Chief Justice of India Surya Kant laid great stress on a major aspect of democracy in the course of his address at the 34th convocation of the National Law School of India University at Bangaluru on Oct. 17. He expressed the view that it was ‘a healthy sign of a vibrant democracy’ if youngsters questioned those in authority or positions of power. Obviously, he was referring to the movement against CEC Gyanesh Kumar and the ongoing SIR of voters’ lists in India.
Justice Kant highlighted this point earlier too during court hearings concerning the protests at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and elsewhere, and while addressing the Supreme Court Bar Association’s Independence Day function when he defended the expression of disagreement or the raising of questions concerning our institutions. In his opinion, questioning should never be viewed as an inherent attempt to disturb peace and stability so long as the individuals involved in such an activity do not violate the foundational values enshrined in the Constitution. He specifically pointed out that this was what we learnt from India’s struggle for Independence. In any case, questioning those in authority is also a duty of lawyers and others with a view to protecting constitutional rights and civil liberties.
Now keep the legal profession aside and have a close look at the field of journalism. One can easily notice how the right to question has been helping the practitioners of this art to come out with most-talked-about and effective news stories and opinion pieces. One can confidently say that journalism would cease to have any meaning if the right to ask questions, convenient or inconvenient – a part of the freedom of speech and expression as guaranteed under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution – is taken away. There have been occasions when journalists got excellent news stories after raising questions, sometimes embarrassing ones, during Press conferences held by ruling politicians and others. Of course, indulging in questioning fearlessly is possible only in a country having a democratically elected government. The constitutionally provided right to question is bound to keep those in authority on tenterhooks. They are likely to feel uneasy while answering questions, particularly when their record of governance has been mired in controversies. This may be one reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not been able to gather enough courage so far to face even a single Press conference though he has been at the helm of affairs since May 26, 2014.
Here it must be mentioned that even today, it remains a treat to watch a video showing India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru answering unscripted questions from celebrated British editors belonging to The Economist, The Sunday Times and The New Statesman soon after the country won its Independence from the UK. Nehru can be seen confidently answering questions from these highly rated journalists of their times in June 1953 during his first interview to BBC Television as Prime Minister. The interview was recorded when he was on a visit to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
However, Dr Manmohan Singh holds the honour of addressing the maximum number of Press conferences (nearly 144 in all) during his two terms as Prime Minister. Nehru comes second with 75 Press conferences followed by Rajiv Gandhi (62), Lal Bahadur Shastri (56), AB Vajpayee (55), Indira Gandhi (42), PV Narasimha Rao (40) and Morarji Desai (14 Press conferences). Prime Minister Modi’s score is zero.
However, sometimes asking inconvenient questions during a Press conference may lead to the journalist concerned landing himself in serious trouble as it happened when Gen Pervez Musharraf was the President of Pakistan. I clearly remember having read a report carried by newspapers in 2001 about how a senior journalist in Pakistan got punished when he dared to ask an embarrassing question during a Press conference addressed by General Musharraf. The journalist concerned, Masood Malik, Chief Reporter of well-known Urdu daily Nawa-e-Waqt, in July 2001 dared to ask the ruling General whether a democratically elected ruler in Pakistan would have succeeded in reaching an agreement with India during the famous Agra Summit between the two neighbours. The General lost his cool and retorted if Malik was joking. When Malik went back to his office a few hours later, he was told that he had been demoted and removed from the Urdu daily’s prestigious investigation team.
General Musharraf, obviously, was a military dictator and never tolerated inconvenient questions. Once he rebuked a highly respected journalist in 2008 when the General was confronted with a difficult question concerning the escape of a suspected terrorist from jail. In the process of all that happened, General Musharraf got exposed for his arrogance and rude behaviour.
The discussion on the right to ask questions takes me back to an interesting interaction a group of senior Indian journalists had with noted political thinkers, ministers and others nearly two decades ago in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Brussels is also the city where the European Union (EU) has its headquarters. What I intend to present here is a development that occurred when I happened to be there as one of the journalists invited from India to learn about how the grouping of 27 European countries functions almost successfully. There was a question-answer session after the experts invited by the EU briefly addressed the journalists from India. The discussions we had then soon led to why the EU had been giving one excuse after another to reject Türkiye’s demand to get enrolled as an EU member. After all, Türkiye, too, is a European country. There was a university professor who was most forthcoming in answering our questions.
When I gathered courage to pose a direct question: Is it not true that Türkiye is unable to become a full-fledged member of the EU, perhaps, because it is a Muslim-majority country? The professor quickly answered my question, “Yes, you appear to be correct. After all, the EU is a club of Christian nations for all practical purposes.”
I was stunned. However, I appreciated the honesty of the professor. He revealed the truth, but only after I raised this straight question. It is a different matter that there has been another powerful factor coming in the way of Türkiye not getting its due. Türkiye, having the largest population among all the European nations, would have the largest number of members in the EU Parliament once it gets the EU membership. Obviously, this factor can upset the applecart of Germany, the next most populated country of Europe after Türkiye. It is Germany which does all it can to deny Türkiye the coveted EU membership.
Here I am reminded of a very crisp and brief full-page advertisement carried by The Economist decades ago. The advertisement, issued by America’s Time magazine, “Ask no questions, and you will be told no lies”, must have added considerably to the readership of the prestigious publication owing to its focus being on the idea of questioning. Originally, the catchy phrase was, “Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no fibs”, first used by Oliver Goldsmith (1773) in his famous play, She Stoops to Conquer. Charles Dickens (1861) made it crisper by replacing “…I will tell you no fibs” with “…you will be told no lies” to appear as “Ask no questions, and you will be told no lies”, in his celebrated novel, Great Expectations. Later on, writers like JK Rowling and James Joyce used its variations like “Ask no questions and you will hear no lies”.
The Economist is known for having run at one time the sharpest advertising campaign in the history of newspaper ads. Abbott Mead Vickers, the agency behind the magazine’s most celebrated ad campaign, designed the advertisement with a white text having a bright red background. The most discussed advertisement then had very sharp, sarcastic intellectual humour, asking unforgettable questions. Once, in the midst of these questions, there was a great poster meant for The Economist’s readers: “Lose the ability to ask questions and you lose the ability to lead.”
[The writer, former Dy Editor of The Tribune, is a New Delhi-based political commentator. Email: syed.nooruzzaman@gmail.com]