If guns could write

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If guns could write

By Ranjan Yumnam *

"Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favour of free speech, then you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favour of free speech."
- Noam Chomsky

Journalists are by nature fierce proponents of free speech. Some of them are so overzealous about it that they would go out of their way to test its limits. Count me among those hacks.

Exercising free speech and by extension freedom of press is a risky business in an intolerant society such as Manipur. Given the existence of many power centers-legal and the underground-one can never be sure whether a writer would be stepping on some smart Aleck's toes, the moment an honest opinion escapes her pen or mouth.

Writers therefore think it prudent to err on the side of the caution, than to needlessly provoke some crackpot into waking you up in the midnight. The casualty is not an individual writer's frustration; it's the free exchange of ideas. This has led to intellectual sterility instead of a vibrant, open and deliberative culture that should have been and ought to be.

File photo of All Manipur Working Journalists' union (AMWJU) member's protest

Pardon my impudence, in the marketplace of ideas, there are only three players: honourable CM Ibobi, UGs and the frontal organizations.

The rest are banished to silence and obscurity. Academicians live in claustrophobic dread and are not free to express their mind beyond the textbook rhetoric. Apparently in self-preservation, most of them, barring a few, have gravitated towards one convenient ideology or the other that can ensure them a good night sound sleep. Forget cerebral duels.

I am not a frontal writer. If you ask me to mount a sting operation ala Tehelka on the powers that be, than I am sorry. I can't take a chance with my life. Even ISTV-Aajtak of Manipur- can't do it without succumbing to pressures and finally capitulating to self-styled editors at large. They say images speak more than a thousand words, but in the end they have turned out to be hollow.

The million-dollar question is: When the vividness of images fail, can words succeed?

Hardly. Well-wishers who know my inclinations for a sting operation have warned me and suggested two choices before me. Toe the dominant line or flee. Evident in this is a regime of publish-and-perish of a Taliban mould that sends chills down a maverick commentator's spines.

In the sham democracy that is Manipur, it's not the media that is being wooed. It's the other way round. In order to keep their craft going, media practitioners need to keep many actors happy. This jugglery is a hard task any day. If your work pleases somebody, it will also offend someone else, who will inevitably accuse you of having a bias and pursuing a hidden agenda.

The point that few understands is media has every right to pursue its own agenda, take a stand on the burning issues of the day and play up what they believe to be truth. That 'truth' may be relative, may even annoy some groups and turn out to be false ultimately, but the right to express it unless it has the potential of inviting a Biblical apocalypse should be accepted without question.

If we look at the wide freedom of speech enjoyed by the Americans, most of us would be amazed and shocked by its unlimited scope (that local media here can only dream of). The main beneficiaries of this liberal culture are the American press who take full advantage of it to disseminate their own brand of ideology-left, centrist, right and so on. It's only in that land of opportunity that you can dismiss global warming as scientific fraud or call its president names.

The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic…all have their leanings as different from each other as chalk and cheese are. Advocacy journalism, despite its many imperfections, is seen as an acceptable face of the freedom of press.

Americans have to a large extent put to practice what Evelyn Beatrice Hall said: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". In other words, they treat their readers respectfully and trust in their intelligence to separate the chaff from the wheat.

Closer home, we have Hindu with its soft corner for left and at the other end of the spectrum the Times of India reigns as the liberal bellwether.

Enter Manipur, we have multiple media outlets but they offer little or no plurality of thoughts, not to talk of alternative and unpopular ideas. Which begs the question: Is there any benefit to be gained from having a semblance of multitude of media voices if they pretty much say the same things all the time? There isn't any, other than nurturing an illusion of consensus and legitimizing one-sided school of thought and emboldening its protagonists further to reject dissent.

That this sheer level of intolerance is appallingly dangerous for people in the profession of trading ideas is a foregone conclusion. It is also a grim reminder of the fact that the rule of law, the very foundation of a civilization, is woefully missing from our society.

(But whose laws?) If our original intention as a reporter or an editor was to roar, we end up whimpering because we see the futility of having a meaningful dialogue, much less confrontation, with trigger-happy guardians of our conscience and what not.

I can't be too pessimistic. Free speech can be exercised with impunity if you have the muscle power and the protection of firepower. Sometimes it makes me wonder whether the universal right to own weapons would solve our problems-a wishful, dangerous and impractical thinking that I admit.

But sorry grandma, pen is not mightier than sword. Our pens are impotent and I fervently wish they were guns.

* This young talented writer is a frequent contributor to e-pao.net. He has recently started a new column in The Sangai Express print version, under the label Whistleblower. He has a weblog in the name of Whistleblower and can be contacted at ranjanyumnam(at)gmail(dot)com
This article was webcasted on May 23, 2007.

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