Two leaders, former US President Donald Trump of ignominious reputation and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, have both made news. Trump was arrested in the US for alleged payoffs to a porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence on his sexual trysts with her, violating election law. Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand was sentenced to two years in jail, the maximum which could be imposed, for his defamatory remarks about the Modi surname.
Gandhi’s support from the US, followed by Germany and the European Union, roused the ire of the saffron brigade who say these foreign countries have no business commenting on India’s internal affairs. But they forget these counties have commented on their own soil where they are guaranteed freedom of speech as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For, other nations can comment on Rahul Gandhi’s conviction just as much as Indian anchors can poke fun at Donald Trump.
Trump too has his supporters, as renegade politicians always do. But the support Trump has garnered is nothing like that for Rahul Gandhi who was disqualified from Parliament with alacrity after his conviction. We forget that Gandhi made his comments at Kolar in Karnataka but he was convicted by a court at Surat in Gujarat which, prima facie, has no jurisdiction.
Hence, we are moving away from the concept of a democratic state being held accountable to its people through transparency and the ballot every five years to the concept of an opposition leader (and by implication its citizens) being held accountable to the state for lampooning the Modi surname. For Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly raised the spectre of Adani’s proximity to the prime minister and China occupying Indian territory.
The government may have unwittingly made Rahul Gandhi a martyr. The same government has proposed to amend the Information Technology Rules, 2021 to tighten internet censorship which has been flayed by global NGOs like the Internet Freedom Foundation. Coming soon after the blocking of the BBC’s two-part documentary, India: The Modi Question, we have to ask ourselves if we have turned into an autocracy disguised as a democracy.
To return to Rahul Gandhi, politics and law are inseparable because it is the politicians who are law-makers and then turn law-breakers. The “Actual Malice Test” was devised in 1966 by the US Supreme Court in a landmark case known as New York Times versus Sullivan, where the plaintiff proved that the statements in the New York Times were false.
But the US Supreme Court laid down that public figures should not be oversensitive to false statements made about them in the media which could not be verified, so long as there was no malice in publishing these false statements, because the effect of awarding damages to Sullivan against the New York Times would culminate in having a chilling effect on free discourse about issues of public importance involving public figures.
The US Supreme Court held that public officials could not recover damages for libel without proving a statement was made with actual malice — defined as “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not”.
Nearly 60 years after this test was devised in the US, India continues to deify its leaders — so that Rahul Gandhi has had six defamation cases filed against him. This, naturally, has a chilling effect on public discourse about corrupt ministers because their chelas will willing file proxy defamation cases on behalf of their leaders.
Asking why all chors like Lalit Modi and Nirav Modi have the same surname as Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not amount to abusing an entire caste or community because the surname ‘Modi” is used by OBCs, Parsis, Muslims, and is found throughout Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. It means grocer, grain merchant or an oil extractor depending upon your religion, your lineage and your ancestral place.
Opposition leaders like Rahul Gandhi have a duty to speak out and expose the ham-handed enforcement of the Prevention of Child Marriage Act, 2006 in Assam to change the socio-psychological behaviour of the people — but doing this may send him to jail again. Three thousand offenders were booked in Assam out of 8,000 men who married minor girls out of which only 4,074 cases were filed till March 10, this year.
Writing in Mid-Day on April 3, columnist Ajaz Ashraf writes that since May 2014 when the present ruling dispensation swept to power, its members have written 640 opinion pieces within 3,000 days in The Times of India (ToI), the Indian Express (IE) and Hindustan Times (HT), “excluding the Hindu as politician-writers are few and far between in it.”
Of the 640 opinion pieces, IE accounted for 337, HT for 97 and the ToI for 206. Former Vice President Venkaiah Naidu has written 68 opinion pieces across the three newspapers while former minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, a darling of a certain news channel which chants “the nation wants to know”, penned 22 opinion pieces.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote 18 pieces for the ToI and nine for the HT while Home Minister Amit Shah wrote 12 opinion pieces for the ToI and nine for the HT. It is difficult to imagine any of these editors phoning the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to commission a piece but when they get a call from the PMO, they dare not refuse a slot by dropping some other columnist.
None of these editors thought of asking Rahul Gandhi to write an opinion piece on his take about being sentenced to two years in jail for abusing a community. Apparently, these journos think he is not worthy enough to figure on their hallowed pages. Just as Dump Trump! is the motto of the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Dr Olav Albuquerque holds a PhD in law and is a senior journalist and advocate at the Bombay High Court
