The recent arrest of Delhi-based freelance journalist Prashant Kanojia, who was arrested for allegedly sharing an objectionable post on Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on social media, has brought the right of freedom of speech in India to limelight. So what did he exactly do? Kanojia had allegedly uploaded a video on Twitter in which a woman is heard making some claims about Adityanath. Kanojia had posted a comment with the video. The head of a Noida-based news channel that had broadcast the video that Kanojia posted has also been arrested, along with one of the editors of the channel. A fourth person Raju Singh Yadav was arrested for allegedly uploading morphed photographs of the CM Yogi Adiytanath and the Kanpur-based woman on his Facebook account.
Kanojia was arrested under Sections 500 (Defamation) and 505 (spreading rumours and public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act. The manner of his arrest, is shocking and cannot but be seen as a show of the heavy hand that might come down on journalists who mock those in power. Kanojia’s wife said she was not even shown an arrest warrant. Such high-handed police action aimed at intimidating and terrorising journalists, artists and writers and suppressing freedom of speech is not confined to any one party or state.
Article 19 of India’s constitution guarantees the right "to freedom of speech and expression." However, the constitution also allows the government to limit freedom of expression "in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence."
This year, the world’s largest democracy ranked a miserable 140th out of 179 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index — falling two places from last year. The number is worrying as it highlights that the freedom of speech of Indian journalists is in danger. Since the BJP government came into power, in recent years, the government has cast a watchful eye on the Internet, demanding that companies like Google and Facebook to remove items that might be deemed “disparaging” or “inflammatory,” according to technology industry executives. Since Saturday, June 8, hashtag #ReleasePrashantKanojia has been trending on Twitter. This was one of the many public reactions triggered by the arrest of Kanojia.
It is unfortunate that the kind of pressure being mounted by forces inimical to the current central dispensation, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is leading us down the wrong path of reducing freedom of speech. The Editors Guild of India condemned the arrests and called the police action “high-handed, arbitrary and amounting to an authoritarian misuse of laws”. In a statement released on Sunday, it said the arrests were “an effort to intimidate the press and stifle freedom of expression”. While restricted free speech is far from unprecedented in India, many observers describe a decline in the quality of the freedom of expression in India since Modi took office in 2014. The numbers on internet shutdowns and sedition cases don't tell the whole story: some analysts see the change most clearly manifested as a shift in the climate of debate.
