Institutionalising the Individual

As a research scholar of History at the University of Hyderabad, I hope not to be judged exclusively on my affiliation to that University simply because its Department of History is perceived to be good, but not as good as those in the Jawaharlal Nehru University or the University of Delhi. My fear, therefore, is that if I were to compete with their students for employment, publication, or scholarship, I would always find myself on the losing end. If, however, I were to be judged exclusively on my knowledge and research on History, I believe I might just be able to manage. Or so I started telling myself since the day I was convinced of my inability to secure admission in places like these.

Although this is how I wish to be judged, I rarely judge others as individuals themselves, satisfied as I am mostly in treating them as personifications of their institutions. For instance, I assume that every aspiring historian affiliated to a University I consider better than mine to be better than me, just as any individual affiliated to a University I consider lesser than mine to be lesser than me. Unfortunately, this habit extends far beyond the University into institutions of all sorts. Therefore, if an individual is published in the right places and praised by the right people, also in the right places, that individual automatically becomes the right person for me even without having taken the trouble to read the person myself. The only reason for such hypocrisy that I can think of is intellectual laziness where the popular perception of an institution becomes a convenient shorthand for me in judging a person, a practice that saves me the trouble of taking the time to know the person as an individual before forming some sort of an opinion of her/him. It would seem that I have bought - lock, stock, and barrel - into the Curriculum Vitae life, where the more impressive an individual's CV, the better the individual herself/himself.

Recently though, this hypocrisy has been troubling me, to the extent that every time I judge an individual thus, I stop and re-think. Interestingly, I have come across a few individuals who prefer identifying themselves with their institutions rather than have themselves treated as individuals. These are ones, who, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, drop names of institutions, even of other more illustrious individuals they have associated with, to create an impression of being impressive by virtue of this association alone. This can even be seen in contemporary scholarship where certain people are invoked, time and again, through citations and quotations to supply authority to an argument and, thus, validating it simply by their presence among the references. While I am usually taken in by any such display of generous name-dropping, I do wonder, usually later when I am alone, whether there is any point to being a person whose self-worth is derived not from who they are, but rather from who they know.

More importantly though, I wonder why someone would even bother being such a person. The answer seems to be insecurity, the same insecurity that plagues me into believing that an institution makes an individual. People like me feel so paralysed psychologically that without the crutches offered to them by their institutional affiliations, they feel incapable of standing up and walking on their own two feet. The only problem is that someday, these crutches will be taken away and then, we will have nothing to keep us standing. So, here's hoping that the crutches remain forever. Or, at least, as long as I remain.

Is the freedom of expression an absolute right?

'All citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression'. So states Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India. However, states the same Article, 'reasonable restrictions' can be imposed on the right in the interest of the 'sovereignty and integrity of India', 'friendly relations with foreign States', 'public order', 'decency or morality', 'contempt of court', 'defamation', or 'incitement of an offence'. It, thus, follows that the freedom of speech and expression is not an absolute right, at least not according to the Constitution.

The 'right to freedom of expression' has also been enshrined, again in Article 19, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) - adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) on December 16, 1966 - to which the Republic of India acceded on April 10, 1979. However, even in the ICCPR, echoing the Constitution, the same Article states that this right may be 'subject to certain restrictions', namely the 'respect of the rights or reputations of others', the 'protection of national security', 'public order', or 'public health or morals'. It would thus follow, yet again, that the freedom of expression is not an absolute right, not even according to the ICCPR.

However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - adopted by the General Assembly of the UN on December 10, 1948 - appears to be different. Like the Constitution and the ICCPR, it has also enshrined the 'right to freedom of expression' - in Article 19 too, but unlike the earlier documents, it places no apparent restrictions on the exercise of that right. Does it, then, follow that the freedom of expression has finally been revealed as an absolute right and that too, by the UDHR, no less?

To answer this question and to illustrate that answer, this article would like to use the case study of an Op-Ed, entitled How to wipe out Islamic terror?, written by Dr. Subramanian Swamy and published in Daily News and Analysis on July 16, 2011. This case study has been chosen because it had once been in the news as the reason for the removal of two courses on Economics that Dr. Swamy teaches at the three-month Summer School session in Harvard University.

In it, he advocates, among others, the following 'strategy' 'to negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India': 'remove the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites' and 'enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion...declare India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus'.

While the call to 'remove' masjids may be an exercise in the 'right to freedom of expression', it also violates Article 17(2) of the UDHR, i.e. 'no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property'. The call to prohibit conversion from Hinduism and disenfranchisement of all non-Hindus who do not 'proudly acknowledge' their Hindu ancestry does one better, for it not only violates Article 18 - right to 'freedom to change his religion', but also violates Article 2 - right to equality - and Article 21 - right to 'universal and equal suffrage', at the very least. Finally, this 'strategy', in toto, violates Article 30 of the UDHR, which states that nothing in the Declaration may be interpreted 'to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein'.

One is bound to conclude, therefore, that the right to freedom of expression is not and has never been absolute. In fact, it ceases to be free if exercised in violation of other fundamental human rights.

"The exception that proves the rule"

Of Ludwig Wittgenstein, wrote Bertrand Russell in his Autobiography, "He was perhaps the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating." Whenever I read this line, I think not of Wittgenstein's genius - of which there seems scarcely any doubt - but of Russell's generosity, for Russell was his teacher and yet, considered him a friend and an intellectual equal, if not a superior.

Having spent most of my life as a student, I have seen how rare this is, especially in University. Barring a few, most of the teachers I have studied under would never even dream of treating a student as their equal, much less their superior or friend. Their attitude seems to be that a student, no matter how good, is an intellectual inferior and, therefore, must know her/his place, which is under their thumbs, in perpetual servitude.

To this charge, many of them might retort that we are not Wittgenstein. To which, I can only respond that neither are they Russell. My point, however, in citing this example is that generosity will not reveal itself even in the face of genius if it is not already inherent in an individual.

So, why does this trait elude most of my teachers? Because most of them are insecure, so insecure that they seem to suffer from an inferiority complex. And to compensate for it, they maintain an air of superiority among their students by suppressing any one, who dares to speak to them as an equal. If all this sounds a little vague, let me try giving an example. In University, we are taught to accept nothing at face value, to have doubts, to raise uncomfortable questions, to speak up. If, however, we are stupid enough to adopt this critical attitude against our teachers - and what and how they teach us - we soon discover that these lessons are meant only for the readings we receive, not for anything else. And if one of us were to make our dissent official, rest assured that not only will the problems raised not be addressed, but the student in question will probably be threatened with consequences for having the temerity to do so.

Of course, there are a few noble exceptions, a few teachers, who are generous to a fault, but alas, they are "the exception that proves the rule."