Writer and podcaster Amit Varma spoke recently to one of The Wire’s founding editors Sidharth Bhatia on the backlash surrounding popular YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia’s “joke” on India’s Got Latent that a section of commentators have said is vulgar and the issue of Freedom of Speech, censorship and Broadcast Bill, in general.
A transcription of it is below.
It has been slightly edited for style and readability.
Sidharth Bhatia: Hello and welcome to The Wire Talks. I’m Sidharth Bhatia. A popular online show host, Ranveer Allahbadia, who goes by the strange name of Beer Biceps, with over eight million subscribers on YouTube, has suddenly turned into a villain.
Till the other day he was interviewing very important people and ministers like S. Jaishankar, Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal have appeared on his show and he also received an award at the hands of the prime minister and bantered with him. Clearly he was a favourite of the establishment. Now he’s gone off his channel, he’s getting death threats and losing subscription.
Cops from Assam and Mumbai are after him. Reports say he’s not answering his phone and his house is locked. The Supreme Court has given him some relief from arrest but the judges made some scathing remarks about the vulgarity of what he said.
All because he made a crass remark on a comedy programme. Allahbadia has since issued an apology for what he said, but the threats haven’t stopped. All this raises questions.
Does Freedom of Speech, including the freedom to say obscene things, is social media very fickle where you can go from hero to zero, as they say, in a matter of minutes? And should the state, in this case the police and even the judiciary, get into it at all?
In this episode, I discuss these and other issues with my guest Amit Varma, who knows a thing or two about social media. He runs a popular podcast, The Seen and The Unseen, and a video show on YouTube, Everything is Everything.
Amit has won the Bastiat Prize for journalism in 2007 and 2015. Amit, welcome to The Wire Talks.
Amit Varma: Thank you so much for having me, Sidharth.
Sidharth Bhatia: Amit, I start by asking you a simple question. Have you ever seen this show, Beer Biceps?
Amit Varma: I haven’t seen the show. It’s a subscriber-only show and I haven’t subscribed.
I’ve just seen the clips in question. I have seen other stuff by Ranveer, obviously, little bits of it here and there. And I’ve seen stuff by Samay Raina, who I think is edgy and an excellent comedian.
And Samay also played a part in the revival of the chess ecosystem in India, a hallowed role that not many outside that community know about, and is a damn good guitarist as well, I am told. So I’m familiar with more of Samay’s work. Ranveer’s work, I have kind of seen it around, but it’s not the kind of show I watch.
But this particular show, all I have seen is the clips that are everywhere on social media.
Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah, well, they’re all over the place. It’s very difficult to escape them.
But, you know, don’t you find it interesting that the most important people in this country were so willing to be interviewed by him? And if you have seen any of those interviews, as I have a few clips, of course, he was clearly out of his depth on the topics he talked about, and yet they came one after the other. So what does that tell us about him, that he had that kind of influence to get all of those people over to his channel?
Amit Varma: So here’s the interesting thing about Ranveer. And, you know, I don’t like any of his content.
Frankly, you know, I defended him on Twitter recently, because I realized that both sides, the right wing and the left wing are coming after him. And it’s a fundamental principle of free speech that you defend the rights of even those you agree with, which is why even though I don’t know the guy at all, I said, ‘However, reprehensible you find this content, you’re not forced to watch it, you’re not forced to listen to his jokes. So it’s perfectly fine.’
Now, the interesting thing is, how he got popular is that he was just making different kinds of content trying to figure out something that would get him clicks. He had no deep knowledge of any subject. But, you know, he was just a curious kid trying different things.
And there is an interesting period in time where he released a couple of videos early on in his career, one of them was an interview with Priyanka Chopra, the other was a video with an Aghori Baba. Right. And now what happened is he thought that the Priyanka Chopra video will go madly viral.
Instead, the Aghori Baba video went madly viral and got something like 2 million viewers in two hours or something like that. It went absolutely crazy. And he realized that, oh, my God, that is a niche. And, you know, people want to know about Aghoris and Tantra and all of this nonsense.
Also read: Vulgarity Row: Not Cultural Policing Only Reasonable Restrictions, Says BJD MP Sasmit Patra
And then he embraced it and he dived into it and he got great numbers for it. And what happens with celebrities is he started getting celebrities. And then the effect that took over is that people would say, oh, Priyanka has been on the show.
I can go and then somebody else would go and they all piled on. So for a long time, this was the show and it was doing well. It was light viewing and it got a lot of numbers.
Then something amusing happened. And I say amusing because what has happened on YouTube is that you have these mainstream people like Beer Biceps aka Ranveer doing whatever they’re doing. And you have an ecosystem of right-wing podcasters and bloggers and all of that who are fairly radical and who will even say that [Narendra] Modi is not extreme enough, he’s letting down the Hindu cause, etc. etc. But all of these guys assume that they are the right-wing guys. So whenever the establishment notices, you know, the podcast sphere, as it were, they will go to these right-wingers.
Instead, these guys didn’t have the numbers. So your Modi and [S.] Jaishankar and all of these people completely ignored these right-wing podcasters. And they said, we’ll go to the people with the numbers, Bear Biceps has numbers.
And Jaishankar went there. All these people went there. Now, he produces content at quite a reasonable pace.
He has no deep, intrinsic, deep knowledge of anything, himself or Ranveer. And he doesn’t claim to. He’s just saying that I know nothing.
I will be curious. In fact, his standard tactic is that whenever somebody answers a question, he will repeat the last line of the answer as a question. So, for example, if I’m talking to him, though I’ve never been on a show, I doubt I ever will.
But if I was talking to him and I said something like that free speech is fundamental to a democracy, Ranveer would say, Oh, free speech is fundamental to a democracy. And then you will start again. So he has these little tricks, but he can’t push back because he knows nothing.
And, you know, he has no deep base of knowledge himself. So he will just ask these questions in wide-eyed wonder and you do what you do. Now, what happened is when he got all these ministers on his programme, immediately the left-wing noticed him and they painted him as a right-wing podcaster, which he wasn’t.
He’s not right-wing. He’s not left-wing. He’s just someone who knows nothing.
And he’ll just, he’s entranced by celebrity and all these powerful people are coming on the show and he’ll kind of get them on the show. And then what happened when he was called on Samay’s show is I suspect that he wanted to find a way to be edgy because Samay is edgy and cool and, you know, and seriously quite good in my opinion. The thing with being edgy is sometimes you go a bit too far, but Samay is great.
And none of these words are from Samay, by the way, what the clips that are circulating. And I think he just tried too hard to be edgy. And first of all, the question that he asked about your parents involved in certain activities and would you join them – one, the question, as you pointed out in a pre-chat before this, isn’t even original.
It’s been asked before, but it’s not even that it’s plagiarised. The sin is that it’s a cliche. It’s been a party question on Reddit and so on for 20 years.
Another famous Indian comedian, much more famous than Ranveer or Samay, used it in a show seven years ago. I won’t name that person because why get him into trouble, but it’s just an absolute cliche and he used it and he got into trouble. And what has happened is the left already hated him because they saw him as a right-wing guy who panders.
And now these Sanskari guys have got after him because ultimately, you know, the BJP is riding a tiger they can’t control. You know, you have all these lunatics who are just looking to take offense at anything. And there’s, you know, I saw this clip of this Baba dressed in saffron who was asked about this.
And he said, ‘Inhone sanatan dharam ki tauheen kari hai, inhe maaf nhi saaf karna chahiye (They have insulted Sanatan Dharma, they should not be forgiven).’
And that we can argue about as maybe pushing the boundaries of free speech and what should be cautious and what should not. So he has, so to sum it up, he’s gotten himself into trouble. But I feel that the big danger is this, that today he’s a convenient target.
Nobody likes him. Nobody respects his content. So the left is after him.
Now the right is shitting on him. And many people feel schadenfreude because they don’t like the work that he does. And the danger is that at the heart of this, we personalise the issue and we forget the principle involved.
The principle involved is that free speech matters, that we have to defend it, that we have to be free speech absolutists. But in a case like this, one, it can get personalised that this is a guy you don’t like. So you forget about the core principle.
And two, you can politicise it, that if the person you don’t like is on the other ideological tribe, so to speak, then you don’t care about the free speech. And that kind of hypocrisy is random in the Indian political sphere, both on the right and the left. And to me, that is dangerous.
And to me, we have to take the focus back to where it belongs and talk about the importance of free speech in a democracy and how we can’t, like, I worry that this incident might be used as a backdoor way to bring the Broadcast Bill back. That everybody’s after this guy, they are saying he can’t produce content. Tomorrow, they’ll say he needs a license.
And you bring in the Broadcast Bill and say, see, this is why creators need to be controlled. And that worries me greatly.
Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah, well, that’s exactly where we are heading.
But I mean, in fact, your answer covered a lot of things that I will be talking about. But, you know, a little while ago, you said he knows nothing about nothing, so to speak. He has no ideology, nothing.
He had tried to be edgy on his own platform, where he had said that who will be these three people you’d like to kick out of this country? You know, so, you know, free speech, yes. And crass speech also should be defended and also crass speech by somebody you don’t like should be defended. Yes.
But my point is that if you’re an absolutist and you say you don’t like it, don’t watch his show, the thing is that you may have already watched it and you can’t unwatch it. That is one. And two, many of these shows, some show or the other, and I have seen those shows, are very, very radical in terms of the kind of communalism they spew out.
Now, it’s not maybe comes to everybody’s notice. But that isn’t, shouldn’t there be some kind of, you can’t say there that don’t watch it because you’ve already watched it, or it’s going out to millions of people. Should absolutism demand that nothing but nothing should come under the purview of the law?
Amit Varma: My sense of that is that, look, I agree with where the US landed upon this.
So the US First Amendment is an awesome defence of free speech. And where they have landed upon this is that everything is fine, hate speech is fine. The line is crossed when there is a direct incitement to violence, right? So if I, for example, say that senior journalists simply should not exist, right? I think bizarre as it is, it should be allowed.
But if I say here is Sidharth Bhatia’s address, go and get him, then that is a direct incitement to violence. And because violence is illegal, that therefore becomes a problem. But otherwise, my issue is that the moment you start saying free speech is fine unless somebody does x, that x becomes open to interpretation.
And the question that then comes in is who is doing the interpreting? Like the reason India doesn’t have free speech is because in Article 19(2) of the Constitution, we have exceptions for things like public order and decency and morality. Who is interpreting decency or morality?
You know, it’s being interpreted by the people in charge, or is being interpreted in an arbitrary way by a district magistrate somewhere or a police somewhere or a court somewhere. So I think the important thing is that what you then have to do is that you have to, in a blanket way, say that no, all free speech is fine, unless there is a direct incitement to violence, in which case, yeah, the law should take action because the violence is illegal.
But otherwise, the moment we start finding exceptions, you know, the exceptions will kind of go against us, and they will harm us. And I’m reminded of this by Tripur Dhawan Singh and Adil Hussain have this excellent book about [Jawaharlal] Nehru’s debates with various people. And you know, one of the four sections there is about Nehru’s debates with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
And there is this point where Nehru, when he’s defending the First Amendment and the First Amendment, our First Amendment, contrary to the US, was a blow on free speech, because it introduced some of these caveats under which free speech would not apply, which can be interpreted widely. And I’ll give you Nehru’s words and Mukherjee’s words, and you’ll see how Mukherjee’s warning is prescient. When Nehru says, if the constitution is interpreted by the courts in a way which comes up in the way of the wishes of the legislature in regard to basic social matters, then it is for the legislatures to consider how to amend the constitution, so that the will of the people as represented in the legislature should prevail.
And this is exactly what he did time and again, like Nehru onwards, every prime minister has amended the constitution every time they wanted to do something unconstitutional. And Mukherjee’s warning to this was, to Nehru was, quote, ‘maybe you will continue for eternity in the next generation, for generations unborn, that is quite possible. But supposing some other party comes into authority, what is the precedent you’re laying down, stop’.
And this is exactly what happened, that, you know, your opposite ideological tribe came into battle and now the same laws you championed are being used against you.
Sidharth Bhatia: Incidentally, the opposite side of ideology is where Shama Prasad Mukherjee also stood.
Amit Varma: He did, but if you look at these particular debates and these particular subjects, the liberalism is coming from Mukherjee, not from Nehru, which also shows you how power corrupts and how power corrodes.
And therefore, the important question to focus on is not who is in charge. It is a mistake to think, if the party changes, everything will be fine. That if a new party wins the election, then democracy is safe.
And I’m like, no, the rules of the game matter. And the fundamental thing is that free speech is respected in our country, neither by the constitution nor by society itself. And these are two problems that seem almost intractable.
And we need to take the focus back on this. And we can’t just let things get worse with something like the Broadcast Bill that might come up on the back of this and so on and so forth. And that we have to lustily defend free speech.
Because the point is, if we make an exception today and say, then tomorrow, what we say will also be considered hate speech and anti-national. So the line that we should take down, that I strongly argue in favour of is that, you know, all free speech is fine unless there is a direct incitement to violence. And we should defend not just people that we agree with, but even people that we disagree with or whose content that we don’t like.
Sidharth Bhatia: Tell me if indeed that is a principle that ought to be followed, which is not going to be followed, of course, because of various parties also supporting. And now at this present moment, when you have a situation like you don’t like a speech by Umar Khalid, throw him into jail and throw sedition at him. And he’s been inside for four years.
He said nothing controversial. Munawar Faruqui, the comedian, was in jail because of a joke he could have potentially made.
Amit Varma: Exactly
Sidharth Bhatia: He wasn’t in for something he said, but could have possibly said. And it could have incited enmity or violence between two communities. So if that is the case, do you think that the state will ever, I mean, I’m not asking this hypothetically, but I’m just saying, would the state or would anybody, even in this case, I felt the remarks by the Supreme Court were unduly harsh.
That was my opinion while giving relief. The question of morality and in our current climate, say, sanskar, because this is really that, because that man in the saffron robes is also sanskar. You know, the whole idea of what is acceptable in a society like India, you know what the underlying sanskar is.
Do you think that if anything, we will find the state, the courts and people at large, therefore following the state and the courts, heading in the exact opposite direction?
Amit Varma: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head because they are heading in the exact opposite direction. And I’m glad you brought up Umar Khalid and Munawar Faruqui because my point is that if you support Umar Khalid and Munawar Faruqui on principle, which I do, then you also have to support beer biceps rights. Now, they are completely different people.
They’re in completely different places. You know, Munawar was doing absolutely nothing that is wrong. He’s a really good comedian also.
I love his dark humour. And Umar Khalid, again, one can only admire the man and what he’s been through with such grace. And one may not feel the same positive sentiment for Ranveer Allahbadia, but then the point is, the principle is the same.
I find it discordant that some people will support the right of Umar Khalid, but not the right of Ranveer Allahbadia, even though it did not seem bizarre to name them in the same sentence. The principle at the core of it is one, free speech, and two, the oppressive power of the state, which we have to fight against. But even before we get to the state, I think there is a question of what is going on in society in the sense that look, politics is downstream of culture.
You know, if you want politics to change, like before the state changes, politics will have to change. Before that happens, a culture will have to change. And unfortunately, in our society, there is no sense of the importance of free speech.
You know, people are perfectly happy to censor views that they don’t agree with, and even worse, as in the case of the Sanskari Baba who said, ‘Inko maaf mat karo, Inko saaf karo (don’t forgive them, finish them)’.
You know, which might seem to be an extreme view, but you know, there are people who hold those kind of views and who think defending free speech is not at all important. So therefore, the important thing to do is, and this is a long term battle that has to be fought, that, you know, it was, this is something that Gandhi also said that you need to change society from the bottom up, it will not happen in a top down kind of way.
And this is one of the fundamental mistakes that I think we made and that we recognize only in hindsight, that we imposed a relatively liberal constitution, not as liberal as you and I would like, but a relatively liberal constitution on an illiberal society. And then we thought that our job was done. And as Ambedkar recently pointed out, that the constitution was mere topsoil, that below that topsoil, society was still deeply illiberal, misogynist, casteist, racist, all of those things.
And we ignored that change completely and thought that, okay the elites have imposed this constitution, everything will happen. And what has happened in the last few years is that politics has caught up with society. And that if the values that we care about, you know, have to be promoted, then that has to be done through social change and not by lecturing people and talking to them in a patronising way and coming from a position of power, but in a much more organic, bottom up way.
And a critical part of that is defending principles for the sake of the principles and not being hypocritical about it. Not supporting, you know, 295A and 153A, when the opposite side is getting, you know, oppressed by them, but, and, you know, attacking them when your own side is getting oppressed, but instead being uniform about it. And by saying that, look, it doesn’t matter if it’s Umar Khalid or it’s Ranveer Allahbadiya, you know, free speech is the thing here.
And again, free speech involves that by all means you condemn Ranveer all you want. If Ranveer says something you find objectionable, then by all means you speak against it. You have a right to free speech as well, but the state should not get involved.
All of this nonsense that a case filed in Assam, a case filed here, they’ve taken his passport away. Why is that happening? That is wrong no matter who it happens to. And, you know, we have to speak in unison about that.
Sidharth Bhatia: Now, coming to, you know, things that are said online and on television, we’ve been discussing the principle, but to carry this forward, much worse is being said on online and on television. Politicians, including MPs, say the most outrageous and hateful things in an outside, in and outside Parliament and getaway. Also, there are many, many cases of reels and all kinds of small content, video being put out by males and females both, which are quite either incendiary or crass or just offensive in some way.
It may not be racist or it may not be against any religion or something like that. But what anyone would say is what one would in common parlance say vulgar. So, why do you think this man has become such a target? His numbers may be one reason, but why do you think this man has become a target? Why not those people who put out those reels? Why not politicians? Why this man?
Amit Varma: So, Sidharth, I don’t think a man with a beard as lustrous as yours has any need for razors, but I will cite two razors here.
One is Occam’s razor, that the simplest explanation is the one that tends to be true, and the other is Hanlon’s razor that never attributes to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. So, I think Hanlon’s razor could be said to apply to Ranveer here in the sense that a lot of people took objection when I described him as well-intentioned in a post where I kind of defended his right to free speech, not his content, mind you. I would never defend his content.
In fact, a lot of his other content is far more objectionable to me than this stupid crass joke, but just his right to free speech, and they said, hey, he’s not well-intentioned, and I’m like, no, Hanlon’s razor, you know, assume goodwill, never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity or in this case, perhaps ignorance. But the other one, Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation tends to be true, is one that I would invoke here. You know, people are coming up with all kinds of conspiracy theories that, oh, this has been planned by so-and-so, or, oh, this has been planned by him himself in conjunction with the ultra right wing and etc, etc.
And I would say that go with the simplest explanation. The simplest explanation to me is that [when] he went on the show, he felt pressure to be edgy because he thought he’s with really cool people and he’s got to be edgy. And he went too far.
And he repeated a cliche that’s been around for 20 years and offended nobody. And he got into trouble. And as for why this particular clip, the point is that something or the other at some point is going to offend people.
Ranveer just got unlucky that it happened to be this thing which was behind a subs wall and still somebody made a clip of that and put it out there. And I think that it is just bad luck. And it’s a really stupid thing to say.
But look, you know, if people are going to go out there and look for offensive things, I’m sure they will find many, many things you and I have said.
Sidharth Bhatia: Absolutely no doubt.
Amit Varma: That can get us lynched, right? You and I have in fact both been at the receiving ends of lynch mobs in my case by both the right and the left.
So, you know, for people who are prolific in the content that they put out, it’s not hard to find anything. I think he just got unlucky and it’s a little bizarre. But I wonder if we got unlucky as well, because now everybody from the right and the left feels schadenfreude that, oh, this guy is being made an example of.
But that might become a pretext for people to bring in a Broadcast Bill or to generally normalise the clamping down on free expression online. And that’s really bad because today we might say, oh, there’s a lot of crass stuff out there and there’s a lot of, you know, offensive stuff out there and somebody needs to do something about it. But eventually, make no mistakes, Sidharth, it’s going to be used against you and me anytime they feel like it.
Sidharth Bhatia: No, no. Of that, I have zero doubt. But I have a slightly different take on it, why they are going after him, is that there is perhaps a sense of, I won’t say embarrassment, but some shock that this crude fellow, this ignorant crude fellow was a man whose show we appeared on.
I mean, you’re sitting as the foreign minister, external affairs minister of this country. You’re sitting as an important grandee of the political system and one minister after the other because some person somewhere decided, hey, this guy can reach eight million people. So why not go on his show? And they sat there while he asked the most daft questions.
And now I think there is an embarrassment there that, you know, he has made a mickey out of us, because though it was pretty apparent even then to say eight million or not, we are not going to subject ourselves. How difficult it is to get an interview with any of these people, extremely difficult. They won’t talk to the media one to one.
And yet they go on like this. I mean, I’m sorry to use that strong word, but idiot is the only way I can describe it and subject themselves to some very silly questions. And now there is this thing to say, ‘ye toh hume pagal bana hai isne, iske peeche jao (he has fooled us, go after him)’. So there may not be a conspiracy, but while it is happening, nobody is stopping it.
Amit Varma: I would just say that I’m a little sceptical of a teleological argument like this, that this is, you know, the intention behind it.
I simply think that there is no intention.
Sidharth Bhatia: There is no intention. There is lack of intention, perhaps lack of action also. But while it is happening, they are not getting into the act.
Amit Varma: That’s a good point. I’ll think about that and process that.
That’s why they’re not really bothered with it. But the other thing that I would point out is that from their point of view, Ranveer was absolutely the perfect person to interview them because Ranveer’s default mode is fawning with any guest he has. He just fawns over them and they’ll say the most banal thing and his eyes will go wide and he’ll say, wow, really, really tell me more.
And that is exactly what they want. And that is the only kind of interview they can handle. Like, you know, one, those guys would never come and talk to you or me, but I would never have any of them on my show either, which is true of most politicians across the spectrum, because they would always have an agenda and they would never open up and they would never be honest.
Who do they go to? They have to go to someone who is exactly like, in a sense, he is a template. He is a model interviewer for them because he won’t ask any difficult questions because he doesn’t have the knowledge to ask difficult questions. He will fawn over them.
And that fawning, frankly, is actually sincerity. You know, it’s not as if he knows that they are what they are and he is trying to curry favour, which has a touch of manipulative evil about it. But he really doesn’t know any better.
You know, [the] minister is sitting in front of him. Wow. And, you know, that’s exactly the kind of interviewer that they want.
But now, yeah, they won’t rush in to save him because why should they? He is not a fundamental part of their ecosystem. He is someone they used to build their image in front of a large audience for the elections last year. And it’s a use and dump.
It’s over now. They don’t need him right now. So he is not a fundamental part of the ecosystem that they’ll rush to save him.
Remember that they even sacrificed Nupur for example, when all of that happened. So who is fundamental? You know, they only care about themselves at a certain deeper level. Yeah.
Sidharth Bhatia: Now, coming to the crucial question that you have touched upon a couple of times and I was going to ask about that. And that’s really exactly the question that has bothered a lot of people that the Broadcast Bill was put in the cold storage because there was a hue and cry in 2023, I think, or maybe 2024. And now may be a good time to come out with it from the government’s point of view because they might say, that look, I mean, they may present it as look, we don’t care if you’re this wing or that wing, etc. This was a man considered to be on the establishment side, interviewed all kinds of people. But once this infraction happens, we are standing up for that principle.
Now, that principle is the principle they think is the principle. So what do you think is going to happen?
Amit Varma: I don’t know the current scenario and how Delhi works and how policy circles work well enough to have an opinion on that. One thing I worry about is that there may not be enough opposition to the Broadcast Bill to stop it.
The last time there was a lot of opposition, a lot of people united against it and so on and so forth. And it worked. Eventually you get fatigued.
How much are you going to protest, protest, protest? And I worry that that fatigue will set in. And I worry about that. And that is something we should kind of watch out for, because this is really something that everyone should get together unitedly and oppose.
You know, the Broadcast Bill will be an absolute disaster if it happens. And especially, you know, the last elections were closer than many people thought they were. And one of the reasons that were put forward for that is that there were all these independent news channels on YouTube and all of that, which helped the Opposition’s case.
So maybe these guys are just waiting for a chance to give themselves a tool where they can strike down on anyone at any point in time. So it may not be something wide reaching, like every creator has to apply for a license. It may not be something like that, but it could be something a little less, but something that gives them the power to clamp down on anyone that they want, you know.
So, Teesta Setalvad comes on my show, for example, as she has, and they might say, okay, clamp down on Amit Varma, finish it forever and find a reason to do it, you know. And there will be, because there will be clauses that will be open for interpretation, like in Article 19(2), you can always find a reason to shut me or you down. And actually, Sidharth, that is the case even now, even without a Broadcast Bill, they can shut you and me up.
You know, it is just the way that the laws are and the constitution does not protect us enough. But regardless of that, the Broadcast Bill would sharpen that blunt tool. And I worry strongly about that.
But I want to turn this back to you, because so far, you’ve been asking me questions and taking my opinions. But I am also extremely interested in what you have to say, because I am just an independent creator sitting in a corner and the powers that be may not notice me much. You are running The Wire, right? You have to deal with these sort of issues on a daily basis.
Your reporters, I know for a fact, have been persecuted. You, no doubt, have faced both at an individual level and at an organisational level, an existential crisis time and again. Tell me about how you look at it.
What gives you hope and what gives you despair when you look at the environment today?
Sidharth Bhatia: So, interesting question and since this is a discussion, I’ll be happy to. Not just us, but a lot of people in our kind of position are fully conscious of the fragility with which we operate. And we are also conscious of the fact that the establishment could manufacture a reason.
Now, in the case of Reporters’ Collective, for example, they did not extend their FCRA and that they said journalism is not a public purpose. Now, that statement is applicable to everybody, including solo artists like you. So, that consciousness of the fragility of the situation is always there.
On the other hand, and I’m not making this kind of grand statement, we just continue day after day after day doing what we know best, what we think we are best at and that is plain old simple journalism. There is no major kind of this, we are not here to win awards or something like that. We are doing what the others are not doing.
If let’s say everyone else was doing what we are doing, we would be one more player, but they are not doing that. There is no journalism being practiced in India now. So, the hope is only that I have always been conscious of the fact that there is a sufficient amount of support base, there is a sufficient number of people, young people by the way, with principles.
Without them, how do we exist financially and otherwise? So, I won’t call it hope because I don’t think it is a situation where we are struggling to survive and these guys are giving us hope. I would say that we do what we do and people notice it, people appreciate it. There are others also, they do what they do and because I doubt whether you can come after each and every one of us, all the sites which are practicing good journalism, I doubt it.
I mean, you can come, the state can be very, very strong and push us down, but it’s not going to silence. We began, I always say this, we began our journey, by the way, we are going to be 10 years old. We began our journey in 2015 with no money for 15 months at all till some money came in.
We didn’t take a salary. So, how much more difficult can we be in? So, I don’t know whether this covers what you are looking for, but I think it is the best way I can say that we do what we do because that’s what we trained in, to be journalists.
Amit Varma: Congratulations on the 10 years, by the way, and more power to you and I hope you continue.
I also worry that everything that is happening has a chilling effect. Maybe instead of one Wire, there would be three, maybe instead of one Scroll, there would be five. But there are many people who will simply say that, you know, why bother doing all of this? It’s just too much trouble.
Sidharth Bhatia: Of course, I mean, I constantly meet people socially and otherwise who say, you know, bravo, etc, etc. But they will not raise their voices on their own, even in their own environment, they don’t have to set up the wire. But even in their own environment, in their WhatsApp groups, in their social groups, etc, they will play it down.
Though that has changed a bit, I must confess. What I saw many, many years ago, and what I’m seeing today, that has definitely changed. I can see a trajectory of people who were really hush, hush, hush, and now are a little less so.
Also read: The Supreme Court Is Policing Morality, Justice Remains Elusive
Amit Varma: Good to know and I’d also be interested in your views and all the questions that you ask me. Like I’ve stated my position, which I know most people in the country will disagree with, free speech absolutism and the only exception being for direct incitement to violence and so on and so forth. Even if you don’t like someone’s views, you are not obliged to defend their views, but you should defend their right to have those views and to state them.
What are your views on this? Where do you come down?
Sidharth Bhatia: I think more or less parallel to yours to say. But I’m very conscious and that was one of my questions. I’m very, very conscious, Amit, that we are dealing with a society here.
The law is very excited to throw the hammer at us because the law knows, the state knows that society will be cheering them and not this man. So, I’m conscious of that fact. So, my views are more or less this.
The absolutism, perhaps I would temper it down by saying that it’s not always easy to use the line, if you don’t like it, don’t see it, because you may have already seen it. But the state entering the picture, absolutely not. And I’m glad to see a lot of people are writing about the state needlessly entering the picture.
Amit Varma: In fact, I’m recording tomorrow with a right-wing podcaster, Kushal Mehra, who has been fiercely and repeatedly speaking up for free speech, even in this case, even though you could argue it goes against his ideological tribe, but he’s speaking up as well. So, I think this, you know, much as we talk about our divisions, it is also true that on the basis of some principles, we can actually form some kind of a united voice. And I think it’s important to sort of have a little more of that because the worst thing we could do is shut up at a time like this.
Sidharth Bhatia: No, no, no, of course not. No, there’s no question of shutting up at a time like this. And not just us, a whole lot of people today I read in the Times of India, somebody’s writing that.
So, somebody who I thought would be, you know, against sanskari or all for sanskari values. Anyway, I have to move on. Amit, there may be soon we must kind of try to organise an offline chat on this.
One of these days, but thank you so much because you have explained the principles really well. And as I said, you are now a veteran in social media projection.
So, I have listened to your podcast, but three hours each time is a little too exhausting.
Amit Varma: I did a recent episode that was 12 and a half hours. So, I don’t think you would have noticed that.
Sidharth Bhatia: So, again, thank you very much for agreeing to join and giving your views. I’ve just been discussing this with Amit, who runs a very popular and very long, as he just said, podcast called The Seen and the Unseen, a weekly television programme?
Amit Varma: Weekly YouTube show.
Sidharth Bhatia: Yeah. Yeah. YouTube show, sorry. Everything is Everything, quite an intriguing name. I’m talking about this episode of Ranveer Allahbadia alias, as the police says, also known as Beer Biceps, who is running away from the police and the state for some crass remarks that he made.
I don’t know whether he’ll listen to this, but he’ll be pleased to know that there are people who are defending his right to say whatever he did say. So, we’ll be back once again next week with another guest on The Wire Talks. Till then, from me, Sidharth Bhatia and the team, goodbye.
