of the APPSC in 2015.

The Study Circle derives its name from three pioneers in social justice reform in India, Ambedkar, Periyar, and Phule, as their fight against various forms of social discrimination and work in the area of educational empowerment was tremendous.

Initial Journey

Over the span of a semester and a half, APPSC has organized events and programs in order to move closer to the objectives that we, as a group, set out to achieve at our inception. Some of our notable activities are talks by eminent speakers, such as Professor Sukhdeo Thorat (economist, Former Chairman of UGC and Chairman of ICSSR) and the dynamic and young Ananya Gaur and Nakul Sawhney, who have directed the critically acclaimed documentaries, Caste on the Menu Card and Immoral Daughters in the Land of Honour, which were also screened by us. We have started our independent online magazine, Savitri, named after Savitribai Phule. It is a platform to discuss opinions and counter-currents within society and provide recognition to Savitri Phule’s views and struggle. The Peer Project Guidance Program and the making of past years’ answer sheets available at the library have been some of the other endeavours undertaken by us to provide academic support to students.

APPSC organised an interactive session with Prof. Satish Deshpande, one of the most renowned social thinkers and sociologists of the country, on the topic 'identifying discrimination: How Institutions discriminate.’ He gave us his valuable insights and outlined the ways in which gender, caste and other forms of discrimination can get embedded in the institutional practice of higher education.

Ambedkar Jayanti

On the occassion of the 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle in association with the Center for Social Inclusion and Minority Rights, NLU Delhi, organised a guest lecture titled ‘Dr. Ambedkar; The Maker of Modern India’ by Prof. Dr. Raj Kumar, Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Delhi. A formal tribute-paying ceremony was also organized on 14th April, 2016in the NLU Delhi campus, wherein our esteemed Vice-Chancellor and Registrar were also present.

Dalit History Month

The Study Circle celebrated Dalit History Month in April for the first time on campus. As a part of the same, a poster-making competition was organised. Students drew on various caste and minority-related issues.

On 19th April 2016, as part of Dalit History Month, the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle organised a talk in Hindi on ‘The Importance of Dalit Literature in 21st Century’ by Dr. Jai Prakash, who is a prolific Hindi Dalit writer and has a good understanding of the initial discouragement that Dalit Literature faced.

On 25th April 2016, Vira Sathidar, the actor who played Narayan Kamble in the Oscar-nominated movie Court shared his personal experience of the Indian legal system and judicial repression with students of NLU Delhi. He delivered a talk on ‘Branding Naxal and Beyond: State and Judicial Repression in India.’ He provided personal insights on the crackdown of state machinery and the legal system on voices of dissent and activists who fight against the system.

As part of Dalit History Month, Prof. Rajmohan Gandhi delivered a talk on ‘Nationalism and Some of its Meanings,’ and, in light of recent controversies, he addressed the relevance of slogans and symbols in assessing patriotism and nationalism of political identities. The students enjoyed the interactive session and had lots of interesting questions to ask Prof. Rajmohan.

Jai Bhim!

The Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle at NLU Delhi is a students led initiative.

For any comments or suggestions, the group can be contacted at appsc.nludelhi@gmail.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Ambedkar-Periyar-Phule-Study-Circle-NLU-Delhi-133748560317383/?fref=ts

Ambedkar

Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle (APPSC), National Law University, Delhi – Journey So Far

Law schools in India have remained largely isolated from discussions on the issues of Dalit identity, untouchability, and discrimina...

Growing up as a brown kid in the United States, you learn a lot. First, you learn what it means to be a minority. Second, you unlearn everything about your culture that your parents try so hard to teach you as you force yourself to assimilate as quietly and naturally as possible within white American culture. After that, you grow up to learn that you have been robbed of your precious traditional identity that the same people who looked at you strangely for are now gleefully appropriating. And if you were forced to move back because yours, like several other immigrant parents in the early 2000s, realized after about ten years of forced patriotism, that they want to ‘move back home’ you find out that you are stuck in this weird limbo of trying to re-learn everything about being desi while your Indian peers overtly try to emulate the west. Like every other first generation immigrant child that ends up moving back to your home country, you are too American for India, and far too Indian to be truly American and more than ever, you are simply confused about what you really believe in.

However, something that being in the minority teaches you (apart from looking back at your childhood ten years later and realizing with horror that you were the victim of very blatant and also shadily encased racism – which, now that you think about it, explains a lot) is, perspective. You, better than any of your white and brown peers understand oppression and social justice in a more nuanced, fine and of course, first hand manner. Are you thankful for it? Yes. Are you now faced with the self-inflicted burden of fighting for every single oppressed group that suffers at the hands of a self-appointed, bigoted authority? Also yes.

So, how do you even start on your anti-capitalist, social justice warrior, desi-feminist journey? You go to law school, you use your newfound understanding of constitutional law and justice and you speak out.

Collective sighs fill the class as you raise your hand every time a question on gender is asked. You are branded ‘reverse racist’ because of your perpetual contention with white America (and if you use your freedom of speech to explain how reverse racism isn’t a real thing, everyone uses theirs to call you wrong). ‘I can say whatever I want, it’s in the constitution’ your opponent argues, forcing you to actually reconsider your approach to this argument. I mean, he’s right isn’t he? But you recall how a six year old white boy used the same line in elementary to make fun of the other Indian kids that dared to wear bindis in public school, and it doesn’t seem so right anymore.

So what is it really? Who and what is free speech meant for? To give standup comics the right to make rape jokes? To give children the ability to be freely racist, as long as their words do not affect their actions? Truthfully, I don’t know and I’m not even sure that will ever have a solid answer. Which begs the question, what does freedom of expression truly mean and where do its limits lie? Does true free speech even have any limits?

Free speech has always been the subject of heated debate. In 1633, Galileo disobeyed the church to perpetuate his claim that the Earth revolved around the sun. Religious fundamentalists in 1859 unsuccessfully tried to silence Charles Darwin when he came out with his theory on natural selection. The ancient Greeks recognized the existence of free speech long before anyone else around 350 BC when Aristotle insulted the jury at his trial. The right of free speech has been around even before it was enshrined in any legal document, deriving its authority from the people who dared to speak up and those who dared to believe. Free speech is an essential element to a free existence, let alone a democracy.

The importance of this right isn’t what the argument is about, because the minute you enter that debate, you’ve already lost. But like most rights, it isn’t absolute. The parameters the state has put up - sedition, hate speech, threat to national security - are fairly clear. It’s on things like satire, decency and humor where the lines between free speech and ‘toxic talk’ start to blur.

Four months ago when the Charlie Hebdo tragedy struck, the citizens of Paris took the streets brandishing signs that read ‘Je Suis Charlie’, displaying their solidarity and showing that no act of terror will take away their freedom of speech (of course, thousands were being massacred in North Nigeria but no one cared enough and the white supremacist media didn’t even bother adequately reporting it). But as with any tragedy that hits the white, western world - social media immediately erupted (metaphorically) in flames. The idea that ‘free speech was under threat’ enthused everyone to jump onto the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ bandwagon. It was ‘#trending’ on twitter, Jared Leto proudly slipped it into his Golden Globes acceptance speech and every other remotely aware young adult was quick to defend the satirical magazine half because the youth are always looking for an excuse to rebel and half because, ‘If we don’t have free speech, we have nothing’.

Perhaps, it is my experience as living as a person of color in a white-majority country, because of which I have learnt the importance of culture and religion and its impact on identity in a manner that not many people (especially those, who have all their lives, lived as a majority) have had the experience of having. The universal white supremacist belief (that you unknowingly buy into and perpetuate) stems from the colonial era and every nation of color knows only too well the ‘white man’s burden’ to bring us to civilization and under this dictate to us which parts of our culture are okay to display publicly, what constitutes ‘terrorist’ activity and even what is satire/acceptable to joke about. But we’d be lying if we said that we were ever only the victims of such subjugation. The hierarchy of oppression is a strange thing because for whatever reason, no one ever seems to understand from experience how it is the worst thing to be at the bottom of this structurally unequal society, they continue to oppress whoever else they possibly can. I mean sure no non-white country ever started the trans-atlantic slave trade but none of us are any strangers to creating barriers that stop certain groups from having full access to their ‘equal rights’. Yes India, I’m looking at you.

Years before colonization, we had our very own homegrown system of oppression based on caste. And almost 70 years later when our constitution has specific provisions to tackle this particular issue, this oppression isn’t gone, it’s just taken on different forms, often at times being harder to detect even for the ones actually being oppressed.

The Jim Crow era has long since passed but why did the white protesters who broke Baltimore’s curfew on February 10^th get multiple warnings by cops who “did not want to arrest anybody” when right after that, a black man walking by with his hands in the air was pepper-sprayed violently dragged across the street?

There are people who have the ability to enforce these rights, and there are others that face barriers to having full access to these same rights, even though they might be from the same economic and social background. Very often it is either the past their past (history of castism/racism) or the discrimination they face today (islamophobia) that makes them the victim of a deep rooted inequality that is beyond any sort of legal issue. Think about it, it is not a coincidence that the people who most often have a contention with equality under the law are also people that are the recipients of universal bigotry.

Let me explain, Je ne suis pas Charlie. I am not Charlie. I don’t even want to be Charlie. And this in no way means that I condone acts of violence as a response to hurt sentiments. It just means that Charlie Hebdo is a racist, homophobic, bigoted magazine that used the defense of ‘freedom of speech’ to defend its racist, homophobic and bigoted cartoons. Never did it use its platform to push for social or political change in France - a country where the Muslim community has been abused and ignored for ages. While it claimed to be a left wing magazine that supposedly questioned the actions of the right wing, more often than not it looked like they were laughing alongside them. Besides, the idea behind governments implementing a provision for freedom of speech was not to give people the right to say terrible things to everyone else without any repercussions. Just as satire isn’t about belittling the oppressed (people of color), it is about challenging the power (a point which Charlie Hebdo blatantly ignored).

So just like the argument, ‘I am entitled to my own opinion’, the argument ‘I have a right to say whatever I want’ is problematic not only because it is untrue, but also because it is a statement used by oppressors and bigots to perpetuate their backward and oppressive thinking. We also often let them get away with using this excuse, which ultimately defeats the purpose of ‘changing mindset’ that the Indian public so fervently speaks of when discussing solutions to long running problems.

It also takes away from the idea that with the right to free speech comes a high burden of responsibility to ensure that you use it the right way. What is the purpose behind the United States allowing a ‘National Draw Muhammad Day’ to be held as protest against limiting free speech when it was made solely for the purpose of antagonizing one particular religious group? It isn’t about blasphemy. It’s about being a decent human being. So instead of asking why people have a problem with other people exercising their right to express themselves, ask the question of why the people expressing themselves feel the need to do so by making another group of people uncomfortable?

While that is happening in the west, the 2015 World Press Freedom Index ranked India 136 out of 180 countries (then again, disclaimer: survey conducted by majority white countries who decide how ‘free’ freedom should be). All Indians know how notorious its government is for clamping down on individual rights to expression. We can’t even update our Facebook without the potential for being arrested (slightly thrilling, young teenage rebels would so feel). And when finally one of us actually uses satire correctly, to protest against the corrupt government that gave us such a right for this very purpose, they get thrown in prison (Aseem Trivedi and how the Indian Government hates people to who are right: a memoir).

The Indian Censor Board won’t even release the American version of ‘Gone Girl’ because it has too much sex, but they’ll leave all the violence in it and give it a great review - because sure, our citizens can engage in violently harmful acts but god forbid they have intercourse in a nation built on the Gandhian principles of non-violence.

With banning the (albeit, highly offensive) All India Bakchod ‘Roast’ on the internet, and throwing around accusations of sedition like candy on Halloween night, the Indian government is yet to score points amongst its citizens for upholding the glorious right to free speech. In India, everything we worship everything – Gods, celebrities and especially our sanskaars so almost anything becomes blasphemous or ‘indecent’, while France on the other hand, takes ‘secular’ to another level entirely, ignoring the fact that despite it not thinking so, religion and religious sentiments, actually do exist.

So where is this so called ‘line’ between free and hate speech and why haven’t we been able to draw it yet? In the effort to reach this seemingly unattainable balance, the idea that any act of the government ‘damages’ free speech must be precluded by questioning whether it is justifiable for society to protect that type of speech in the first place (instead of asking me why I’m not laughing at the rape joke, why don’t you explain to me why it’s funny).

The very thought of being held accountable for expressing yourself in certain ways (i.e., bigotry) immediately paints a very dictatorial picture, where the right to say anything at all is removed. The idea that any kind of speech or expression can be banned is unfathomable for a generation where every single thought about everything is expressed online for the whole world to see. Which is why today, any sort of limitations on the right to express yourself through comedy, satire and even artwork is argued to be unconstitutional.

But, ‘there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something versus having the moral right not to be held accountable for it’, as China Meiville puts it. A distinction often overlooked because of how closely intertwined they are. Being asked not to say something objectionable, or apologizing for the same does not mean you are stripped of your legal right to say that thing, therefore, using the defense ‘free speech’ time and again in those situations doesn’t make you demanding of your legal rights but instead just demands an end to the debate about on the criticism of what you say.

Ask different questions – Why do Americans need to express themselves by drawing Prophet Muhammad, what exactly are they achieving by it? Why does the standup comic necessarily need to incorporate rape jokes into act to be funny? After all, there are things that are straight up banned – holocaust denial in England is a criminal offence, and several countries have made the promotion of Nazism absolutely illegal, despite it being an ideology that some people actually uphold. And this is great! No one ever argues that these bans should be lifted. So how does this invisible threshold exist, the one where people have seemed to unofficially deem Auschwitz jokes during comedic roasts as ‘inappropriate’ but are okay with islamophobic jokes and comedic pieces on ISIS beheading innocent journalists?

More than rushing to protest any sort of limitation on free expression because of the idea that you need to defend your rights no matter what, look at what right you are even defending - the right to be racist? Why do you even need that right in the first place?

Are we incapable of drawing a line in a way that protects even those that have structurally unequal access to free speech? Atheists like Bill Maher will confidently assert that religion should play no part and free speech is meant to be absolute. But Pope Francis on the other hand says no right allows people to insult or speak harm of something so personal and important to others. Implementing either points of view, can be a slippery slope – as is seen in both western and eastern countries. The right of free expression and how ‘free’ it truly is, seems to be a metric of progress and reflect the values and culture of a country, but what about the values and culture of a country that protects its citizens from the repercussions of being openly bigoted? What do we ever say about those societies?

India – where actually using your right to free expression for its designed purpose will get you convicted and right wing political groups scour the streets to beat up youth that aren’t following their sanskaari values.

BUT, The United States - self-proclaimed ‘land of the free’ where racism is so deep rooted that in 2015, the law enforcement looks like it is committing black genocide. France - the birthplace of democratic values is universally known for making it difficult for Muslims to practice their religion in peace.

Rhia B is a law student at Jindal Global University

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The Idea of Free Speech

Growing up as a brown kid in the United States, you learn a lot. First, you learn what it means to be a minority. Second, you unlearn...

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Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle (APPSC), National Law University, Delhi – Journey So Far

The Idea of Free Speech

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Ambedkar Phule Periyar Study Circle (APPSC), National Law University, Delhi – Journey So Far

The Idea of Free Speech

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