Opinion
The world according to Grok: India must keep trade issues apart from free speech
Summary
- Irony may seem writ large in a legal move made by Elon Musk’s X in India amid a dust-up over his AI chatbot. We must keep matters of free speech out of trade talks with the US. What Grok can or can’t say is for India’s judiciary to determine.
India has been playing nice with America’s Donald Trump administration. So too with EV-maker Tesla and the satellite services arm of SpaceX, both led by Elon Musk, who is widely seen as President Trump’s confidant, a billionaire shaking up the US by taking a chainsaw to its government under the Department of Government Efficiency.
This contrasts with the response of several other countries that the US has threatened with punitive tariffs. Therefore, many see as dark irony the aggressive stance adopted by another firm owned by Elon Musk, X, the microblog platform that he took over in 2022, in suing the government of India over what it sees as attempts to censor free speech. The lawsuit, filed last week, comes amid a furore over what xAI’s chatbot Grok has been saying on X.
Also Read: Only Grok can judge you. It’s scary, and not so smart.
At the outset, let us be clear that there are two separate issues at stake here. One is an effective strategy for dealing with the White House and its notion of US greatness that departs from classic win-win principles of free trade. The other relates to different conceptions of free expression.
It makes sense for New Delhi to refrain from talking tough and focus on negotiating the best deal India can get on US reciprocal tariffs. Depending on whether these are levied on individual items or on classes of products, the impact on our US-bound exports would differ.
The sheer structural difference between the two economies would ensure that what we export to the US will overlap little with what we import from it. So, if New Delhi retains high import duties on ready-to-drive cars, of which Indian exports to the US are minimal, and Washington raises its own barriers for cars made here, it would hardly matter. However, if mirrored tariffs are levied on clubbed products, such as automobiles and components, then our auto-part exports to the US would be hit, unless our barriers are lowered.
Also Read: Nitin Pai: Trump’s tariffs serve political ends even if they lack economic logic
America might also seek to treat Indian GST levied on imports as an additional duty. This is conceptually flawed. Our domestic producers bear GST and need imports to pay the same rates for a level playing field. This must be explained to US negotiators. In general, bilateral talks must take place in an atmosphere of reasonableness and cordiality, not one of confrontation and hostility.
While the White House has readily deployed tariffs to achieve ends in spheres other than trade, India must not let distinct issues get mixed up. On free speech, Trump and Musk both oppose any gags whatsoever as part of their war on ‘wokism,’ but in India, it is squarely a constitutional matter.
Also Read: Both Musk and his MAGA critics are wrong about free speech on microblog platform X
The free-speech curbs that India adopted in its First Amendment do not constrain American free speech. The Indian government, though, tends to err on the side of curtailment while applying the criteria that may justify restrictions on this basic right under Article 19: in the interests of “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence."
A provision of India’s Information Technology Act that seems to give the Centre arbitrary latitude in having online posts taken down is under legal challenge by X. Trump and Musk are too publicly invested in absolute free speech to bargain it away for a bilateral trade deal with India. It would be wise to keep it off the table of talks. What Grok can or cannot say is for the judiciary to determine.
