The right to be ‘wrong’

A few years or months ago, I would not have been saying this: but, now, I am convinced that the most sacred of all rights, which every government should protect with all the tools at its disposal, a right for which societies must stake whatever they possess to safeguard, is the right to have a wrong opinion, the right to think and feel wrongly just about anything, the right to live in a manner completely at odds with the expectations of the rest of the world, in short, the right to be wrong for the sake of being wrong.

All great ideas owe their existence to this one single right that the modern world with its so-called “liberating” technologies has dedicated itself to dismantle with the arrogance of a beast gone mad under the influence of a dangerous drug called self-righteousness. Self-righteous behavior has made the world unlivable in giving men the idea of a utopia where there are no disagreements. Primitive men killed their dissenters and in the modern world they get pilloried by public opinion shaped by a ruthless and relentless media and culture industry. How different does that make us from our primitive ancestors!

Two cases in recent memory are: one, when the lawyers defending Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the 2008 Bombay attacks had to face public ire and disgust. The article that appeared in Indian Express, titled “Kasab’s lawyers faced a trial by fire,” speaks of what the lawyers had to go through to be able to defend Kasab. My point is: Kasab may have been a terrorist. It doesn’t mean that he should have no one to defend him. I simply think that the argument is a completely flawed one. Public opinion can be a euphemism for tyranny of the majority and everyone has a right to be represented. I don’t know if that is what democracy is all about. But I’m sure that that’s what humanity is all about.

In another case “an association of women lawyers on Friday moved a petition in the Supreme Court not only to punish two male colleagues for their derogatory views on women in a BBC documentary on Nirbhaya gang rape case, but also to fight the deep-seated gender bias among male advocates . . . and sought a ban on their entry into the apex court premises. The two lawyers represented the accused in the Nirbhaya case.” I surely disagree with what the lawyers had to say. That does not mean that they don’t say it at all. In fact I’m certain that their view, as discriminatory as it may be against women, is a fairly prevalent one. That being apart, they should be able to say it without being put on the rack for the consequences of their words.

Defending the French professor Robert Faurisson, accused of anti-Semitism for denying the holocaust, Chomsky in “Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression” says that “it is precisely in the case of horrendous ideas that the right of free expression must be most vigorously defended; it is easy enough to defend free expression for those who require no such defense.”

“I can’t prosecute you for wishing someone’s death . . . Thinking is not a crime, my friend,” says the judge to the man who is convinced that he is a potential criminal in Luis Bunuel’s movie The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955). The right to uphold absurd opinions in violation of moral and social codes falls in the same category as the right to think and fantasy murdering people that we don’t particularly like to share the earth with.

While mourning the loss of individuality in the modern world, the visionary filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky notes that:

“Throughout the history of civilisation, the historical process has essentially consisted of the ‘right’ way, the ‘correct’ way—a better one every time—conceived in the minds of the ideologues and politicians, being offered to people for the salvation of the world and the improvement of man’s position within it. In order to be part of this process of reorganisation, ‘the few’ had each time to waive their own way of thinking and direct their efforts outside themselves to fit in with the proposed plan of action.”

The “right way” and the “correct way” people have infiltrated the social media, they are the mainstream media, the public spaces are occupied by them and the private spaces are more or less non-existent thanks to them. Individuals must be allowed to pay the price on their own terms for the consequences of wrong words as long as it qualifies for an opinion and not a statement on somebody’s personal life or belief. There is no doubt that this is murky territory that only gets murkier as you start wading through it. However, the distinction could easily be made.

I am dead against freedom of speech if it means being deliberately provocative to the point that the results could be violent and dangerous for the ones who make the statement and for others as well. The Charlie Hebdo thing falls in that category. Where someone is making a point that is disturbing to a lot of others simply because they think that the point is a wrong one and unsustainable in real life that’s when it becomes important to defend it. I cannot think of an example but I can think of countless situations when this happens.

The disseminating technologies of the modern world are monopolized to a large extent by wealthy corporations and unfortunately the most unsustainable of opinions occupy the space of public debate without giving the little more serious ones a chance to see the limelight. That being the case there is fundamentally no distinction between a right and a wrong opinion. Of course, I refuse to equate opinions with assholes like the Clint Eastwood character from a movie. I don’t think everyone has one, I mean opinion.

Fashion and consumption dictate the shape of public debates and how opinions get formulated in the process. Perhaps that’s a bigger issue than the opinion itself. The point I am making is that in giving a chance to “wrong” positions that are targeted for being contrary to public opinion as in the case of the lawyers who wished to defend Ajmal Kasab or the lawyers for the notorious Delhi rapists whose worldview is a reactionary one, we are actually strengthening the social and political order.

In the end it is not the opportunists who suffer the brunt of murderous self-righteousness but decent people who genuinely wish to leave the world a better place than the one into which they were born. The 82-year old communist Govind Pansare who came from a humble background and who did not conform to mainstream thinking in most things that he said and did, who was deeply critical of what he perceived as contradiction like in the BJP’s lip service to Mahatma Gandhi while simultaneously endorsing the worldview of Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, not so surprisingly he was murdered in cold blood and his wife shot at as they were returning home from a morning walk a little more than a month ago. Likewise, Narendra Dabholkar who was murdered in August 2013 for fighting superstition and black magic in a predominantly backward country where people are a prey to insecurities of all kinds, he was merely another one of those victims fighting for what is right while also defending the right to be “wrong.”

An accommodation of the right to be “wrong” is the best way to combat majoritarianism which might use being “right” as a lethal weapon to destroy what is viewed as “wrong” the way a scientist tries to eliminate a virus or bacteria from the human body. The difference is that being “wrong” is not a disease contaminating the body politic especially when we remember that Socrates is put on trial for holding opinions that are completely unfashionable to the society in which he lived. Being “wrong” is merely another way of looking at things without which our minds would stagnate and reach the vegetable state in no time.

Prakash Kona is a writer, teacher and researcher who lives in Hyderabad, India. He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of English Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad.