Freedom of expression is one of the essential freedoms in a civilized society. For a writer, however, it is more than essential. It is his oxygen. Without it he will choke to death as a writer. I have had personal experience of that choking feeling lately.
My friends, who have been following my columns in this space, have been telephoning and e-mailing me to ask if I have stopped writing. I have been trying to reassure them (and myself) that my last column has only had a little “local difficulty” and will appear soon, my editor assures me.
In that column, I hinted, among other things, at the distinct possibility of one George W. Bush being born yet again. I am no prophet except that I never “misunderestimated” him. (My WORD programme has, as I type this, just questioned my spelling. I am ignoring it, Mr President.) And true enough, “Sayyed” John Kerry’s exit polls turned out to be just that. Intrigued about “Sayyed” John Kerry? Too bad. You will have to wait until my missing column is recovered from the paper’s lost property office.
In the meantime (and it is a mean time), big stories are breaking here in Britain and there in India. Since I last put pen to paper the biggest story has been (no, not Kimberley Quinn v/s David Blunkett, not even Jayalalitha v/s Shankaracharya) but a saga that will go down in history as THE DAY OF THE FOX. This epic is destined to run and run here, like the wily fox, until at least the next General Election, sometime in spring next year perhaps. By then it seems an ancient British sport, described so aptly by Oscar Wilde as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”, will have disappeared from the English landscape, in spite of all the demonstrations and protestations promised by the hunting lobby.
A more unlikely scenario is that the huntin’ and shootin’ brigade will have won the day and that Tony Blair will be chased out of the hunt, with dire consequences for the fox. I have a nasty feeling though that both Tony Blair and Freddie Fox will survive and flourish, the latter to wreak havoc in the English countryside and the former to resume the hunt, chasing humans round and round the “axis of evil”, crying tally ho in unison with the great hunter in the White House.
However, to come back to my original plea about the freedom of expression, I raise this issue not entirely for personal reasons. There is a principle involved here and it ill behoves the guardians of free speech to be denying the same to one of their own tribe.
Shooting the messenger is a sport practiced best by the potentates of yore, and even they learnt to their cost that the message did not die with the messenger.
I urge, therefore, humbly and in all seriousness and friendliness, that my paper publish my October column so that normal service can be resumed. It will be a sad commentary on a newspaper for which, as I have said in my previous columns, I have a great deal of respect, if it was to censor my columns on personal grounds. My candid and outspoken comments about our revered leaders have passed muster. And yet my mild, and in my view entirely justified, complaint about the consistent errors (some as serious as to render my text meaningless or to mean exactly the opposite of what I had intended) has resulted in the column being held back.
Those responsible for denying me my basic human right as a columnist should remember that the paper has on its own panel of columnists that redoubtable champion of freedom and fair play, my friend SARDAR KHUSHWANT SINGH who would not hesitate to administer the draught of malice that may be necessary.
Jo Bole So Nihal, Satya Sri Akal
-Yavar Abbas
Date: December 8, 2004