Manu Joseph: Where our freedom of speech came from and where it went

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A few years ago, someone got in touch with me asking if I would agree to be part of an interview series where authors are interviewed in front of a live audience by a person who has never read a book. I immediately agreed because I knew that this interviewer had to be interesting just for admitting that he doesn’t read books.

That is how I first met Kunal Kamra, who has since emerged as one of the most endearing and consequential comedians in the world. In tribute to his most recent show, a Shiv Sena squad destroyed the venue. All these years, I was certain that Kamra was yet to read a book.

So I was amused when, during his show, he held a book in his hand. It was the Constitution of India. He said he could say what he did, including lampooning the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, because of the book.

And I sensed he had not read this one either. Because freedom of expression is not an absolute right in the Indian Constitution. It is abridged.

It can be denied in the interest of “public order," for example. The thing is, freedom of expression does not make sense if it has subjective caveats that can be widely interpreted. To say that you can say whatever you want as long as public order is not disturbed is the same as saying you do not have the freedom to express many things that are worth expressing.

Since the Kamra controversy, there has been a lot of talk around the fact that India does not have freedom of expression in practice, anymore. People presume there was a time when we had such a freedom. There is some truth to that.