Kamal Haasan’s Sorry and the Cost of Offence

Freedom of speech comes with a price in India and most are unwilling to pay it. It was therefore a surprise that Kamal Haasan would not apologise for saying Kannada was derived from Tamil. In Karnataka, linguistic pride is a mainstay of politics, and the statement led to protests. It became a question mark whether Thug Life, his movie, could release in the state. When the producer moved the state’s judiciary for a direction to ensure its smooth passage, the court sought Haasan’s apology. The movie won’t be released because Haasan remains unwilling. All this is par for the course, because institutions here, from executive to the judiciary, hold public sentiment as inviolable. Ergo, offensive and insulting, which are questions of morals and tastes, become fodder for policing.

This was evident earlier in how the podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia was subject to police cases in multiple states after he made a lewd joke on a popular YouTube comedy show. The show closed. And it is yet again seen in right-wing influencer Sharmistha Panoli, who is from Haryana, being arrested by the police of West Bengal for posts allegedly communal and abusive in tenor. She, in fact, apologised and yet the courts have denied her bail stating that freedom of speech does not mean religious sensitivities can be hurt. We have lost count of the number of times that the Supreme Court has said bail is the norm and not the exception.

Haasan and Panoli are from opposite ends of the political spectrum which tells you that if free speech is not protected everywhere it is protected nowhere. Much of this sensitivity is because in India it doesn’t take much for mob violence to get unleashed by jokes or comments. But between physical violence and verbal offense, a society should recognise the crime that needs deterrence. To prevent the violence by preventing speech only makes the bar for offense lower with time. Thug Life is not Haasan’s movie. He is only one actor in it. A big budget movie production is like a massive temporary factory of many moving parts. Can an entire company be punished for what one employee said in his personal capacity?

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