Hate speech has always been a live debate in India. The issue has been raised time and again before the legislature, court as well as the public. The 267th report of the law commission of India on “hate speech” brings clarity to the reflection on this topic. The same document borrows the definition from the recommendation of the council of Europe’s committee of ministers to member states on ‘hate speech’ as: … the term "hate speech" shall be understood as covering all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including: intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination …”
However, in the recent times one may notice a flood of occurrences where a protagonist engages in it with great impunity and even been justified by supporters of the views or ideologies expressed in such articulations. And sad to say that every avenue or opportunity is exploited to the hilt in airing expressions that indicate the ailing moral fabric of our society. The current scenario in our society raises serious concerns for a person who believes in freedom of expression, religious freedom, right to equality, social justice and community values which are the main tenets of the Indian constitution.
It is important to say that freedom of expression is founded on the concept of liberty that views free speech as an intrinsic aspect of autonomous individual. In the words of John Stuart Mill, a British political philosopher and parliamentarian, “if all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
This is the area where a sensible citizen of a country must apply his discretion to understand the difference between free speech and hate speech and do not reduce freedom of expression to be an unbridled license to expression devoid of any moral integrity and accountability. Freedom of expression founded on the value of liberty guarantees every citizen the right to free speech which has to be understood as the moral right to freedom of expression, a fundamental moral requirement that agents be free to express themselves and communicate with others. This right to free speech evokes duties on other agents from curtailing or limiting another’s freedom in any form and the positive duty of the state to guarantee that right to every citizen by needed legislation.
The arguments that moral rights to freedom of expression which seems to permit every form of expression even the controversial category of speech does not qualify for protection from the considerations of listener autonomy, speaker autonomy, democratic arguments and thinker based arguments. The above four arguments are often sited to justify hate speech. But a careful examination reveals that they don’t provide ‘hate speech’ the needed impunity from ethical implications to be accepted as a moral right. As a result, anyone who aims to justify hate speech will have to employ mechanisms that silence his/her moral agency.
Since the values that justify free speech do not count in favour of protecting hate speech, the case for criminalizing or otherwise restricting hate speech can proceed. Having said that one must also examine the values that underlie the moral right to free speech. They are: the duty not to threaten, the duty not to harass, the duty not to offend, the duty not to defame, the duty not to incite wrongdoing. It is worth contrasting the definition of hate speech presented above against these values.
The moral right to free speech is enshrined in the constitution, however when it comes to addressing the evil of hate speech that perpetuate inhumanity, the moral agents in a society seems to resort to mechanisms that justify their moral disengagement. In the Book, Moral Disengagement- How people do harm and live with themselves, by Albert Bandura, examines eight mechanism of moral disengagement that one resort to when confronted by life’s predicaments.
In a brief analysis of hate speech one may notice that the imagery, metaphors and nuances employed has a definite purposes. They are employed to vilify or dehumanize the victim of hate speech. The hate speakers carefully select images that convey the subhuman stature of the victim to other members of the society using various mediums. Once the individuals are stripped of their dignity and humanity that resembles the hate speaker, the whole society is just one tiny leap away from activating ‘the final solution to the Jewish question’ of the sort that the Nazis hatched against the Jews.
Let us look at two example to illustrate the point. In the final solution to the Jewish question, Hitler had activated a complex network and modalities of propaganda against the Jews. In the days after the Nazi electoral victories of July 1932, Adolf Hitler informed Joseph Goebbels that he intended to make Goebbels the director of s new propaganda ministry when the Nazis took over the reins of national government. Goebbels soon envisioned an empire that would control schools, universities, film, radio, and propaganda. “The national education of the German people,” he wrote “will be placed in my hand.” This ministry headed and fully exploited the mechanisms available to them in every form to dehumanize the Jewish victims. They stripped the Jewish community of any resemblance to the Germans. The caricatures, cartoons and hate speech that evoked a national sentiment the Jews are less than human beings and the Germans saw the Jews as disgrace meant to erased from the face of the earth. Rest is story.
A second, yet meaningful insight comes from the following snippet that is taken from history. Here the situation is slightly different, but the victims are considered to be less in dignity and respect to the hate speakers. – it is the sermon that appeared in Lisbon in 1705 and refers to an auto da fé ceremony that took place on September 6th of the same year, where 66 individuals were sentenced and punished. This sermon was given by the Archbishop of Cranganore, which is situated in Portuguese India, and it opens with the following call against the sentenced individuals who were unable to speak: “Oh! The humiliated remains of Judaism! The last remains of Judah! Indecent Catholics, disgusting figures even amongst the Jews themselves!... You are disgusting, for you are ignorant! Even the law by which you live, you are unable to uphold!”.
The Archbishop ended the sermon with a call to Jesus: “For 1705 years you have wished with open arms to ask your sons (=the Jews) to come to you, and they, ungratefully, turn from you and refuse to acknowledge you as their saviour…”.
I am sure one would immediately recognise the language and the nuances. The Portuguese saw themselves vested with the divine responsibility of saving the locals from ignorance and final damnation. The articulations clearly indicate the values and mechanisms that is engaged by the reverent Bishop, dehumanising the victims of dignity and humanity, which provides legitimacy for the cruelties that were perpetuated, and the perpetrator goes on with the clear conscience over his/her actions. A careful examination of moral decisions of every moral agent of a society will prove that we make convenient compromises and disengage with our moral agency when confronted by difficult predicament in life. And when we consider hate speech it is amply clear that the mechanism of dehumanisation of the victim is a convenient and powerful devise we activate. And these phenomena can be well understood and analysed from a moral disengagement perspective.
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