COLUMN: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai wants more freedom of expression in America.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: At a time when India’s democracy seems to be crumbling to mobocracy, Hindutva radicals taking center-stage with blood curdling ultra-nationalistic slogans, calculated violence to curb dissent and protest, freedom of speech and expression quickly becoming like a paper kite ensnared in wires of electric poles in Delhi which shreds exposed to the elements, the Indian American-origin Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Varadaraj Pai, has expressed dismay over the danger of losing free expression and marketplace of ideas in the United States, especially on college campuses.
Pai, whose four-year term as the FCC Commissioner – in which role he decides what’s appropriate to be broadcast on American airwaves, and what’s not – comes to an end in June of this year, in an interview to the Washington Examiner lamented the loss of freedom of expression in American society.
“I think that poses a special danger to a country that cherishes First Amendment speech, freedom of expression, even freedom of association,” Pai, the son of emigrants from India, Radha and Varadaraj Pai, who attended Harvard University and the University of Chicago, and a Republican pick for his current post, told the Washington Examiner. “I think it’s dangerous, frankly, that we don’t see more often people espousing the First Amendment view that we should have a robust marketplace of ideas where everybody should be willing and able to participate.”
Pai’s comments eerily reflect the ongoing political and social row in India over anti-national protests in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, which culminated in unprecedented and unfettered rowdiness and violence against liberals by ultra-nationalistic supporters, including some lawyers, at the Patiala House courts, on Monday and Wednesday, this week. Reports say the Delhi Police were mute spectators to the goings on.
“Largely what we’re seeing, especially on college campuses, is that if my view is in the majority and I don’t agree with your view, then I have the right to shout you down, disrupt your events, or otherwise suppress your ability to get your voice heard,” Pai, who grew up in Kansas with both his parents working as physicians at a local hospital, and now lives in Virginia, said.
“Private actors like Twitter have the freedom to operate their platform as they see fit,” Pai said, “[but] I would hope that everybody embraces the idea of the marketplace of ideas. The proverbial street corner of the 21st century, where people can gather to debate issues is increasingly social media, which serves as a platform for public discourse,” he added.
Pai opined that if voters and institutions fail to defend the First Amendment of free speech within their own spheres, it could lead to more government regulations curtailing that freedom.
“The text of the First Amendment is enshrined in our Constitution, but there are certain cultural values that undergird the amendment that are critical for its protections to have actual meaning,” Pai said. “If that culture starts to wither away, then so too will the freedom that it supports.”
As India roils over issues of nationalism, anti-nationalism, sedition, the thin line between free speech and inciting racial hatred, it’s good to remember that in the world’s oldest democracy, such issues continue to be debated vigorously in one form or the other.
The laws on sedition in the US date back to 1798, when President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts. Over the centuries, it has evolved to cover malicious writing against the President and the US Congress, to willfully spread false news of the American army and navy, to teach the desirability of overthrowing the federal government, and to even punish protesters of the Vietnam War.
The law was used in 2005 to try investigate a nurse, Laura Berg, who worked at the US Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in New Mexico. She was charged with writing a letter to a local newspaper editor accusing several national leaders of criminal negligence. The charges were dropped a year later, according to Wikipedia.
Till date, there have been only three prominent cases of sentences under sedition laws, in the US: in 1981, Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican nationalist and Vietnam War veteran was convicted and sentenced to 70 years in prison for seditious conspiracy; in 1987, 14 white supremacists were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of seditious conspiracy; and in 2010, 9 members of the Hutaree militia were charged with crimes, including seditious conspiracy.
And while protesters in India who raise slogans in support of freedom and secession for the people of states like Kashmir in India are being deemed anti-national – with most of these protesters being displaced Kashmiris themselves, according to reports – in the US, talk of secession has been going on since the birth of the nation. It’s debated come ballot time every two years, in local and congressional races.
Right from 1860, when 11 Southern states each declared secession from the US to form the Confederate States of America, which ultimately was defeated in the Civil War in 1965, to continuous talk in present times of Texas seceding from the US, it’s a matter for open debate. So much so, that a 2008 Zogby International poll found that 22% of Americans believed that “any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic“ and a 2014 Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 23.9% of Americans supported their state seceding from the union if necessary; 53.3% opposed the idea.
And it may be a surprise to some, but in 2015, there were a total of 892 active hate groups in the US, up from the 784 such groups listed a year before, according to data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and released today, on Wednesday.
These groups include the Ku Klux Klan – 190; Neo-Nazi – 94; White Nationalist – 95; Racist Skinhead – 95; Christian Identity – 19; Neo-Confederate – 35; Black Separatist – 180; and general hate groups, which include anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-LGBT groups, among others.
What’s important is that when it comes to Black separatist groups, which include the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party, the organization ‘Black Lives Matter’ which through vociferous protests and marches has brought a new sense of identity for Black youth all across the US, highlighting racial incidents – especially targeting errant police officers – and opening up debate about the issue, is not deemed as an organization that incites hatred, by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
This reporter saw a protest by some ‘Black Lives Matter’ organizers, at Grand Central Terminal, in the heart of New York City, late last year.
A group of protesters, black and white, stood in the middle of Grand Central, one of the most policed and guarded train stations in the US, holding up placards offering a story to read for all those who were interested: of a young Black mother, Miriam Carey, from Brooklyn, NY, who was shot dead by some police officers in Washington, DC, on Oct. 3, 2013, apparently for an error in judgment by her, an unintentional act. None of the officers were punished for that shooting; in fact, all received a standing ovation from members of the US Congress, and are now back in active duty.
Scores of people came by and looked at the placards, read it, walked away; some commiserated with the organizers. Black Lives Matter organizers handed out pamphlets. Police officers stood by as they do on the perimeters of the station complex, didn’t interfere.
Question is: was that protest anti-national, or to be construed as inciting racial hatred in society, disturbing peace, or seditious, if the implication of US Congress members honoring those police officers is to be taken into account, and seen as being part of a conspiracy to hide a crime?
This week, the Suffolk County Courthouse in New York hung a middle schooler’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ drawing as part of its Black History Month display, which read: “Stop The Violence. Black Lives Matter. Stop The Racism.” Some police officers have protested the move. The drawing is still up.
The fact is, America’s democracy thrives because of such transparent protests, dissents, and the subsequent discussions that take place. In restaurants, bars, street corners, college campuses, in homes, Congress and Senate floors, and by even by the President of the country. It’s what makes America the greatest nation on Earth, in allowing freedom of speech and expression to flourish.
India, and the Indian public, perhaps, need to ask whether it would be appropriate to protest publicly and organize rallies when businessman and GOP presidential contender Donald Trump talks of barring all Muslims to the US, including from India – like the UK did a signature drive to bar him from the country; or to hound Muslims within the country on communal grounds. Which would show India’s nationalism better?
India, and the Indian public, perhaps, need to ask if it’s better to charge only those who commit anti-national crimes under sedition laws after a thorough investigation or to send a posse of policemen to arrest all those who were part of a protest.
An Indian friend of mine who is settled in the US recently expressed a worry to me, which I found amusing at first but then, on introspection, realized it had its merits.
“I’m worried my son is going discuss his moves on Minecraft in public when we’re in India,” he said to me.
“Why?” I asked him.
“He keeps talking of killing cows to get food and to make leather for armor,” he said. “It’s part of Minecraft,” he explained.
Crazy – or well, not that crazy – as that may sound, killing cows are part of the hugely popular Minecraft video game, which has been bought by more than 21 million people globally. Cows are killed to survive, for food, and as my friend explained, to make armor, to counter threats, in the game.
Now, envisage a scenario where my friend and his 10-year-old son get into a conversation on perhaps a public train in India, talk of the same Minecraft moves, to ‘kill cows to stay alive, and then take the hide of that cow’s skin and make armor out of it, to thrive’.
And sitting right behind them, listening avidly, are a bunch of men who believe in the Hindutva ideology of the sanctity of a cow, to ban eating beef in India.
You can imagine the rest.
(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief, The American Bazaar)