Freedom of Speech! Has that ever freaked you out?

Are you from a country where a person is allowed to say whatever he/she wants to say? Are you all free to communicate in the society you live in? Have you never been punished for saying something that you thought was completely right? Are you fearless to speak whatever you want to, no matter on a personal level or public level?

Well for a long span of time I have been thinking over these issues. I desperately wanted to answer these questions with a big "YES" but something was preventing me to do so. Something right inside me that constantly convinced me the other way. So I took it to my friends. I expected the problem to solve but it rather complicated. A fierce debate started which ended with practically no solid conclusion. But one thing was evident (at least it appeared evident to me) that no matter what the opposition say, there is freedom at some places. But then again a very intelligent friend of mine made me realize that I was just comparing the scenarios! Due to that at some places the freedom seemed to be relatively high as compared to others.

Hence I finally gave up thinking coz you know its rather wise to study than shouting in debates which no one is really listening, if you have an electrical sciences exam waiting for you the next day!

So I won't answer the questions. Because personal opinions are biased. I usually like to leave people with doubts and stuffs to think upon so that more concrete solution comes up. And that is the power of democracy right?

Alright so let me put some stuffs on this hub that appear to be pointing towards both the sides of the coin. And then you decide yourself how free you are in your society? Any new excerpts or cases of different countries are always welcomed!

1. Why Freedom of Speech?

2. Controversial Danish cartoons!

3. Salman Rushdie and "The Satanic Verses"!

4. SOPA and PIPA!

5. Conclusion!

Well why exactly are we running after freedom of everything? Don't you think the situation will be really creepy if anybody is free to do whatever the hell they want to do? If a thug is free to go robbing banks and a policeman is free to shoot him right when he sees him, then don't you think that our world will be extremely different from what it is right now? Anybody in that case can go doing anything they like and probably that won't be liked by rest of the people.

This is the problem with us humans! We want to be free yet we want to remain bound. Bound to rules, bound to laws, bound to culture and traditions and bound to anything that doesn't really harm us.
This persistent ambiguity in human beings has never and will never let a perfect freedom law to form, because all of us don't have the same meaning for freedom.

Alright so one thing is understood that we actually aspire to have a "partially" free society that is largely comfortable for us to survive and where there are some set of boundary conditions which every one should stick to.

To ensure that the world listens to us, we urge for freedom in speech. We then ask to make laws that protects us from being hurt physically, mentally and emotionally. Now physical suffering reasons are usually loud and clear and "defined rules" are quickly enacted to protect citizens from it.
Next comes mental and emotional sufferings which includes largely the words we speak! Situation in which the person essentially is also plays a necessary role in mental sufferings but still speech is the key element which can be used to torture someone mentally & emotionally.

Due to ambiguity in defining exact ways to torturing someone mentally, our laws for freedom of speech are flawed! It complies with the majority of population but still some people are left behind. At many points of time it happens that their sounds are so weak that majority of us tend to ignore it and move on with our proud constitution, proud democracy and last but not the least, proud "Freedom of speech".

So now you might have started thinking that proper law governing the freedom of speech is also necessary, right? Let me cite you an example.

Suppose you are in India where 80% people are Hindus, 15-16% people are muslims and around 4% are Christians. Now if you speak something in public without really caring about the sentiments of all the people in the audience, then you might hit real trouble. But at the same time, say if you have a rule in constitution that prohibits you from making any such comments and in doing so, either fines you or puts you behind the bars, then will it be comfortable for you to speak in public?
I expect that you got the idea.

It can be any place --> U.K. or U.S. or Australia or Middle East or Africa.
I am just taking religion as an example. Audience can be anyone. Maybe higher & lower society people or employed & unemployed people or village & urban people, etc.

You don't really know the set of exhaustive sentences that offends a particular part of audience. Hence, you make laws on estimation basis. And therefore some sentences inevitably fall into the category of outlaw!

I hope everyone of you know about Danish cartoons but still I'll brief about it. One fine day a popular newspaper of Denmark hit real trouble when they published cartoons which offended Muslim communities all around the world. Supposedly those cartoons depicted "The Prophet", the holiest human being in Islam, in various adverse ways. Among them the one you see in which the man with dense moustache has a bomb on his head was most controversial among all the cartoons!
There were riots in Denmark and all over middle east. Countries like Syria, Iran, etc. were seriously devastated by protesters. Hundreds of people were killed and injured and millions of public property was ruined to dust! Everything was attacked ranging from normal streets to Danish embassies. And yet the worst part was, there was nothing anyone could do about it!

So what do you have to say now about the Bloody cartoons? Was there a presence of freedom of speech? And if there was, then who used it --> The cartoonist or the protesters?
Who was the outlaw here? And most importantly, Is freedom of speech really necessary?

You got the questions didn't you? The freedom of speech had taken hundreds of lives and bankrupted thousands of families. Should Danish government have posed a sanction on the newspaper or sued them for hurting the Muslim sentiments, then don't you think the world would have been quite different?
In my "biased opinion"(Personal opinions are always biased!) it is a "NO". I don't think that doing all that mentioned above would have made much difference in our world. It just would have happened that some people would have continued to live and some properties would have been saved but only for the time being. Living a life without having any Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Thought is worst than dying. Its more like being slaves to the government.

Having said all that, I don't really mean to take side of Danish government and go against protesters. I believe they had a right to protest as they too live in a world which is free. But certainly the way they chose to do so was questionable.
There were lots of options available. For example, they might have formed an organization that would have legally filed petitions against the Newspaper. They might have urged the Danish government to give them proper justice.
If they wanted international participation in the revolt, they might have formed similar organizations in other countries as well. Embassies of Iran, Syria, etc. in Denmark should all have filed complaints seeking to justice and I am sure things would have got solved in a much smoother way.
It would certainly have taken time but no one atleast would have died!

Its not just Islam, but every other religion go crazy when there holy creations are offended in any way. So its perfectly fine to revolt. But revolt at what cost? Killing hundreds is certainly not going solve the issue and rather it is going to complicate it.

Being from a country having all possible religions living in it, I know how crazy the situation can go when some religious sentiments are hurt.

But certainly there are better ways to deal with these situations rather than the ways which are usually adopted!

Salman Rushdie, a renowned British Indian novelist is a prime example of being a controversial figure due to his extensive use of "freedom of speech". In quite recent past, his book The Satanic Verses, was banned in Jaipur Literature Festival (largest literature festival in Asia-Pacific region) because it deeply offended many Muslim sentiments. On it, I read a statement of Rushdie in India Today magazine. One sentence was what that actually caught my attention. It said --> "..If Egyptians, Turks and even Libyans can read this novel without dire consequences, are Indians really so backward that we can't?.."

Well partly he is right. When such nationalist Islamic countries didn't really have much issues, then why "secular" India had to ban it?
It may sound simple but India probably hasn't forgot the scars of communal riots and various other religious controversies (such as naked paintings of Hindu goddess by M.F. Hussain) that took place in recent past. Situation gets real ugly back here when it comes to religion.
So does it mean that India really suck in providing the "freedom of speech" or is there something really important than freedom to maintain peace in the society?

I hope you can feel the intensity of ambiguity in above case! Hence, answer it yourself!

Anyways, so that's why. I feel, the democracies all around the world keep on facing challenges on freedom of things especially speech!

Another unforgettable attempt in hampering freedom of speech all around the world is in the form of legendary "SOPA and PIPA" bills!
Promising to take almost all the freedom away from the mankind's greatest invention, it not only seriously damages the "Freedom of Speech" but also takes away many possibilities from a common man to innovate.
As their names suggest, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" and "Protect IP Act" are destined to stop online piracy and protect Intellectual Property by hampering access of users to the websites that are "believed" (stay on the word) to encourage online piracy. Actions can be taken before a formidable verdict from courts. Also, the victim websites aren't given much privileges to sue back the authorities for wrong claims!

It appears to be the most naive bill of the century! World wide protests by both online and offline means have inflicted quite a lot of damage to the bills right now, but situation is not any better than worse. These bills, if get passed through the US congress, can not only be troublesome to US citizens but the online audience all over the world.

You can see clearly, United States, believed to be one of the most free countries in the world, is imposing such sanctions to the freedom of their people and that too in such a naive way. What happened to "Freedom of Speech" here?
Being a country which promotes democracy, human rights and freedom throughout the world and has even gone on wars to protect them, have become threat to their own open society.

I think you can sense the extreme level of ambiguity in above statement as well!

In my personal opinion I won't really love the situation in which when I log in to youtube to listen to the latest updates on "Ashes" or "Chelsey vs Man-U" or "latest Bollywood item number song" or "new James Bond movie" and I get a sorry page saying I am not authorized to view the copyrighted content!
Or who knows probably on one fine day when I log on to Facebook and it says, "Domain name doesn't exist!".

Well if you leave me, I can go on writing about the scenarios where freedom of speech truly empowered the people and situations in which people are forced to live in darkness without any "Freedom of expression".
When large and successful democracies like France (Islamic scarf controversy) and United States can be accused of taking away "Freedom of Speech", then you can't really speak about situations in Arab countries like Saudi Arabia or African countries like Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria and Congo.

You know its just too ambiguous to discuss. In some cases, like in SOPA and PIPA, its obvious but in majority of other cases like Gujarat communal riots or French scarf controversy, its quite messy and indecisive.

Possibly there can never be the best law to deal with these issues, hence it depends on us. We, the citizens of Earth, are responsible for rights of all our fellow living beings! Its largely in our hands to decide the fate of our friend.
Wars never bring peace (biased opinion once again! ;-) ), hence its always better to find other ways to reach solutions. I understand that sometimes the wars are inevitable because they are also the outcome of ambiguity in human beings (will to snatch away things from the neighbour).

There is no primary conceptual difference between a street fight and two fighting countries, its only that life and property are at much larger stake in latter case.

Hence we all should try to think wisely for ourselves!