Western Model of Artistic Freedom: Is freedom of speech & expression absolute?

Siddhant Tripathi
2 min readFeb 10, 2022

This topic has been one of the major bones of contention between the Right and Left-wing followers, i.e. the Conservatives & Liberals respectively.

The fundamental right to Freedom of Speech and Expression has been guaranteed under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution of India but it has been one of the most misused rights provided to the general public under the law of the land.

Mostly the people or groups who carry a malicious agenda against individuals, group of people, government, administrative setup, ideology, opinion, views, followers of a particular religion, their traditions, their festivals, their culture, their country, their ancestral heritage, etc. have always been observed to be the foremost to misuse this fundamental right to satisfy their hateful intentions to abuse, demean, defame & badmouth the aforementioned things.

India In Details (https://www.youtube.com/c/IndiaInDetails/featured), a highly popular YouTube channel with over 900K subscribers, has highlighted the issue of misuse of this freedom of speech & expression in the aforementioned video.

Another such video, where recently a so-called stand-up comedian named — Vir Das gave an on-stage performance in the USA that raised a lot of controversy between various ideological factions among the Indian population and attracted a lot of heat from people who help personal opinions for & against his performance.

The following video was posted a while back in the same context by a Polish lady named — Mrs. Karolina Goswami who gave a befitting reply to the self-styled comedian for closing his eyes towards the social flaws and evils existing in the country (as well as the Western Culture), wherein one of its cities he was badmouthing his country & its citizens; in fact, he exhibited his views as if India is & Indians are the most Godforsaken country & people respectively:

The aforementioned video provides a balance to the narrative that tends to always target a particular group, followers of a particular religion & ideology, etc.

However further this debate (whether or not freedom of speech & expression is termed absolute) may go or whatever may be the consequence of it, one thing needs to be well understood:

Any freedom in absolute terms will ALWAYS result in chaos and lawlessness in society!

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Siddhant Tripathi

Creative content developer and bilingual translator (5+ yrs. work experience)