Definitive verdict on right to free speech

Last week’s Supreme Court judgement, underlining the importance of the right to freedom of speech and expression, is a landmark pronouncement, and the court’s directions to the police and the courts should be heeded and followed in letter and spirit. The court’s views are especially relevant at a time when the right to free speech is under pressure from various quarters. The Supreme Court has always upheld it as an important fundamental right and has now asserted that it should not be trampled upon on “flimsy and fanciful grounds.” It has quashed an FIR filed by the Gujarat police against Congress MP Imran Pratapgarhi over a poem. It said the poem’s words did not bring about or promote any disharmony, as charged by the police, but talked about “love, non-violence and fighting against injustice”. The bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan said that FIRs should not be filed in a mechanical way and the police must conduct a preliminary inquiry before registering cases involving the spoken or written word.

The order said that "the reasonable restrictions provided for in Article 19(2) must remain reasonable and not fanciful and oppressive." It made it clear that Article 19(2) on the limitations to the right cannot be allowed to overshadow the substantive rights under Article 19(1)(a). The emphasis has to be on "reasonable" grounds, not on restrictions. Importantly, the court held that a person’s right to express views should be respected and protected, even if those views are disliked by a large number of people. It also said that it was the duty of the courts to protect fundamental rights, and they must do their utmost to uphold them. 

The court’s observations on the role of the police in the matter of freedom of speech are important. Because police officers are part of the state under Article 12 of the Constitution, all the responsibilities of the state fall on them. Many of them are not aware of those responsibilities, and the court urged the state to conduct training programmes to make the police personnel aware of their obligations. Setting standards, the court said the spoken or written word will have to be evaluated on the basis of "standards of reasonable, strong-minded, firm and courageous individuals, and not on the … standards of people with weak and oscillating minds." What the court said must be applicable to other forms of expression too. The right to freedom of speech involves not just asserting one’s own right but also respecting others’ right. The key to that is tolerance, a value basic to democracy.