American Sniper: On the Police Assault of Sureshbhai Patel

As an immigrant from India, last week’s incident in Madison, Alabama, in which police used unwarranted force on an Indian man who indicated he didn’t understand English, is deeply disturbing. This 57yr old grandfather had recently arrived in America to stay with his son and daughter-in-law, to help care for their toddler. He walked in the neighborhood, up and down the street where his son lived.

On February 6^th, around 8 am and on his morning walk, Sureshbhai Patel aroused the suspicion of a neighbor who called the police and requested that he be investigated.

There are two video recordings from police car dash cams showing different angles of the incident, which help re-create what transpired.

The two officers who investigated this call were Officer Eric Parker and his trainee, Andrew Slaughter. When they arrived, Sureshbhai Patel was walking at a brisk pace on the sidewalk along the houses. The officers parked their patrol car and caught up to him:

Officer Eric Parker:

Hi Bud. Talk to you real quick. Come here. What’s goin’ on sir?

Sureshbhai Patel:        (inaudible)

Officer Eric Parker:   

You what? India? Your knee? You’re doing what?

Come here. Where you headed?

Sureshbhai Patel:        (inaudible)

Officer Eric Parker:   

Where? I can’t understand you sir.

Where’s your address? Where d’you live?

(Mr. Patel begins to walk away)

Officer Eric Parker:   

Stop walking. Stop walking. D’you have any ID on you?

No ID. What’s your name?

Sureshbhai Patel:        (inaudible)

Trainee Andrew Slaughter:  

He’s sayin’ “No English.”

Sureshbhai Patel:        (inaudible)

Officer Eric Parker:   

India? OK.

Do you live here? Do you live in this neighborhood?

Where’s your address? Where you goin’?

(Mr. Patel begins to walk away again.)

Trainee Andrew Slaughter:  

Sir, sir. Come here.

Officer Eric Parker:            

We’re tryin’ to figure this out. Are you lookin’ at houses and stuff?

Trainee Andrew Slaughter:  

Stop. Do not jerk away from me again.

If you do I’m gonna put you on the ground.

Do not jerk away one more time. D’you understand?

DO you understand what I’m sayin’? Do not jerk away from me again.

Officer Eric Parker:            

Relax. Relax.

This is when the officers throw Mr. Patel face-down on the ground, with nothing to break his fall because his hands were held behind his back. He is patted down. Still in a prone position, he is asked to uncross his legs. He doesn’t do it, and as the officers quickly find out, it is not just because he doesn’t understand English. They hoist him up and ask him to stand, but Mr. Patel’s legs dangle limply. The force of being thrown down causes spinal injuries resulting in paralysis.

This incident has quite possibly caused every Indian immigrant in America to wonder whether this atrocity could have happened to his or her own parents. One subset of immigrants, I’m guessing, might have dismissed their imagined versions of a police encounter gone bad by reassuring themselves that their parents are immune to this kind of a disastrous turn of events because their parents speak English. (Roughly, about 2% of India’s population is fluent in English and uses it as their primary language).

While fluency in English will likely have reduced the chances of a violent outcome with the police, the root of the problem here is not a lack of communication. Blind use of force in the context of a communication gap is the cause for this latest episode of unwarranted violence by the police.  If you reassured yourself that your parents are immune, picture this:

      In a hypothetical encounter with the police, your English-speaking father or uncle, unskilled in the required behavior of just-the-right-amount of subservience by people of color in the presence of police, reaches for something in his pocket before a trigger-happy officer launches a round of bullets through him.

Aside from the problem of overuse of force by the police, there is the question of the neighbor – with whom this whole fiasco begins. Is the role of the neighbor incidental or pivotal?

The neighbor’s “concern,” which is now a bold euphemism for perpetuating racist stereotypes, is fueled by the Culture Of Fear that inundates America. We are hyper-vigilant about our safety in ways that run counter to common sense.

During the police call, our Neighbor Of The Year begins:

“We’ve had a….He was doin’ it yesterday, and today he’s just kinda wanderin’ around in driveways and now he’s walking down Hardiman Place Lane towards Hardiman Road… 

He’s kinda walkin’ around close to the garage and I stopped and started lookin’ at him and he started walking down Hardiman Place Lane towards Hardiman Road…”

It doesn’t occur to NeighborOfTheYear that if the same man was there “yesterday,” and again today, he might have good reason to be there. Clearly, the color of his skin stole any possible legitimacy to be in that neighborhood.

In an ironic twist, when Chirag Patel, the son of Sureshbai Patel is interviewed, he says: “This is a good neighborhood, so I didn’t expect anything to happen….”

So good, that in the eyes of his Friendly Neighborhood Bigot, it is no place for a colored man to be seen.

When the police dispatcher asks American Neighbor to describe the man, he says:

“He’s a skinny black guy, he’s got a toboggan on, he’s really skinny…..

And I don’t …I’ve lived here for four years…I’ve never seen him before….”

As AmericanNeighbor points out, Mr. Patel is very thin. Some media reports put him at 130-140 lbs. Hardly an intimidating figure - further indicating that the tactics used to restrain him and stop him from walking away were abusive.

AmericanNeighbor mistakes Mr. Patel for an African American. Let’s be clear - there’s no crime in that! But the hypothetical question remains unanswered of whether he would have been just as concerned about the safety of his family had he identified Mr. Patel as a person of color, but not African American.

And even though the officers who responded to this call were expecting to encounter an African American man - about 30 years of age according to AmericanNeighbor –  they learn from the very beginning of their interaction with Mr. Patel that he is from India and speaks no English. Their use of force on Mr. Patel is not because they think he is black and are acting on whatever prejudice that knowledge entails, as some media commentary seems to indicate. They are well aware of Mr. Patel’s ethnicity when they slam him to the ground.

If at all the police brought any additional prejudice into the fray, a possible candidate is - Disdain For Those Who Don’t Speak English:

The initial investigation begins with two officers. A third officer pulls up in his patrol car at the time when Mr. Patel is brought down physically to the ground – that is why there are two police video recordings with different vantage points. As the third officer approaches and asks  “Any Madison ID?,” the investigating officer answers:

“I don’t know. He don’t speak a lick of English.”

Whether this comment was just a neutral piece of information being conveyed, or whether it carried undertones of disdain, is open to interpretation. However, there is ample evidence all around us, that there is much antipathy for those who don’t speak English in America. The possibility that not being fluent in English degraded the status of Mr. Patel in the eyes of the officers is one worth examining:

Even despite the color of his skin, Mr. Patel possibly went from being someone with rights to a Person Of Inconsequence simply because he didn’t speak English.

That there is hostility towards those who do not assimilate linguistically when they live in America is most apparent in people’s attitudes toward Hispanics, especially in border-states with large Hispanic populations. But it is far from being just a border-state phenomenon. A recent and amusing blog post in the Vermont Political Observer,  “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished,” illustrates the point:

In brief: An eighth-grader and a student of Latin in Vermont requested Senate Minority Leader Joe Benning to introduce a bill to give Vermont a Latin motto in addition to the existing one in English. Benning introduced the bill earlier this month. After a local news channel covered this initiative by Benning, the news station received a barrage of angry posts on their Facebook page “from ignorant Vermonters spewing their hatred in barely readable fractured English. (Spelling and punctuation as-is) Warning: Teh stoopid, it burns!”

A few unedited posts:

Chris Ferro: “That’s a BIG NO, if you live in the United State YOU need to learn ENGLISH!!”

Kurtis Jones: “No cause vt ain’t no Latino area. Leave the motto alone”

Dorothy Lynn Lepisto: “I thought Vermont was American not Latin? Does any Latin places have American mottos?”

Norman Flanders: “What next Arab motto??”

Kevin P. Hahn: “How about ‘go back south of the boarder'”

Richard Mason: “We are AMERICANS, not latins, why not come up with a Vermont motto that is actually from us”

Ronald Prouty Jr. “No way this is America not Mexico or Latin America. And they nee to learn our language, just like if we go there they want us to speak theirs”

Heather Chase: “Seriously?? Last time I checked..real vermonters were speakin ENGLISH.. NOT LATIN..good god…”

Phil Salzano: “My question is, are we Latin, or are we Vermonters? Alright then, English it is…..”

Julie Kellner: “No, you a USA citizen!.. Learn & understand the language!!!.”

Kelley Dawley: “How do you say idiotic senator in spanish? I’d settle for deport illegals in spanish as a back up motto”

Linda Murphy: “This is America! Not Mexico!”

Not knowing the difference between Latin and Latin America is one thing. Not knowing about the heritage of the English language vis-à-vis Latin, is another, and all the more comical coming from people vehemently advocating learning English! This incident in Vermont not only reveals a widely held hostility to any deviation from English, but also betrays a deep ignorance of American history.

If AmericanNeighbor began this relay of prejudice based on the color of Mr. Patel’s skin, the officers carried the baton further when they assumed that a lack of fluency in English is a sign that the man they were dealing with was a Person of Insignificance. With these preconceptions, they could never have imagined that Sureshbhai Patel belonged in that neighborhood by virtue of his educated son, and that he now has a community of support (Indian, American and international) behind him. Given Mr. Patel’s obvious lack of understanding of what the police were asking him, they could have followed him to see where he was headed. If they were aware (and they ought to have been) of AmericanNeighbor’s observation that Mr. Patel was also seen in the same neighborhood the day before, they had all the more reason to constrain themselves and watch where their suspect was headed.  If they had waited, they would have seen Mr. Patel enter a residence not ten houses away from where they stood, and the situation would have been resolved peacefully.

During the call to the police, AmericanNeighbor follows Mr. Patel at a distance in his car. He describes:

“I’m just kinda followin’ him from a distance….

I’m on my way to work but I’m nervous leavin’ my wife and….

He’s just standing around in the driveway across the street…..

He looked at me and started walking away so……. I’d like somebody to talk to him.”

AmericanNeighbor exhibits classic symptoms of our Fear Culture. It seems that an individual’s lack of familiarity with passersby on a public street is now grounds for questioning safety. Anyone daring to walk in residential neighborhoods in broad daylight better be prepared for scrutiny, especially if they are people of color.

Our hyper-vigilance is manic. Children no longer populate their neighborhood streets in much of America, the way they did a generation ago. Children seen without an adult chaperone in residential streets and public parks are targets of police investigations, and their parents are attacked by the Predatory Wing of Child Protection Services. Instead of looking out for your un-chaperoned children, AmericanNeighbor will call the police. Under the pretense of “concern” for your children, AmericanNeighbor derives great pleasure in bringing you down.

Within one generation we have already managed to trigger tectonic shifts in our sense of security. We used to derive our sense of well-being from intangible powers – from the feeling of belonging to a community, and faith in that community. Now we have externalized our sense of security into the purely tangible: It has transformed into the ever-present devices that rule our lives – Cell phones. Security cameras. Electronically monitored gates. And guns.

Hyper-vigilance has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We examine everything through the lens of safety.  There is less crime in present times than there was a few decades ago when today’s parents were growing up. And technology has made it easier and quicker to communicate and get help when true emergencies happen. Yet, we are increasingly afraid of daily, imagined disasters.

The proverbial Village Idiot has morphed into your Friendly Neighborhood Bigot. And he has much in common with the American Sniper. He takes shots at you from the sanctuary of his home.  He fires at you from the safety of distance, wielding a weapon we call 911.

Police video recordings of the assault:

Investigating officer's patrol car dash cam

Second patrol car dash cam

Lady Justice Is Blind (And Crazy)

In the aftermath of the Ferguson grand jury verdict, here I am again, trying to make sense of insane pieces of news streaming through my social media network.

Yesterday the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, reached a verdict and acquitted officer Darren Wilson of shooting and killing Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Wilson’s claims of self-defense were taken to be credible. This shooting incident, which took place on August 9^th 2014 not only bears resemblance to another highly publicized shooting and killing of an unarmed black teenager, Treyvon Martin, by civilian George Zimmerman, in Sanford Florida on February 26^th 2012, but also follows on the heels of the acquittal of George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges on July 13^th 2013.

The two cases have important similarities and differences:

Setting aside all contextual information for the moment, and only looking at the bare bones of what happened, in Ferguson, MO, a man was shot and killed by a police officer on duty. In Sanford, FL, a man was shot and killed by a civilian. Taking only this information into consideration, lethal force wielded by a police officer is somewhat less disturbing than when a civilian exercises the same force. 

In both cases, the defendants initiated contact with the victims. Again, for a police officer on duty to stop and question a pedestrian is not as remarkable as a civilian (even if he were part of the Neighborhood Watch) to approach a stranger, intimidate him and begin an altercation, as George Zimmerman did.  When we also consider that Zimmerman disregarded the instructions from the 911 operator to not follow the suspicious teen he was reporting about, his actions appear all the more premeditated. For these reasons, the acquittal of George Zimmerman is far more outrageous than the acquittal of officer Darren Wilson.

Further, when we take into consideration that both teenage victims were unarmed, the use of lethal force by both Zimmerman and Wilson seem unwarranted, and the deaths of the two teenagers tragic, avoidable events.

When we add the detail that both victims were black, it appears to indicate that racism was what motivated the use of lethal force. Racial discrimination is what is being widely discussed in the media. While the issue of race certainly influences the use of force by the police, citing race as the primary reason for these two teenage deaths, is misguided.

Looking at the two incidents solely through the lens of race implies that if the very same incidents took place with white victims, the act of killing unarmed teenagers wouldn’t be so outrageous. What if Trayon Martin’s shooter in Sanford and the police officer in Ferguson had been black? Would the killings then be less distressing?

Racism is widely prevalent in America. Nobody denies it. There are more African Americans in prison than their proportion in the general population would indicate. Blacks and Latinos are pulled over and frisked in much greater proportions than whites. African American drug defendants are more likely than whites to receive mandatory sentences and sent to prison more than whites for the same drug offences. But racism is not the prime cause of the deaths of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin.

When George Zimmerman became suspicious of a black teenager who was minding his own business and peacefully walking through Zimmerman’s neighborhood, that was racism. But when Zimmerman initiated an altercation, pulled out his gun and shot this black teenager (allegedly in self-defense,) that was not racism. That was an instance of America’s toxic gun culture at its worst.

We are so accustomed to the ubiquitous presence of guns in everyday American life that we look past gun culture as the primary cause of violence and cite incidental details as causes. It’s like saying someone died of gunshot wounds because his body was too weak to withstand bullets.

Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were killed not because they were black, but because guns are used with impunity in America. If you hypothetically sift out racism from America and imagine how the Sanford, Ferguson and similar incidents might have played out, you would still see unnecessary gun deaths. They would just be equally distributed among the races! But if you sift out America’s noxious gun culture, keeping racism intact, these incidents would play out in ways that would still be unfairly biased towards blacks, but their outcomes would not be nearly as fatal.

It is true that more African Americans fall prey to the bullets discharged by white police officers than white victims. But it is also true that there are a greater number of deaths of African Americans in the hands of other African Americans wielding guns. Think Chicago. When we implicate racism as the root cause of gun deaths based on cases like the one in Ferguson and Sanford, we fail to account for the greater proportion of African American deaths. When we implicate Gun Culture - the easy availability and unchecked use of guns -as the root cause of deaths like that of Trayvon Martin, we account for all deaths in the hands of guns. Of course there are many layers of complexity within the influences of gun culture, and race, class and gender differences most certainly shape it.

In assessing the role of racism in the Ferguson and Sanford incidents, one must view the killings of the unarmed teenagers and the acquittal of the perpetrators as separate issues. The influence of racism in the killings is not as salient as the influence of racial discrimination in the acquittals. Would the juries in the Zimmerman and Wilson cases have indicted the killers if the victims had been white? Perhaps.

The use of guns in everyday life is second–nature to a large proportion of Americans. It is considered a birthright. But like all rights, some people have a greater share of it than others. White privilege has certainly staked a larger claim to the right to use guns:

Enter Marissa Alexander.

Marissa Alexander is an African American woman from Florida, and a mother of three. In 2010, she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

According to her defense account, she fired warning shots in her home and in the direction of her estranged and abusive husband and his two sons after her husband attacked and threatened to have her killed. 

The prosecution claims that they weren’t warning shots, that she wasn’t in fear for her life, and that the shots were fired in anger, at human height, and in the direction of her two stepchildren, endangering their lives.

Comparisons between Alexander’s case and Zimmerman’s case have been made for many reasons: Most obvious is that they are both Florida cases where the defendant invoked Florida’s “stand your ground” law to defend the discharge of a firearm under the perception that one’s life was in danger. Both defendants claimed that their lives were in danger. In Zimmerman’s case, this resulted in the death of an unarmed teenage boy. In Alexander’s case, nobody was harmed.

Another common factor is that both cases were under the supervision of State Prosecutor Angela Corey. Corey has encountered much criticism for her handling of the Alexander case. The guilty verdict she sought for Alexander is driven by Corey’s supposed commitment to victims’ advocacy, in this case, on behalf of the two children whose lives were endangered when Alexander fired her gun. Corey wanted to send a strong message that domestic disputes should not be handled the way Alexander handled hers, with a gun.

There are complexities in every case, and clearly the nuances in Zimmerman’s and Darren Wilson’s case helped cast their version of the events in a credible light. It was also convenient that the victims weren’t around to refute their versions.

The nuances in Alexander’s case, however, did not enhance her credibility. Despite a history of abusing his wife and other women (and admitting to it,) and despite changing his story - first corroborating Alexander’s version and then changing his version, Rico Gray, Alexander’s estranged husband was perceived as the victim, and Alexander the aggressor. The jury deliberated for a mere 13 minutes before they found her guilty on all three counts of aggravated assault. In May 2012, Alexander was sentenced to twenty years in prison (comprising three concurrent terms.) Yes, twenty years for using a gun and not killing anyone, while George Zimmerman walks free for using a gun and killing someone.

In September 2013, a re-trial was ordered by the 1^st District Court of Appeals on grounds that the judge in the original trial did not properly instruct the jury on self-defense.  The retrial was/is scheduled for December 8^th. 2014, where, if it were to take place, Angela Corey intends to pursue the same three charges of aggravated assault, and a 60-year sentence - comprising three consecutive terms.

In the meantime, and as if the overly harsh judgment meted out to Alexander weren’t enough, the winds of chance conspired to have Marissa Alexander accept a plea bargain on the very same day that the jury in Ferguson reached their verdict. The two events – the grand jury acquitting Darren Wilson of murder, and Marissa Alexander agreeing to plead guilty - to not risk a 60-year term for not killing anyone- were juxtaposed by chance on November 24^th 2014.

You have to be blind (like Lady Justice) to not see the irony and injustice of it all.

As per the plea agreement, Marissa Alexander will serve a three-year sentence (most of which she has already completed.) She is likely to be released on January 27^th 2015.

Strange are the ways of  “Lady” Justice.  She turns on her own kind.

The Dissent of Man: The Downward Spiral of Censorship

       The decision last week by Penguin (India) to recall and pulp existing copies of Wendy Doniger’s  ‘The Hindus - An Alternative History,’ is another sign that India is heading towards the Dark Ages. Liberal writers and commentators denounced Penguin’s decision as a cowardly step that will further fuel the narrow-minded sentiments of the Hindu Right Wing. This action by Penguin (India) was not forced upon them by a court of law or any state sanctioned decree. Rather, it is a voluntary step taken in the wake of a lawsuit filed by the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (Campaign to Save Education). The SBAS, an outcrop of the powerful, right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is spearheaded by one Dinanath Batra who objects to Doniger’s book because it “has hurt the religious feelings of millions of Hindus,” thereby violating section 295A of the Indian Penal Code.

       That Penguin (India) chose to settle the case rather than fight it out in court is telling, and perplexing. Calling for censorship and giving in to censorship have aspects that are clearly counter-productive and counter-intuitive. Imposing restrictions on access to books or banning them only increases their visibility, which often leads to increased sales! Penguin (India) was certainly aware, and must have taken some comfort in knowing that no matter how irresponsible their action is to their writers and their readers, their bottom line would see some benefit. 

       Censorship in India is common practice. Even though Article 19 (A) of the Indian Constitution states that “all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression,” this right has been eroded down to the bone by amendments: Section 153 (A) of the Indian Penal Code criminalizes “promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.” IPC 153 (B) prohibits actions that are “prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquility.” The law evoked to silence Doniger is IPC 295 (A), which identifies as criminal, those “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.” Between sections 153 and 295 (A), there is no room for any opinion whatsoever. Given India’s diversity in religion, culture and language, anything you say has a potential to insult someone. Here are a few fragments from that iceberg of Indian censorship:

The most infamous act of censorship in recent years was the banning of The Satanic Verses in 1988. Despite being the birthplace of Salman Rushdie, India was the first entity, worldwide, to ban the book – and it did so well before the fatwa was issued on Rushdie’s life. It was banned, not by a right-leaning government, but by the centrist Congress Party, led by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The circumstances surrounding the ban were not entirely transparent. Here is an open letter by Rushdie to Rajiv Gandhi following news of the ban. 

In 2003, Paul B. Courtright’s ‘Ganesha: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings’ was banned because it offended Hindus for suggesting an additional interpretation of the story of Ganesha. Courtright views the Parvati-Ganesha-Shiva relationships through the lens of Oedipal conflict. Courtright’s  bigger “crime” was to make overt phallic associations between the physical forms of Ganesha and Shiva as a part of that oedipal reading. 

In 2004, James W. Laine’s ‘Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India’ (Oxford University Press) was banned after activists affiliated with the Maratha Seva Sangh ransacked the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune, whose archives provided Laine with much of his research. The book allegedly portrayed Shivaji in a negative light.

Cultural vigilantism is no stranger to India. Maqbool Fida Hussein, India’s most eminent painter (he was called the Picasso of India), spent the last years of his life in self-imposed exile. Some of his paintings depicting semi-nude goddesses in sexually suggestive poses triggered a barrage of lawsuits as well as an attack on his home by the Hindu fundamentalist Bajrang Dal, which led Hussein to ultimately leave India. Hussein was also a film director and producer. His film ‘Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities’ angered Muslim groups for allegedly being blasphemous, causing Hussein to withdraw it from cinemas. 

In January, 2013, actor/director Kamala Hassan’s ‘Vishwaroopam’ was banned in the state of Tamil Nadu following protests that the film portrayed Muslims in a derogatory way. 

Censorship has extended its reach inside the hallowed halls of education as well. In October, 2011, an essay by A.K. Ramanajum, a preeminent scholar on Indian literature and linguistics, was removed from the B.A. syllabus of Delhi University. This was the upshot of pressure put on the Academic Council of the University by right-wing groups to remove the essay. The essay, called ‘300 Ramayanas,’ brought to light the many variations and “tellings” (as Ramanujam liked to call them) of the epic that exist in addition to the Valmiki-Ramayana, the default version in India. 

Social media, too, has not been spared. In November 2012, two college students aged 20 and 21 were arrested for “hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus.” One girl’s crime was posting a comment on her Facebook page questioning the total shut-down of Mumbai following the death of Bal Thackeray, Mumbai’s political kingpin and Hindu hard-liner of many decades. The girl wrote: "With all respect, every day, thousands of people die, but still the world moves on...... Respect is earned, given, and definitely not forced. Today, Mumbai shuts down due to fear, not due to respect.” The other girl’s crime was “liking” her friend’s post.

       Penguin (India) is not the first publisher to set a precedent to capitulating without a fight. In January of this year, Jitendar Bhargava’s ‘The Descent of Air India’ was voluntarily withdrawn by Bloomsbury (India) in response to a lawsuit filed by Praful Patel, India’s former Aviation Minister widely implicated in bringing the airline to ruin. Bloomsbury even apologized to Patel in a public notice: "If the contents of the book have caused any embarrassment to Mr. Patel, we sincerely regret the same and it was never our intention to discredit him in any manner."

       These and a multitude of other instances of curbing free speech have made taking offence a de rigueur occurrence in India today. Taking care to not offend is looked upon as the strategy to maintain peace. And so the law is exploited, where feelings of being offended are disingenuous, or they are pandered to in order to gain votes or some political leverage. 

       Dinanath Batra’s claim that ‘The Hindus’ has offended a million Hindus may not be a false statement. However, the offence taken to Doniger’s textual analysis, (or should I say sexual analysis) of Hindu literature has no bearing on the right to publish these alternative interpretations of them. No matter the alleged depravity and errors in Doniger’s interpretation, translations or method, suppressing her viewpoint is not the answer. The healthy way to counteract dissent is to engage in the conversation and add to the discourse as some people who are equally offended as Mr. Batra is, have done. Indian-American philanthropist and businessman Rajiv Malhotra spearheads one such effort to bring attention to the claim that western indologists are altering perceptions on Hinduism by their psychosexual analyses of Hindu texts. Several academics, too, have compiled a critique of Doniger’s perspectives and methods. Their criticisms of Doniger and other scholars of Indology with a similar bent to interpreting Hindu texts have converged in a book called ‘Invading the Sacred.’ I have not yet read Doniger’s comprehensive (almost 800 pages) ‘The Hindus,’ nor have I read ‘Invading the Sacred.’ But reading excerpts and related correspondence available on the web gives a sense that no matter whose viewpoint one ultimately sympathizes with, the academics connected with ‘Invading the Sacred’ have done well to engage in civil discourse with the Indologists whose scholarship they find questionable. For example, S.N. Balagangadhara (who wrote the forward to ‘Invading the Sacred’) offers, in his own writings, much insight into the nature of offence taken by the religious right. In his letter to Jeffrey Kripal (who interprets the words and actions of Sri Ramakrishna as having sexual overtones) Prof. Balagangadhara objects to a Freudian interpretation of Hindu texts. He says:
These interpretations “deny access to our own experiences…. Who or what is denying access to our own experience? It is not a theory, but a theorizing of someone else’s experience.” 
He views Freudian analyses (based on a western culture) as being incapable of understanding the culture of India. He says of Freud: 
“What did he ‘theorize’ then? He theorized upon the European experience of other cultures and upon a theological elaboration of these experiences. Consequently, who or what is denying the access to our experience? The experience of another culture. This lies at the root of the feeling of wrongness: our experiences are being trivialized, denied, distorted and made inaccessible by someone else’s experience of the world. Hence the feeling of moral or ethical wrongness, because such a situation is neither justified nor justifiable. One is made to think that, apparently, there is only one way of experiencing the world: the ‘western way’.”

  The rationale for free speech rests on the tenet of ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ (similar to a free market in economics), which assumes that when all kinds of ideas are freely expressed and are accessible to all, the better ideas will eventually prevail. Therefore, silencing ideas that are unappealing is an ineffective and short-term solution to the “problem” of human progress. Here’s an example from libel law:

       Libel laws are meant to protect those whose reputations come under attack by false statements, leading to negative repercussions for the one who is slandered. While it may seem like a good idea to have libel laws, they can be and are abused leading to far reaching negative effects. When frivolous or opportunistic lawsuits take advantage of laws that curb freedom of expression, the fallout is not just a matter of inconvenience and money. Such lawsuits result in strongly negative repercussions on public discourse, with the message: Don’t engage in any form of criticism - even if it is for the public good - or you too will be sued! A case in point is the Food Disparagement laws in the US, also called the “veggie libel laws.”  Remember when Oprah Winfrey was sued by Big Beef in the wake of the Mad Cow Disease outbreak in the UK? The Texas Beef Group sued Oprah for saying, on her show, something as ordinary as “Cows are herbivores. They shouldn’t be eating other cows…It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger.” 

       Even when libel laws have stringent standards of burden of proof, and frivolous lawsuits are successfully dismissed (as in Oprah’s case) there are detrimental effects on the atmosphere of public discourse. That is why proponents of free speech prefer to err on the side of freedom to communicate rather than on the side of suppressing information. After the Big Beef lawsuit was dismissed, Oprah declined to speak about the matter any further. If that is the effect an attempt at curbing free speech had on Oprah Winfrey, you can imagine the silencing effect it might have on the ordinary citizen. You can read about the Oprah case and Food Disparagement Laws in the US here. 
       Having laws that protect one’s sense of outrage will breed outrage, just like having laws that protect free speech will breed free speech, even the kind that may be inappropriate and offensive to some. So why is having free speech better than having laws that protect taking offence? Let’s take a look at the two conditions of free speech and no free speech in good times and bad times to determine which one is better for a society in the long run:

The Best of Times:
During the best of times, both free speech states and non-free speech states will do well. If the people in power are good and fair, everybody is mostly happy. In non free speech states, there may be low conflict because people are afraid to offend and get sued. But this is not necessarily a good thing in the long run. 

In prosperous times in free-speech states, potentially offending expressions may be tolerated better than during hard times. Eventually people learn to accept differences and learn some tolerance because any amount of tolerance breeds more tolerance. This is better for society in the long run. 

The Worst of Times:
It is during the worst of times that the difference between free speech and non-free speech states is most apparent. Life has abundant quantities of bad times so this is an important consideration. Let’s assume that during hard times, the people in power are unfair to some groups, and are good only to a select few. They want to promote their worldview only. They oppress and suppress minority groups.
In a non free speech state, you cannot protest this unfairness. There is no free press, and people are afraid to complain lest they be sued for being offensive to those in power. Change is very difficult.

In a free speech state, peaceful protesting is allowed and grievances can be aired without fear of reprisal. It is possible to critique unfair practices and suggest better alternatives. Unfairness can be exposed by the press as well as by individuals. Change is possible. In addition, the free-speech state discourages unfair practices because there is recourse for the ones who are aggrieved. However, a non-free speech state implicitly encourages unfairness because injustice can be sustained through suppression of those who might complain. 

       While India is well past its expiration date, the date of post-independence predictions of fragmentation into it’s multi-ethnic components, and still stands as one nation, the largest democracy no less, it is dangerously veering towards the designation of Highly Insecure Nation that’s Doomed–isthan. Its sense of identity is so precarious that any viewpoint that comes in contrast to the favored view is squashed, often even before this viewpoint has a chance to be heard. For India to regain her confidence, freedom of expression must be dissociated with reactionary terms like outrage, insult and offence. The health of the state should be judged, not by the absence of dissent, but by the nature of it. It is only when healthy dissent is used as a yardstick of measuring peace, that we will have a true tolerance for differences. 

       The premise that the absence of offence lies at the core of maintaining peace among a diverse population such as in India, is a faulty assumption. It is, in fact, the opposite. An environment that does not challenge one’s own views, and does not encourage polite dissent, is an environment that will eventually lead to intolerance. Tolerance is not learned in a void, nor is it fostered in a milieu of agreement and forced acquiescence. It is inculcated and refined only through the practice of accepting ideas novel to one’s own. 

To end with a quote attributed to Aristotle: 

It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it.