Do liberals stifle debate? Riveting session ends ZEE JLF 2019 with a bang

The final session of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival 2019 on Day 5 ended in a cacophony of noise as the who’s who of the commentariat engaged in verbal jousting even as journalist Sreenivasan Jain tried to bring the house in order. 

The final session was a debate whose motion was “Do liberals stifle debate?”. Participating in the debate were Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, former Union Minister Kapil Sibal, Professor Makarand Paranjape, journalist Mihir S Sharma, journalist and author Sagarika Ghose, former Union Minister Salman Khurshid, Rajya Sabha member and Indian classical dancer Sonal Mansingh and historian Vikram Sampath.

Each speaker had three minutes to make their initial comments before they were drowned out by loud drums, an innovative way of time-keeping which ensured that speakers didn’t go past their given time.

 A brief of summary of each speaker’s argument:

Makarand Paranjape said that most liberals are illiberal which is why the world is witnessing the twilight of liberalism. He cited the example of scientist Richard Dawkins speech be banned. In India he observed, a class calling themselves liberal had undue economic powers, putting the ‘loot’ in Lutyens’. 

He considered these liberals a continuation of our colonial masters which in turn was leading to the alienation of these elites and their political reversals across the globe.

Sagarika Ghose – who didn’t lose a chance to remind the panel and audience about her recently published book – wondered how we could be debating the liberals silencing dissent when we were witnessing the death of journalists and rationalists like Gauri Lankesh and liberals were being hounded and threatened.

Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that liberals were a confused lot and elites masquerading as liberals were facing a backlash. He said the Indian National Congress was an elite idea which brought to the mainstream by Mahatma Gandhi. He wondered how saying Bharat Mata Ki Jai mean that the idea of India was dead and added that liberals needed to introspect.

He added that the contrived narratives to bring the state down would eventually backfire on the conspirators.

Kapil Sibal – who tried to regulate social media and was seen as the architect of the erstwhile Section 66 A – said that we owed our allegiance to the Constitution which was liberal. He added that those who opposed the state shouldn’t be labelled anti-national and added that liberalism is a way of life.

Vikram Sampath pointed out that no group had the right to appropriate terms like liberalism and accused a group of selective outrage. Modern-day liberals, he claimed, lived by the George Bush absolutist maxim of ‘you are with me or against me’. He said liberal has become a cuss word because of the intolerance displayed by those who professed to be liberal, and that there was a tendency to calls everyone one disagreed as a Nazi or fascist.

Mihir S Sharma observed that the moment you stopped thinking, the moment you stifle debate you stop being a liberal. He observed that even liberals were guilty of moments of illiberalism but just because a perfect liberal didn’t exist didn’t mean one ought to stop striving.

Sonal Mansingh meanwhile observed she had never been labelled until she accepted VHP’s invitation to perform in Washington following which she was labelled a ‘sanghi’.

Mansingh said she had often faced questions for her political views for her opposition to Indira Gandhi's Emergency in 1975. RS MP said she was labelled saffron by the Artists Against Communalism for accepting an invitation to Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s invitation to perform at the 100th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s lecture.

She added that all this debate is useless and one ought to give space where a discussion is possible.

Salman Khurshid felt that there was confusion over what constituted liberalism stating that being liberal didn’t mean one was a moderate. A liberal, he added, is someone who believes everyone has the right to be wrong.

Following this, each speaker gave rebuttals to one another while at times the debate descended into a Congress vs BJP fight and the vagaries of Indian politics entered the field. Sibal complained that the government wasn’t letting his channel Harvest launch, an audible snide remark of soul harvesting was heard in the background. Hardip Singh Puri added that it was a serious allegation, while Vikram Sampath pointed out that Sibal was the architect of the draconian Section 66A.

The debate ended Jain asking the audience to pick a side of the motion and it was deemed a tie and that brought curtains to another brilliant edition of Zee JLF 2019.