Barely Legal

Our philosophy of life is moulded by how we look at the commodity of time. If you think that time will outlive your consequence, you take to nihilism; if you think there’s only so much time for everyone in the world, you start chanting “Carpe Diem!”. The concept of time has universality but no objectivity. The sense of self begins with our perception of time connected to memories of the past, current experiences, and expectations for the future. Yet, the way we perceive time is widely debated. In all its glorious guises, time has been orchestrating our lives and even though it might have been written off as an illusion, our perception of it most certainly isn’t.

WRITTEN BY ILLUSTRATED BY

Tanmay Gopaldas Sauparnika Nair

Comps 3rd Year MSc Maths 2nd Year

Rohit Rajesh Yelnare

Comps 3rd Year

“Few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer men are wise enough to rule others.” - Edward Abbey. Do you remember the feeling of absolute rage you feel standing in a government office, waiting in a mile-long queue in the blazing hot sun, while the government worker is busy finishing up his round of solitaire after which he promptly heads out for his lunch break? Not one person reading this can honestly say that they haven’t. Can you? There’s a reason why government workers can behave this way and still keep their jobs. The government acts as an uncontested monopoly in the market of governing people. Every organization has vested interests in furthering its agenda and power. They achieve this by seizing as much power in the market as possible. Luckily for the government, this is very easy as they have the sole authority to use force as they please. One way of solidifying their presence is to introduce laws to weed out speech that directly or indirectly harms them.

Hate speech laws make very little sense. The standards for what constitutes hate speech differ significantly from country to country. Usually, speech deemed offensive is generally considered as grounds to prosecute for hate speech. But who gets to decide if the speech in question is actually offensive or not, people’s capacity can vary greatly. But at its core, should offensive speech even be censored in the first place? What gives the government the right to regulate the speech of its subjects.

The “purpose” of these hate laws was to curb targeted violence caused by public speech that expresses hate. But in reality, they are nothing but a tool for the government to crack down on its dissidents. In 1951, just over a year after India’s Constitution went into effect, the article giving the right to freedom of speech was amended