dna edit: Watch thy tongue

Despite the severe backlash against public speeches laced with communal hatred, vulgarity and gender insensitivity, our politicians are hardly deterred. If the Congress’ Saharanpur candidate Imran Masood promised to chop Narendra Modi into pieces, a Rajasthan BJP legislator has threatened to strip Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and dispatch them to Italy. The blame for this descent of political discourse into physical violence lies squarely with political parties. Quick to crack the whip on acts of dissent and dissidence, parties have shied away from demanding the same discipline for such crude and repulsive swipes at rivals.

The relinquishment of all claims to political morality aside, the impunity to such offenders acts as an implicit sanction for more of such attacks.

The credibility of the political class is at its nadir. Parliament and legislative assemblies have witnessed unprecedented instances of misbehaviour by MPs and MLAs. Such a long rope to politicians appealing to the base sentiments of voters by whetting the appetite for violence, communalism and sexist thinking vitiates the very idea of democracy. Already facing allegations of democracy being restricted to the regular conduct of elections, parties must focus on the performance of an incumbent government and the promise of change, rather than vitriolic or personal attacks. The use of cultural, and even religious, idioms to convey political ideas is an accepted and popular strategy among public speakers to connect with rural and uneducated voters. But instead of deploying them cleverly in constructive political messaging, the easier route of titillating voters has become common. Symptomatic of this was Samajwadi Party candidate Nahid Hasan’s innuendo linking Modi and Mayawati’s single status to a post-poll alliance between the BJP and BSP. And Ramdev’s attack on Sonia on Saturday calling her a “foreigner bahu who has looted her entire sasuraal”.

Faced with petitions seeking a ban on hate speech, two Supreme Court benches recently revealed two dimensions of this problem. One bench viewed the issue in the liberal light of the Constitution, noting that the fundamental right to free speech could not be curtailed, that a statement objectionable to one may be acceptable to others, and that people were free not to accept such statements. It summed up its views adding that “we are a mature democracy and it is for the public to decide”. The second bench, in its judgment a fortnight later, asked the Law Commission to consider whether leaders making hate speeches can be disqualified and their political parties derecognised. This bench advised law enforcement agencies to utilise extant laws contained in the Indian Penal Code to criminalise hate speech. As is evident, the judiciary is yet to make up its mind.

But the Election Commission faces a larger dilemma. The Model Code of Conduct it is tasked with enforcing does not have statutory backing. Under the residual powers granted under Article 324 of the Constitution for conduct of elections, the EC inserted Para 16A in the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, to de-recognise political parties for violation of the Model Code. While the EC has sought powers to disqualify candidates who violate the model code, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice has opposed this. This committee also sough the scrapping of Para 16A even while advocating that the model code be enacted by Parliament to give it legal standing. With political parties refusing to act against hate-laden speeches, the case for allowing the EC to disqualify candidates, with legal safeguards, gains currency.