by TEESTA SETALVAD
I would try to posit the entire issue of the freedom to dissent with the complete impunity and immunity with which the society and State has begun to regard hate speech, because I think these two things are intrinsically linked. We are looking at the culture of amnesia that this current regime embodies. The culture of forced amnesia that we are all being forced into by the current regime. Then I think we need to just look very closely at the very intense six weeks of campaigneering and almost one and a half years of the build up to that campaign when it came to extremely vicious, hard-hitting hate speech that managed to communalize the atmosphere and polarize the electorate and which we are being now told that it happens at the election time and now we should be forgetting. I think we fall into the trap of also allowing this to happen. I just like to flag a few of the most crass instances, first by the current prime minister himself when he spoke at Serampore on the border of West Bengal and Assam, when he said – just wait till May 16 and all Bangladeshis will be chucked out of India.
I am not even repeating what the Jharkhand person said in Mumbai when Modi was on the dais, when they spoke about what would happen to the dissenters; to which country they would be sent off to. I think it’s extremely important if we are talking – to agitate, to preserve the freedom to dissent, that we agitate to prosecute the hate speech that went into the election campaign and not allow it to be part of public amnesia that we are told to do.
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