Greetings. It’s a pity that in the India of 2020, in the Era of Minus 23.9, we should have to gather to discuss something as primitive as t...
Greetings. It’s a pity that in the India of 2020, in the Era of Minus 23.9, we should have to gather to discuss something as primitive as the Right to Free Speech – surely the most fundamental building block of a functioning democracy.
On the other hand, perhaps we have ceded the right to call ourselves one – economically, and socially we are on our knees. Over the past few years our country has suffered from a series of artificially induced heart attacks (the sudden and unexplained demonetisation, the rough-shod introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, the abrogation of Section 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, the attempts to ram through the Citizenship Amendment Act, the bungled Covid-19 lockdown and now Covid itself.
Like often happens to patients with diabetes, these heart attacks have been silent attacks – masked by the pre-existing illness. That illness in the case of our country is the cacophony of relentless propaganda and the dereliction of duty by public institutions who have done little to stop the slide. And this includes the judiciary. Our heart is failing. And one of the doctors who – like the many academic, activists, lawyers and scholars who are in jail right now – has been warning us for the longest time about our...
