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Chef Atul Kochhar fired for 'anti-Islam' tweet: Why 'liberals' cheering his persecution are hypocritical

Freedom of expression certainly isn't absolute.

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About a decade ago, with youthful naivety, I firmly believed that freedom of speech and expression should come without any restrictions – reasonable or otherwise. I worshipped British philosopher’s John Stuart Mill’s maxim of liberty that justified the freedom of individual over unlimited state or social control.

He had famously written: “If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person was of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” A decade later, having spent several years in journalism, I no longer carry that particular delusion, seeing that FIRs can be filed over naughty Snapchat filters and mobs can go on the rampage over errant Facebook posts.

Or that a man can lose his job in the real world for a wayside tweet mocking an apology from an actor about a fictional plot in a sub-standard show. The truth is that most of us binge-watching on Netflix, had almost forgotten that Quantico existed, a show whose real mystery remains Priyanka Chopra vacillating accent.

All that changed with an episode which caused national outrage which showed a plot where Priyanka Chopra foils an attempt by a Hindu nationalist who wanted to carry out a nuclear attack in Manhattan and frame Pakistan, to disrupt a summit between the two nations in Jammu and Kashmir. As incredulous and CIDsque as that sounds – with the involvement of a rudraksh – the outlandish plot caused mass outrage in India. It led to a situation where ABC were forced to apologise, and Priyanka Chopra issued a clarification that she was ‘a proud Indian’.

All this would’ve been the end of it but then celebrity Indian-origin chef Anil Kochhar expressed his displeasure in a wayward tweet: “It's sad to see that you (Priyanka) have not respected the sentiments of Hindus who have been terrorized by Islam over 2000 years. Shame on You (sic).”All hell broke loose again over Kochhar’s tweet with calls for JW Marriott Marquis Dubai to sack him and even stricter calls for Dubai – where Sharia-law is practised – to give him a jail sentence. What is more galling, but certainly not surprising by now, was the call for those of the liberal persuasion to join in the chorus to ‘jail/punish the bigot’.

The same group of individuals, who a couple of days ago had been ‘fighting for Priyanka Chopra’s freedom of expression to show Hindu nationalists as terrorists plotting an international nuclear bombing’, now wanted Kochhar punished.Sure, Kochhar’s tweet got that math wrong, Islam hasn’t even been around for 2000 years, but does that mean that he can be vilified and hunted down for his opinions which are partially right. Muslim invaders have ruled over India – where a majority of population are Hindus – for a thousand years at the very least. Along the way, while there have been the moments of benevolence, there has also been what the good folks at UN and Amnesty like to call ‘human-rights violations’. It’s true these invaders have contributed to India’s syncretic culture, but their millennia-long rule wasn’t through ahimsa.

India’s bloody history with invaders – Muslim or otherwise – isn’t a figment of someone’s imagination nor is it a reason to call someone a bigot. What’s next? Pretending we didn’t have colonial rulers who exploited us physically, emotionally and economically? Should indigenous people in America claim that white men didn’t take their land?

Should Muslim empires claim that the Crusaders were there on an exchange program? Should we pretend the Holocaust was a tanning booth? Should Indian liberals crying hoarse about Dalit persecution for the last millennia or two be banned from ever speaking at literary festivals?

What sort of revisionism history is allowed, and what falls in the realm of bigotry? If we are being honest, all the aforementioned groups, including Hindus have as much right to speak about their history and oppressors.  Yet, while denying the Holocaust has serious consequences in the Western world, denying the brutal regime of Muslim rulers in India is considered good behaviour.  Of course, Kochhar’s fate isn’t surprising, and criticising Muslims while working in Dubai is as much of a health hazard as going to the Vatican and badmouthing the Pope.

Dubai is after all a land where a woman spent eight months in jail after being drugged and raped because the law of the land ‘punishes extramarital sex’.

Kochhar, on the balance of things, should be rather pleased to get away with just losing his contract, happy in the knowledge that he’s based in London and extradition from UK remains quite a tedious task. What jars isn’t how Dubai or a business in Dubai reacted, but how our intolerance brigade reacted back home. There was almost a feeding frenzy after Kochhar’s initial tweet and the same individuals who raise the flag of intolerance or cry hoarse when an actor’s movie or product faces boycott were howling like bloodhounds seeking similar retribution against someone from across the aisle.   

It was a stark reminder that freedom of expression remains a delusion, more so for the man who has the misfortune to disagree with his more powerful peers.   Freedom of expression, irrespective of the space-time in which it’s practised, is a heavily-trafficked street, controlled by those that wield power. In India, we’ve seen it time and again, from both sides of the spectrum.On the right-side, we’ve seen the vilification of Anupam Kher, Sonu Nigam, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Randeep Hooda and even a 15-year-old nationalist who disagreed with Kanhaiya Kumar.

On the other-side, we’ve seen mobs regularly target journalists and their ilk, and outspoken actors like Shah Rukh or Aamir Khan, or even Swara Bhasker and Sonam Kapoor. In the real world, your political expression comes with heavy consequences. You can be hunted down for your beliefs. Your freedom of expression will only be supported if it matches theirs.  If it doesn’t, they will throw a label on you.  Bigot. Sexist. Racist. Misogynist. It was all good for JS Mill to say that no individual ought to be silenced. The truth is that there are enough ways to silence that individual.

 

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