Concerns over ‘free speech’ in India raised at Zee JLF

The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival (ZeeJLF) may have attracted a lot of criticism this year for the way its programming epitomised the diminishing space for liberal voices in India today, but for Timothy Garton Ash, Historian and Professor at the Department of European Studies at Oxford University, the world was looking up to India to uphold free speech.

Garton Ash, who was in conversation with writer Salil Tripathi for this session on free speech, went on to express worry at the direction in which India was headed, with increasing state control of the media. “There is an attempt by the government to simplify a diverse story. It is important to see which way India goes,” he said.

Tripathi referred to the killings of academic MM Kalburgi, politician Govind Pansare, and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, and the censure that Tamil writer Perumal Murugan was facing. 

He also spoke about the problems that Internet governance has brought up, citing the example of India as the country with the highest number of requests to take down content on Facebook. The conversation also looked at universities as a “safe space of free thought”, with Timothy saying that all academic institutions should stand up for the right to freedom of expression. China was the theme of another interesting afternoon session. Would the 21st century belong to China? Would the China growth story continue to chug along at the breakneck speed it has been for the past three decades? Or would the fissures — social, political, economic, cultural — put a brake on China’s superpower dreams? A panel on the subject on day three of ZeeJLF threw up some interesting insights into what was happening in the country today.

“From an investment-led growth, Xi Jinping is leading China to consumer-led growth. It has led to a lot of unemployment,” said Rob Schmidt, the Shanghai correspondent of National Public Radio who has just come out with a book on China. “China has succeeded in lifting 650 million people out of poverty, but one forgets that another 650 million remain in poverty, especially in the rural area,” he said. Mei Fong, Pultizer prize-winning author of a book on China’s one child policy, “Money has kept China together. This is the first generation that is not going to see double digit growth,” she said voicing concerns about how they would react to the slowing of economic growth. 

“Everyone speaks of China having the second largest GDP, but China’s per capita is one-ninth of the US,” said Madeleine O’Dea, a journalist who has written a book on contemporary China called The Phoenix Years.     

In another session, an important event that shook the world was discussed, Brexit. British historian Linda Colley said that the Britain’s steady political decline since the Second World War had led to a craving for a new identity.

That the UK escaped invasion during the war led to complications, and the rise of a “geographical determination” to not be counted as part of Europe.  Historian Andrew Roberts said it could also be attributed to some sort of nostalgia for the British empire, and the need to establish trade relations with other countries directly. Journalist Jonathan Shainin also pointed to the sense of Euro-scepticism that the British press held on to, while economist Surjit Bhalla said that it was pure bad economics to have painted a picture of gloom. 

“Britain benefited enormously after Brexit. The depreciation of the pound led to a lot of trade benefits,” he said.  Britain-India relations, especially the baggage of Empire, was mentioned by British-Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang in his scintillating presentation on “The Secret History of Capitalism”. 

British industrialisation, he said, was built on the foundation of tariff protections and banning the entry of superior textile companies, especially from India. 

Another session, ‘Dishonourable Company: How the East India Company Took Over India’, too, tackled the subject. As one of the panellists pointed out, back in 1781, England had witnessed a financial crisis similar to the 2008 economic disaster.