#ICYMITheTribuneOpinion: Free speech, language row and struggle for identity

The Supreme Court rapped the Haryana SIT over the prolonged probe into the Prof Mahmudabad case where the phraseology of the Facebook posts written in English had to be interpreted. Justice Surya Kant told the team, “You don’t need him, you need a dictionary”. Did his posts on Op Sindoor constitute free speech, The Tribune Editor-in-chief Jyoti Malhotra asks in her Edit piece Morality, decency and free speech. Citing various Supreme Court decisions, her article examines how its judges, seen as champions of individual rights, have also shown contradictions. While they’ve defended liberty in cases involving hijab, caste crimes, and academic freedom, they’ve also criticised satire, vulgarity, and dissent on social media.

In another development this week, it came to light that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had flagged a critical vulnerability in the fuel control switches used in Boeing aircraft. This means a switch could move without intention, possibly in flight. But, the FAA merely advised the airlines, and did not make it mandatory for the airlines to look into it. Air India didn’t act probably because it wasn’t legally required. So, flight AI171 didn’t fall from the sky  by chance, it was brought down by a series of decisions, omissions and unheeded warnings, writes Nishant Sahdev, a physicist in the University of North Carolina in his article Ignored warnings, design flaws & an air crash.

On a different note, there were two interesting Op-ed pieces in The Tribune from London. One is about a one-of-its kind exhibition Ancient India: Living Traditions at the British Museum, London, where a ‘spectacle of possession’ is on with rare Indian artefacts on display. The Tribune’s London Correspondent Shyam Bhatia in his Op-ed piece Imperial nostalgia or shared culture writes that while the museum is trying to present the exhibition as a celebration of shared culture, he calls it state-sponsored imperial nostalgia where sacred objects have been transformed into spoils of conquest.

Another interesting story comes from the Pitts River Museum at Oxford University from where ancestral remains of Nagas are being repatriated to India after over a century. It is not merely a return of objects or remains, it is a return of memory, spirit and voice, University of Carolina professor Dolly Kikon said at an address at the museum, parts of which were carried in the Oped article Naga voices rise from UK museum cabinets. 

With the language debate continuing, SC senior advocate Sanjay Hegde writes in his Edit piece Give languages room to co-exist, flourish that the push for lingusitic homogeneity ignores the personal attachment communities have to their mother tongues. Imposing Hindi risks alienation, not cohesion, he warns, and the solution lies in fostering an environment where languages can co-exist.

From the language row, now let’s move to Punjab and the proposed legislation on sacrilege has been the talk of the town. But, why does sacrilege remain a dormant issue and get the attention of the ruling government when Assembly elections are round the corner, asks former GNDU professor Jagrup Singh Sekhon in his Oped piece Sacrilege law a misguided political gamble. Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that the legislation is a misdirected populist measure which has the potential to misfire and intensify religious intolerance. Also, the legislation will give a new force to the fundamentalist organisations in the state and that can be dangerous.

At the global level, minerals were high on the agenda of the India-Brazil meetings in Rio after the BRICS summit. Plans were discussed for joint exploration, mining, processing, recycling and refining of minerals. The PM’s recent overseas tour took him to mineral-rich countries where investments could yield dividends, writes senior financial journalist Sushma Ramachandran in her Edit piece Mineral riches spur India’s outreach. The resource-linked diplomacy is thus a pragmatic attempt to ensure that the country’s development is not hampered at any stage by a shortage of these critical minerals, she writes.

BRICS+ is important as it is seen as the premier forum representing the Global South. In his edit piece Lessons from the Non-Aligned Movement, former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran compares BRICS with the now dormant NAM which played a big role in the post-cold war era from 1965-1990. It is a paradox that the countries of the Global South, enjoying far greater economic, military and technological capabilities than their non-aligned forebears, seem less effectual in influencing global issues than NAM, he rues.

Drawing a comparison between NAM and BRICS, he writes that NAM had a convergence of interests in opposing Western dominance. Today, the Global South is powerless against the unilateralism of Trump’s America. Why is BRICS unable to come together to resist the reassertion of the US and Western dominance? The lesson from NAM is that BRICS nations have no overarching vision which unites them.

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