Speak Out: Because Debate Is At The Heart Of Democracy

On the face of it, Speak Out is “a premier debating platform” for college students, the first edition of which had its grand finale last weekend. For the past few months, the term Speak Out has been code in the Newslaundry news room for “I’m exhausted, sleep-deprived, have debate topics coming out of my ears, about to take a flight out of Delhi at twilight so don’t ask me when I’m going to submit my story”. The Newslaundry team went to 20 colleges, from different parts of the country. They heard the college’s best debaters, mulled over the arguments and frequently sampled the college canteen fare too. From all this whirling emerged Speak Out, a debating platform for the young and the restless. (You can see videos from the nationwide auditions here.)

Instead of pitting colleges against one another, the finale would see 30 finalists argue for or against a motion before a panel of extremely sombre and exacting judges (at least that’s what Abhinandan Sekhri, Anand Ranganathan and I were aiming for. How well we managed the “sombre” bit is up for debate). The idea was to not settle into silos and usual rivalries. It wasn’t just about making your college proud or defending some sort of legacy. Speak Out is about debate – it’s about the argument. We didn’t want the debaters to retreat behind a college’s insignia. We wanted them to come forward, as individuals, forge connections with fellow debaters, and make a point.

The top six scorers from the initial round would be divided into two teams and battle it out before our star judges. Newslaundry’s Editor in Chief Madhu Trehan, NDTV’s Manvi Sinha Dhillon and stand up comedian Tanmay Bhat would listen to the two teams engage in a parliamentary debate, and nominate a winner. Much to our amusement, the winter session of the Indian Parliament began ten days before the Speak Out finale. Here was the temple of democracy where debates of national importance are meant to be held. Our parliamentarians could barely hold it together for about 10 minutes before Parliament would be adjourned and our Speak Out finalists – engaging in a parliamentary debate – were expected to debate for approximately an hour.

There’s a geeky prestige that comes with college debates and in all honesty, I think most of us from Newslaundry were just expecting to feel the fuzzy warmth of nostalgia as we watched this generation of college debaters. But Speak Out surprised us.

Not just because these college students were passionately arguing their points of view, but because they set up arguments smartly. They cracked jokes, rolled their eyes at the world, tugged at heartstrings and some, like Masoom Suchdeo of IIM, Indore and Anmol Mittal of National Law University, Delhi., defended politically-incorrect positions. Suchdeo, who narrowly missed becoming a finalist, managed to drop a reference to John Lennon while attacking a motion about the rise of nationalism. Mittal stepped up to the podium and said that despite the fact that his judges belonged to independent media and there was a “I Pay To Keep News Free” sign behind him on stage, he was going to argue for regulating media. And he did, elegantly at that.

The 30 Speak Out contestants reminded us of a basic nugget we tend to forget in the age of adjourned parliaments and raucous news panels: just as everything is defensible, every argument also has an Achilles’ heel. How logical and strong your point of view seems is actually dependant upon how cleverly you use the available information. Logic, after all, is not a static, universal truth. It shapeshifts depending upon who is wielding it and to what end.

Especially in the recent past, our public discourse has become about binaries. You’re either right or wrong, good or bad, patriotic or anti-national, and so on. These options are presented to us as immovable monuments, hewn out of history and fact. There’s no debating them. They’re given to us and we’re expected to accept them, as they are. In the age of binaries, we forget that these binaries are actually as fragile as the logic that holds them together. We look for punchlines that can fit into 140 characters or become memes with wings, rather than carefully-constructed arguments. When accusations of one being anti-national are bandied about, we’re told to choose between supporting that point of view or declaring oneself anti-national by association. What about looking at the logic that has equated nationalism with patriotism? To question whether supporting the nation is the same as supporting a governmental position would mean someone has to provide answers, rather than fling counter-allegations.

Questions are dangerous things of adamantine strength. They demolish arguments and construct them with equal efficiency. No wonder we’re told not to question our leaders, our judges, our elders. Because if they had to face questions and engage in debate, then they’d have to build arguments, acknowledge nuance and persuade those who have raised questions. It’s much, much easier to nestle in a binary than to justify the position you’ve taken with logic. It isn’t enough to say “because I’m right”. You’ve got to substantiate every element of that claim.

In its essence, a debate is not about what you believe, but rather what you can defend or dismantle. It takes nothing for granted and there are no givens that you can’t substantiate. Not that you’d guess from what we see of it around us, but a debate requires you to listen to your opponent. Spot the pressure point in their argument, apply logic and it will crumble. Similarly, spot the nucleus amidst the shards of a broken argument and the rest can be glued together, using logic; and it can emerge stronger. Like in the gorgeous Japanese tradition of kintsugi, a crack can also be a joining.

Speak Out reminded us how the air crackles with energy when two well-matched teams take on each other’s arguments. Sadly, no one in the Indian public space does this and our democracy is all the more fragile for it. Watching arguments being built and torn down is actually great fun, especially when what’s attacked is something in which you believe. Because now, you’ve got to rebuild the argument to withstand these attacks. You owe it to your beliefs.

The motion for the six finalists of Speak Out was, “This house believes that India’s demographic dividend is an asset and not a liability”. There is something just a little bit cruel about making a group of people in their early 20s argue that a young population is not a good thing for India, but Sateja Paradkar (BITS, Hyderabad) gave it a spirited shot. She also told the judges that she could, at best, score some drugs for them since she’s a Pharmacy student. Paradkar wasn’t part of the winning team – the Government won, which, aside from being a result based on the other team’s debating skills, could also be a reflection of the times if you’re inclined to symbology – but she attacked her own generation with wry savagery, accusing it of being apathetic and easily manipulated to be violent.  

Watching Speak Out, you had to agree with the house, that India’s demographic dividend is its asset. Not only because of Zoheb Bedi (Ashoka University, Sonipat), Jibran Mansoor (Ashoka University, Delhi) and Mittal’s optimistic arguments, but because every shortlisted debater in Speak Out was lucid, engaging and hard-hitting. They were infinitely more inspiring than the politicians that seek to persuade us to side with them.

Considering the arguments that the establishment and the older generations are putting forward – the most recent being the Supreme Court’s decision that the national anthem be played before the screening of films in cinemas – it’s a relief to know that young people like the debaters we saw at Speak Out will be the ones forming public opinion in the years to come. Whether they argue in courts of law, halls of Parliament or at the dining table, their perspectives and the politics that emerge from them will be the best defence against authoritarianism.

If they keep building and dismantling the way they did during the Speak Out finale, there’s hope yet for our democracy despite the doom and gloom of the present. That’s why next year, we want to go to more colleges, find more debaters and hear more arguments. This is how we’re fighting the good fight.