A new idea of India

The values the G7 espouses must be followed

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement on underlining the values of democracy and freedom as “India’s civilisational ethos” at the G7 summit must be welcomed. Mr Modi also supported adoption of the “Open Societies Statement” defending “freedom of expression, both online and offline, safeguarding democracies and helping people live free from fear and oppression”. Invited as the lead speaker in a virtual session on open societies, Mr Modi described India, without an awareness of irony, as a “natural ally” of the G7 and guest countries in defending these values from “authoritarianism, terrorism and vicious extremism, disinformation and … economic coercion”. This is a significant statement for Mr Modi to make at a forum of the world’s most powerful democracies just when these attributes appear to be increasingly under threat in India.

Since Mr Modi’s words must be taken at face value, it would be useful for the government to take a cue from the prime minister and urgently adopt an agenda to make good on these pledges, given that India has seen a sharp decline in global indices tracking freedom of expression. For instance, the 2021 World Press Freedom Index put India at rank 142 out of 180 countries, a sharp decline from a low 133 in 2016. In the academic freedom index released for the first time in 2020, India’s position was comparable to Saudi Arabia and Libya. Then again, the number of cases filed under the 161-year-old sedition law expanded 160 per cent between 2016 and 2019, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Taken together with the hundreds of journalists, activists, and protestors who have been incarcerated under a host of other laws under the rubric of terrorism and “unlawful activities”, many of them on thin evidence and often without the benefit of habeas corpus rights, these facts do not evoke an administration committed to a democratic ethos.

Since a fair proportion of these transgressions on freedom of expression concerns state administrations, Mr Modi could set the trend. A good starting point would be to heed the signals from recent comments and rulings from the Supreme Court and have Parliament read down the sedition laws. Created by a colonial government to stall criticism of authoritarian rule, these laws have no place in a democracy that aspires to be genuine. Equally, amnesty could be granted to activists, journalists, comedians, and cartoonists who have been jailed for, or suspected of, criticising the state. Activists doing useful work at grassroots levels, too, should not be treated as enemies of the state, risibly accused of bids to assassinate the PM and so on.

As the G7 countries, with whom Mr Modi took the “Open Societies” pledge, have demonstrated, freedom to criticise within a liberal interpretation of the libel laws remains a core value with which even thin-skinned leaders learn to live, not least because it offers canny politicians clues to popular disaffection. One simple way for Mr Modi to avail himself of the opportunities of a free press is to hold press conferences without pre-approved questions. In fact, much of his agenda to comply with the pledge made on the weekend involves simply undoing acts of commission and omission of the past seven years.