Book Review: The Free Voice by Ravish Kumar: Revisting ideas on Democracy, Culture and the Nation

 While Ravish Kumar has been in news lately from having resigned from NDTV post the takeover by the Adani group, his book on media neutrality has grabbed my attention and being an ardent follower I felt that this needs to be reviewed.

 Recognized as one of India's best journalists, his book- The Free Voice a n incisive analysis of the current situation of events in India has been offered by Ravish Kumar. Kumar is renowned for his daring reporting and astute political analysis. He was once the Senior Executive Editor of NDTV India, one of the country's prominent Hindi news networks. He has been under attack from numerous trolls over time simply for telling the truth. 

He describes these particular instances of humiliation in this collection of nine pieces while also placing them in a larger framework of the current threats to democracy in India. In the first essay, Kumar shares a personal story about the cost of speaking out. Despite the hatred and threats to his life that he deals with every day, he continues to carry out his duty by telling the truth. He provides numerous examples throughout the book of how the politics of fear work to undermine democratic institutions and democracy itself. It appears that the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) government has made creating fear in the minds of the populace a national project ever since it came to power in 2014.

Although the personal attacks make Kumar uncomfortable, he emphasises the need of challenging power as a necessary component of democracy. Further, Kumar elaborates on the relationship between politics, corporations, and the media as well as how the media is used to manipulate people and spread propaganda. He describes attempts to polarise society and create a "robo-public" as taking place through the use of fake news, sensational cover stories, and arguments. False information is continuously spread about this through social media, WhatsApp, and traditional news outlets. People no longer think and behave rationally as a result of this robotization. Inciting mobs to commit acts of violence against the "Other" by portraying them as a threat to a religion, culture, community, or country has become more common. A WhatsApp forward is all it takes to incite a group to lynch someone.
Kumar warns us that the national project to instil fear is almost finished. In the largest democracy in the world, places for discussion and constructive criticism have been eliminated by the demonization of dissenters, their labelling as anti-national, and online abuse directed at them. Attacks on journalists have dramatically increased, notably those on Basit Malik and Gauri Lankesh in 2017. In the guise of religion or nationalism, many Muslims and Dalits (members of the lowest caste) have been lynched. In his final essay, Kumar revisits important problems including moral policing, "love jihad," honour killings, and hate speech. He emphasises the value of love, peace, and acceptance in a diverse nation like India, where democracy can be maintained via concerted public action and ongoing communication between policymakers and stakeholders. We now come to the fundamental right to privacy, which states that government decisions regarding matters of love and marriage must not be governed. This right gives citizens more power since it protects their democratic commitments while simultaneously enhancing their freedom of choice. Additionally, it restores citizens' faith in the Constitution and due process. This book functions as both a siren and a mirror. On one side, it accurately portrays the complicated social realities that exist in the nation today without using any hyperbole. On the other hand, it alerts people to the terrible repercussions of elevating political figures and the continued deterioration of democratic and constitutional ideals. Rintu Talukdar, 1st Semester