“…when men have realised that time has upset many fighting faiths…that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade of ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market…”, these were the words authored by Oliver Wendell Holmes, a United States Supreme Court Justice, in his dissent in Abrams vs United States (1919). The passage written almost a century ago was a pivotal moment in the history of free speech in America, and holds lessons for us in India.
As Andrew Cohen of The Atlantic writes about Justice Holmes’s dissent – powerful because it went beyond the legal precepts to a fundamental fact of human existence: we all make mistakes. We have good opinions and bad ones, and that we can never be right at all times. Only when one acknowledges this limitation, can one recognise the value of free speech – an ongoing experiment directed towards imperfect knowledge.
Yet we have come to increasingly see free speech as an imposition of another’s view on us. As if when one’s assumptions are questioned, it becomes an attack on one’s character. Naturally when the discussion moves from the issue at hand to the personal, it has a tendency to breakdown dialogue. One wonders how the rules of debate got reduced to judgement of one’s character rather than the merits of one’s argument; belittling the opponent as opposed to working towards common ground; conversation over violence.
No debate that is more glaring in its quality is the one on nationalism. On debates such as these, certain groups will advocate strong positions based on their reading of layers of power above them, even if it is not explicitly said so. The problem is that these layers of power, conforming to any of the many ideological frameworks, fundamentally work in monolithic structures. What this mean is that it leaves little scope for the breadth of ideas that is crucial for a constructive, if not an amicable debate. If these monolithic frameworks are the only way that actors are informed in pursuance of their actions, we are looking at the same quality of debate until new ideas emerge from outside these structures.
The consequences of hardening of ideologies amongst these structures are what we are witnessing at this point. While there is nothing wrong to being sympathetic to particular ideologies, it is the hardening of positions that is closing the space for debate. Unfortunately today, the former is considered a sin and the latter ignored. If students are the lowest actor in the spectrum of power layers, the hardened positions have come to define their relations with their peers in a space which is traditionally the primary platform for debate: our universities.
The idea of violence and bullying defeats the concept of a university. There can and must never be a reason justifying otherwise. Historically universities have promoted certain lines of thought and even perpetuated social hierarchies, yet one will always find spaces in every university that engages in an array of perspectives on various social, cultural and political issues. The scope and audience of these viewpoints may be limited, and even peripheral, to the functioning of the university – but it allows a congenial space for actors (read: students) to critically reflect on the issues of the day without being imposed by any particular ideology. Most often these peripheral discussions add vibrancy and sustain the culture of debate. To see our universities being pulled into the artificial binaries (e.g. nationalism and ant-national) and strategic violence, bores ill on the institution of the university and its role in society.
That is why we need to protect our universities. Both from institutional neglect as well as fundamentalist forces that seek to reinforce particular lines of thought. The design of a modern university requires, at the very least, a modicum of academic autonomy even if it belies conventional ideas and thoughts. An environment that encourages different points of view, new lines of critical inquiry and scholarship, as the university is envisaged; knows that it is the questions, and not necessarily answers, that have pushed the boundaries of human knowledge.
To check the current assault on our universities, social scientist Shiv Visvanathan asserts that one has to rewrite the contract between the university and society. Recent instances have demonstrated that students have the resilience to fight back despite the threat of violence and abuse. Thereon faculty members joined these protest, in a superb articulation of a shared vision of the university as a critical space for debate. An example are the JNU Lectures on Nationalism that were started by the JNU Teacher’s Association to counter the ‘anti-national’ tag given to the university and its students, and to make a point that there were various definitions of nationalism. These lectures have now been carefully compiled and edited as a book. The future of our society is to a large extent dependent on the curiosity and critical thinking of those in universities today. Even though today’s developments may not affect us directly, as a society we must guard against any form of restrictions on free speech in universities.
Ultimately the commitment to the freedom of expression comes down to hearing out even those who are not just disagreeable, but loathsome, or just plain wrong. Whether we like it or not, their view points are also a part of the ‘competition of the market’ as Holmes described. A dose of civility and compromise should be a starting point.
(The author is a policy analyst. Follow on Twitter @rohitrrs.)
