“While we condemn and reject the recent terrorist attack at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris and the killing of the journalists in the magazine company, there is a strong need for introspection on the freedom of speech,” said director of Delhi-based Society of Policy Studies and defence analyst C. Uday Bhaskar.
He was here on Thursday to deliver a talk on ‘The Paris Massacre- Terrorism threatens free speech’, organised by the Centre for Policy Studies.
According to Cmde. Uday Bhaskar, there should be a balance between equity and empathy and different forms of satire may be encouraged but they need not be provocative or insulting to faiths.
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Going back into history, he pointed out that in India there was a similar situation in the 1920s, when a person from one community printed a pamphlet demeaning Devi Sita, and to counter that a person from the majority community printed a book demeaning the Prophet, which was called the ‘Rangeela Rasool’.
Immediately after the publisher of ‘Rangeela Rasool’ was stabbed to death in Lahore, the then British government, brought into force Section 295a of IPC to see that such things are not repeated and to avoid a communal backlash.
Though France is a free-thinking country and the French government had said that satires will not be prohibited, it is the need of the hour to pass certain legislations on freedom of expression at least for maintaining social harmony.
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Post World War II, many of the European country passed legislations on anti-Semitism, so why not now, observed Uday Bhaskar.
Criticising the terror attack, the defence analyst said, “There is common link between Paris attack and the terror attacks at a school in Peshawar and the Boko Haram massacre. And that link is - an ideology of the radical Islamists challenging the freedom of expression.”
Earlier, director of the centre Prof. A. Prasanna Kumar introduced the speaker.