One is amused and amazed at the fact that the terms ‘moral policing’ and ‘freedom of expression’ are much in the thick and thin of things these days. Is it because there is now an upsurge of conservative militancy? Or, is it because the world has not suddenly become a bad place; but that news travels faster now, and television and the Internet are there to blow things up? Look closely, you will know there is a little of both to it.
A decade or so back when Shiv Sena hoodlums plundered the offices of a small Mumbai-based newspaper called Mahanagar, there were few to take up the cudgels on its behalf. But today when the Star News office is pillaged by marauders of an unknown entity over what good journalists will not think of as earth-shaking news, it does have more people reviling the act. And yes, most would have seen the leftovers on television.
It is not very difficult to understand why the great advocates of civilisation react in such uncivilised a manner. This bigoted mindset is entrenched in intolerance, and the nihilist conviction that my beliefs are sacrosanct, yours are not. In a democracy we get the politicians we deserve, and when intolerance is what trickles down from the top, it leaves us as a society in a blinkered quagmire from which we can hardly find a way out.
From the top, did I say? Yes, I did, for today we have a Union minister (whose constitutional mandate ought to be to fight for freedom of expression) lending credence to all self-anointed and self-appointed crusaders of the moral kind. When it is none other than Priyaranjan Dasmunshi who shows he is righter than the rightist Sushma Swaraj by forcing channels like FTV and AXN off the air, it is also equally palpable that there are far too many loopholes in our antediluvian laws that can be made use of to suit the nihilist sensibilities of a hypersensitive, parochial lot.
It is for this reason that not all moral policemen belong to the prowling Shiv Sena- Bajrang Dal stock. There are others like Pratibha Naitthani who use these same drilled laws to the hilt that coax the health minister to get actors stop smoking on-screen. Er, I for one certainly did not take up smoking because I saw Dev Anand puffing in some Navketan starrer. If you are a smoker, probably neither did you. But then, it is unlikely that this contention (or any other) will make Naitthani and her like see reason.
Reason, you will agree, is not the easiest quality to find when the debate of the day is between liberals and conservatives. Reason is unknown to the latter, for if they knew and had the enlightenment to understand, they would have become liberals themselves.
Our over-hyped shibboleth of ‘unity in diversity’ becomes a sordid joke on us when we as a democracy do not allow diverse opinions and imaginations to coexist. Our notions of democracy are mired in the belief that this ‘unity in diversity’ would mean an ethos where people of different religions and sects get the right to vote. That is where this notion ends. That is where liberalism in democracy ends too. For, ‘unity in diversity’ ought not to have been an end, but should have sown the seeds of a vibrant democracy.
Diversity goes for a toss when the conservative fringe of society feels threatened by liberals. When liberals increase in numbers (self-explanatory) or start wielding influence (through the media, being part of it or otherwise), conservatives always strike back, as if in mock self-defence. This they do either by breaking the law (read, taking up the law in their own hands), or making use of loopholes in the same laws. Progress of society has always depended on who wins in these liberals vs conservatives battles. Depending on whose side the scale tilts, you either have the Dark Ages or the Renaissance.
So, who is going to win this ongoing battle on our Indian turf?
It would be infantile of one to make predictions there, but it is a fact that the going is tough for those who believe in liberalism or freedom of expression. After all, we live in a country which is the sixth deadliest in the world as far as journalists are concerned. Yes, more journalists have been killed for their work in only five other countries. And killers of journalists in India are usually not caught and definitely not punished.
We live in a country where it takes a person like Narendra Modi a minute to banish Fanaa, but it takes months, nay years, of legal battles for someone like Anand Patwardhan to stop the bureaucracy from chopping his films into pieces. We are a people who pride themselves on ‘Indian culture’ and we are the same country where you will find men screeching their Honda Accords to a grinding halt so that they can shamelessly unfly and take a leak by the roadside.
Something is grossly wrong with us as a nation. We rake in precious forex by proudly showing off our Khajurahos to foreign tourists, but we have a major problem if nubile couples are even just holding hands in Meerut or Mumbai.
The fault is just not in our stars, but in us as well. That is why many of those who speak out forcefully against the persecution of MF Husain by Hindu goons, could not muster the same courage in 2006 to condemn the virulent Islamist protests against the Mohammed cartoons. If Husain has the artistic right to do as he pleases with Hindu deities, there is no reason why someone cannot do the same with a prophet of another religion.
By maintaining double standards on freedom of expression, we only strengthen the hands of those who hound us for our views and modes of expression.
So, is this a defence of heresy, of obscenity? Is this a defence of the non-existent right to break all laws? No; to the contrary. The bottomline of this piece is just this – if you don’t like my views, don’t read this piece, don’t listen to me. But don’t break into my house or raze it to the ground, don’t make use of archaic laws to get a lower court issue an arrest warrant against me because you don’t like my views.
Just ignore me, as I would do unto you.
[This piece was written originally for M magazine almost a year back. The situation has only worsened since then.]
