Friday, May 26, 2006

Freedom of speech? Shut up!

I usually refrain from making political comments on this blog. But I've been watching, these last few weeks, my India degenerate from a proud democracy (individual freedom, political freedom and economic freedom. Remember?) to a bumbling novice that's turning out to be a haven for religous and political groups. Well, I shouldn't say that this has happened only over the last few weeks. 'Freedom of Speech' has always been taken with a pinch of salt in India. We were one of the first countries to ban Salman Rushdie's Satanic verses. And let's not even go into those dark days when Indira Gandhi declared emergency to prevent court conviction and treated India like her personal trampoline.

More specifically, I've been disturbed at the plight of 2 completely different movies that have suffered at the hands of the Indian government and been banned in parts of India for completely different reasons. First up was the Da Vinci Code that was promptly banned from releasing anywhere in India, following protests from Catholic groups that the movie undermines their faith (If a 2000 year old faith feels threatened by a pop-fiction book and movie, it makes me sad). This, when other predominantly Catholic countries in the Americas and Europe cannot even dream of this. I agree that when we talk about India being a secular country, we swear to recognize and respect all religions. But does this come at the cost of freedom of speech and media? What's next? In our bid to be a secular state, we always bend over backwards to accomodate all kinds of religious groups and fanatics. What we're doing here is setting a dangerous precedent for future protests by various religious groups along the same lines. Why else do you think Muslim groups have sided with the ban? And ofcourse, we can always rely on our saffron brigade (VHP etc.) to come up with innovative reasons for protests/srikes/bans. I think once we go down this path of appeasing various religious groups, there is no turning back. Its a vicious cycle that will suck us into a maze of precedents and accusations of favoritism. These are certainly good times for religious fanatics in India.

Closely following in the footsteps of Da Vinci Code is the decision by the Gujarat government to ban Aamir Khan's much-awaited movie 'Fanaa' in all multplexes in the state. This comes after violent protests all over Gujarat, following Aamir's comments against Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his government. I recently read a blog aptly titled Aaj Ki Goonda Raj that complains about this kind of subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) pseudo-dictatorship that goes on all the time in India. So now we're not even allowed to criticize our democratically-elected leaders and their policies (it doesn't matter if its Aamir or me)? I remember an incident a while ago when our Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha had a few top people from the respected Hindu newspaper arrested for having the balls to question her government.

So what do we do now? Stand by and watch while our freedom of speech and expression gets completely snatched away from us and leaves us naked to suffer the whims and fancies of religious parties, vengeful politicians and the fickle-minded voting public? It might already be too late to stop this rot. I don't have a simple solution, and I suspect, neither do you. But its heart-breaking to see this happening to my country, so I rant and rave here.

Disclaimer: I'm deeply sorry if anything I've said in this article hurts your religious or political sentiments. I'm ignorant, but mean well.

1 Comments:

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