Was Nupur Sharma’s speech “free speech” that is being threatened by the protests demanding her arrest for “hate speech”?  

The iconic African-American writer James Baldwin said, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Nupur Sharma’s speech about Prophet Mohammad is not being condemned because it was “blasphemy”. It is being condemned because her intention was to denigrate and dehumanise all Muslims, for following a man whom she claimed was a pedophile. Discussing the social evil of child marriage (prevalent in India across communities, and perhaps most of all in certain Hindu communities) in its historical and contemporary context is “free speech” – but distorting facts to try and humiliate an entire community is hate-speech.

Moreover, Ms Sharma’s speech as an official spokesperson of the ruling party maker her ‘opinion’ carry the weight and backing of the State itself. Her speech must be seen in the context of the widespread genocidal hate-speech by leaders and propagandists of her party. As Ujjaini Chatterji writes in The Leaflet, “the Rabat Plan of Action, which is a framework formed by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), outlines a six-part threshold test to understand hate speech. The test takes into account : 1) The social and political context, 2) Status of the Speaker, 3) Intent to incite the audience against a targeted group,4) Content and form of the speech, 5) Extent of its dissemination and 6) Likelihood of harm, including imminence.” Nupur Sharma’s speech ticks all these boxes, since she repeated the same on multiple television channels, and was clearly part of the “consorted effort to vilify and demonise all Muslims” that is already underway. As Ms Chatterji reminds us, “By calling everything an act of Jihad by the Muslim community, the media only normalises Islamophobia and peddles fake news.”    

Yogi Adityanath contested the UP elections styling himself as “Bulldozer Baba” – openly insinuating that his USP was bulldozing Muslims’ homes in the name of cracking down on crime. And that is exactly what he has been doing ever since he was re-elected CM. And in fact, the BJP has since then turned targeted “bulldozing” of Muslims’ homes into their national sport.

Speaking on the demolition of Parveen Fatima’s house in Allahabad, Former Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Govind Mathur pointed out that such demolitions of houses of persons accused of some crime were totally illegal, adding: “Even if you assume for a moment that the construction was illegal, which by the way is how crores of Indians live, it is impermissible that you demolish a house on a Sunday when the residents are in custody.”

The public demolition of Muslims’ property is staged as a spectacle. In Aligarh the police force were accompanied by bulldozers in preparation to crack down on Muslims protesting Nupur Sharma’s hate-speech.

In Al Jazeera, writer Arundhati Roy observed: “Over the last few months, authorities in Indian states governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have started bulldozing the homes, shops, and places of business that belong to Muslims merely suspected of participating in anti-government protests. The Chief Ministers of these states have proudly flaunted this policy in their election campaigns. To my mind, this marks the moment when a deeply flawed, fragile democracy has transitioned – openly and brazenly – into a criminal, Hindu-fascist enterprise with tremendous popular support. We now appear to be ruled by gangsters fitted out as Hindu godmen. In their book, Muslims are public enemy number one….

“For their part, government authorities insist they are not targeting Muslims and are merely demolishing illegally constructed properties. A sort of municipal clean-up mission. That reasoning, of course, is not even meant to be convincing. It is meant as mockery, and to instil terror. The authorities and most Indians know that most of the construction in every Indian town and city is either illegal or quasi-legal….

“Before the bulldozer era, punishment for Muslims was meted out by vigilante mobs and the police – which either participated in the punishment or chose to look away. The bulldozing of properties, however, involves not just the police, but the municipal authorities, the media – who must be present to amplify and broadcast the spectacle of demon-slaying – and the courts who must look away and not intervene. It is meant to tell Muslims, “You are on your own. No help will come. You have no court of appeal. Every institution that used to be part of the checks and balances of this old democracy is now a weapon that can be used against you.”

Muslims’ protests against hate-speech were largely peaceful; there were only some sporadic acts of stone-pelting and arson, and it is not clear if even those few instances were actually done by Muslim protestors or by agent provocateurs. On the heels of the Muslim protests, came protests by young job-seekers against the Agnipath scheme. These protests were overwhelmingly marked by violent rage: involving public burning of trains and stone pelting against police. But the same police officers who rained bullets on protestors and bulldozed their homes, were seen and heard arguing for restraint in the police response, reminding the public that the protestors were after all “our children.” Why are Muslim protestors even when peaceful not seen as “our children”? If the house of a Muslim woman can be demolished on the grounds that her husband allegedly incited youth to pelt stones, why is the same not done to homes of Hindus whose sons pelted stones on police and set fire to trains?