The rising intolerance in our country, regional, linguistic, religious and cultural makes me sick. In a democracy, this is an incongruity. It is time people were prevented from taking the law into their own hands. Rising prosperity can help too.
I AM offended. I am deeply, deeply offended. My sentiments have been hurt, deeply and irrevocably. Can I go out, vandalise some buses, smash a few glass windows and threaten my offender with a fate worse than death if he or she doesn’t repent? What am I saying? Of course I can. Everyone else is doing it.
People felt offended when Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty on the cheek. (I don’t think Shilpa minded it much herself). People felt offended when Sania Mirza wore a short skirt to play tennis and said pre-marital sex was not all that bad (as did actress Khushboo). And now, Jodhaa Akbar has been banned in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, apparently because it’s creating a law and order problem. Hasn’t the government considered that it’s the protesters who are creating the problem and not the movie? I particularly have little sympathy for the Rajput protesters of Jodhaa Akbar. Were they asleep when the movie was being filmed, edited and publicised?
This is a typically lazy Indian response. Why bother protecting freedom of speech? It’s so much easier to ban something and save yourself the trouble. You also earn brownie points along the way. It’s politically expedient to ban. No one values freedom of speech. This is a dangerous trend. You cannot have a democracy without the right to freedom of speech and without the fear of reprisals. The rule of law cannot be bypassed by the mob, merely because it is “offended”.
I really have nothing more to say on this issue, except to list the cases in recent years where someone or the other “offended” someone else and that ‘someone else’ retaliated with violence or frivolous court cases. MF Hussain, Taslima Nasreen, Sania Mirza, Khushboo, Shilpa Shetty, Aamir Khan, Ashutosh Gowariker, the makers of Parzania, (banned in Gujarat by the Bajrang Dal, because it depicted a Muslim family’s sufferings during the post-Godhra riots), the makers of Black Friday (for similar reasons, Salman Rushdie (not recent, I know), the makers of Aaja Nachle (for lyrics that were seen to reinforce caste-ist stereotypes), violence in Orissa against Christians and in Maharashtra against non-Marathis, isn’t this rather too much for just a three-year period?
As a nation, we are among the most sensitive people in the world. Most commentators have observed this. Our politicians are also among the craftiest in the world. Commentators have observed this as well.
It’s pretty easy to stir up a bunch of youth with no jobs, no entertainment and no girlfriends (you can thank moral policing for that) by telling them that their community has been insulted gravely. I bet 99 percent of the people protesting Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses never read the book themselves. It’s time to put an end to this. Tolerance levels may take some time to rise. As prosperity increases and quality of life improves, it will prove more difficult for politicians to provoke mobs on such flimsy grounds. However, the rule of law must prevail now. Offended or not, no one can be allowed to take the law into their own hands and stop someone else from saying something through coercion or threat.
Now please excuse me. I have to lead a mob out against a guy who swore at me when I was driving. After cutting me off dangerously with his car, he shouted, “Can you not see?” I’m on my way to Thane Mental Hospital, whose inmates he deeply insulted by comparing them to me!
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