What are the limits of freedom of speech?

Sharjeel Imam, Yogi Adityanath, Anurag Thakur...now Anant Kumar Hegde. And before them Rahul Gandhi. What’s common between them? Yes, in different ways, and with varying degrees of infractions, all of them relate to contentious political expressions in the public space. The propriety of the words Yogi and Thakur used, which rang out from campaign loudspeakers, belongs to another domain. Nuanced questions of discourse ethics have only a remote connection with those. 

But curiously, what Hegde has managed to convey in the latest episode—that Mahatma Gandhi only led “an adjustment freedom struggle” in cahoots with the British colonial masters, and that any eulogising of him only “makes his blood boil”—is not vastly different in its degree of irreverence from what the young scholar, from another end of the political spectrum, said a few days ago. Sharjeel Imam in fact thinks Gandhi is “the biggest fascist” of them all.

That is not what landed him in jail—it was, instead, a call for a blockade of Assam, over-interpreted as calling for India’s dismemberment—but his views on Gandhi, the Constitution et al form the more arresting parts of his speeches. Should they be banned? Should Hegde be made to apologise for what he said, as the BJP now wants him to? Should party loudmouths be taxed every time they go overboard, to shore up our exchequer? Or should contentious speech exist—and invite calm refutation? 

That political discourse has been plumbing some spectacularly new lows in the recent past is no news. But what we are presented with here is another interesting dilemma about free speech and its limits—how to navigate between a mool mantra of liberal democracy and the wider imperative of finding ways to conduct debates without causing harm to collective sanity? Perhaps the only clear limit needed is when speech poses the threat of actual, physical harm to people.