New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that an author’s right to freedom of speech and expression to convey an idea or thought cannot be interfered with. It refused to ban the Malayalam novel Meesha on the ground that it was denigrating women.
A three judge bench of Chief justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud dismissing a petition filed by N. Radhakrishan said “We must remember that we live not in a totalitarian regime but in a democratic nation which permits free exchange of ideas and liberty of thought and expression.”
The petitioner alleged that the novel serialised in a magazine was denigrating women.
Writing the verdict, the CJI said “It is only by defending the sacrosanct principles of free speech and expression or, to borrow the words of Justice Louis Brandeis, the freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think” and by safeguarding the unfettered creative spirit and imagination of authors, writers, artists and persons in the creative field that we can preserve the basic tenets of our constitutional ideals and mature as a democratic society where the freedoms to read and write are valued and cherished clipped, no work of art can be created.”
Cautioning the courts from interfering with such freedom, the CJI said the culture of banning books directly impacts the free flow of ideas and is an affront to the freedom of speech, thought and expression.
Any direct or veiled censorship or ban of book, unless defamatory or derogatory to any community for abject obscenity, would create unrest and disquiet among the intelligentsia by going beyond the bounds of intellectual tolerance and further creating danger to intellectual freedom.”
The bench was of the view that any such curb would result in “intellectual cowardice” which is said to be the greatest enemy of a writer, for it destroys the free spirit of the writer. It shall invite a chilling winter of discontent.
