Freedom of Speech is defined as the basic right of every
human to be able to voice out their opinions, take the stand that they want to
without any fear of being oppressed. However, one always has to ask should
there be boundaries drawn at some points also in favor of the highly debated
case of how much of free speech should be allowed?
In the current world scenario, there are certain restrictions put by the
government on the freedom of speech and expression. Anybody is allowed to have
an opinion, however, the opinion that you have should not, in any way, be
offensive to someone else on the basis of their caste, creed, race, culture or
religion.
Censorship is one phenomena that is in support of the restrictions on freedom
of speech and expression. In India, any movie that is against someone’s beliefs
is censored or banned. That also results in the public asking, “What are the
standards for censorship?” Because the truth is, in an era of diverse mindsets
and way of functioning, there is a diverse range of opinions that can be found.
If a person is telling the truth but it still offends a certain section of the
society, people will be on the streets to remove the content. There is no
freedom of speech anymore, everything depends on compliance to sects of people
who have higher magnitude of influence in their immediate sphere of area.
Internationally, there have been too many cases where if someone uses their
right to freedom of speech, either they have been silenced by removing their
content of forced to be silent by threats and attacks. The Charlie Hebdo
shooting that happened in Paris in 2015 was one of the cases that is a
testament to the attempts that run in the world to force people to silence
their opinions for calling out the extreme aspects of the human-divided world.
The shootings left twelve dead and eleven others injured over a cartoon that
was published in its earlier issue criticizing Prophet Muhammad. On analyzing
this case, we find ourselves posed with a question, “How much freedom is
allowed in having an opinion?”
The impact of the Charlie Hebdo shootings were immense in the world. Nations
were left stunned, people in the west were reeling from the idea that maybe
they no longer had the complete freedom to have an opinion and enjoy satire.
The ‘free world’ of the West clashed heavily with the conservative values of
the East.
But when we think about it, the major clash was over the freedom of speech and
human rights. Why? Because the journalists working in Charlie Hebdo had compete
freedom to express their opinion but so were the conservative values adhering
people of the East because whatever they believe in, they choose to do so and
it is their basic human right to exercise their beliefs. The major problem that
needs to be addressed is that people must learn to respect human rights if they
decide to exercise their right to freedom of speech and if they exercise their
human rights to be able to adhere to their faith, they must respect the right
others have of freedom of speech.
But no matter what we do or where we see, these two rights will always clash
because there exists no mutual respect among both the parties; everyone
believes what they do is right and do anything they want because they think
they have a right to, however, we must realize, those who violate others rights
have no right to possess rights of their own.