Free expression

Members of Uma Bharati's new party blackened the face of a professor in Raipur Medical College for reciting a poem at an Independence Day function in which he allegedly made dishonouring remarks against the goddess Lakshmi. [ Link] According to Bharatiya Janshakti Party state general secretary Rajiv Lochan Shrivastava, some party officebearers came to know about the "derogatory" poem recited by BK Jain the day later and met the professor at the medical college to make him confess regarding the...

Bihar bureaucrats can no longer afford to be casual about what they wear to work. All government officials in the state have been directed to shed their jeans and designer shirts and rely on khadi. Time to go swadeshi, folks. The dress code suggests that IAS officers and other civil servants should dress in formal Indian clothes like dhoti with kurta or shirt or a bush-shirt with trousers (white or some dull shade). A short buttoned-up coat and trousers (white or grey) are also allowed. The...

Very soon we might see stuff on TV that's fit only for babies. At least, that's what might happen if the information and broadcasting minister heeds the advice of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR). [ Link] Sandhya Bajaj, an NCPCR member, wrote to the I&B minister in July, "To protect children from programming with excessive violence and obscenity, I would like to request you to prohibit depicting violence as glamourous or using it to shock or stimulate the audience."...

The Mumbai police are at their wits' end as the number of face blackening incidents keep multiplying in the city. There have been five cases of face blackening in the last four months itself, according to CNN-IBN: The latest incident took place on August 8, when the Shiv Sena's student wing attacked a teacher, for alleged indecency. A week before that, a lecturer from the prestigious JJ School of Arts was attacked by the Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, for allegedly molesting a student. In July, a...

The president of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, has the cheek to defend his party MLAs for attacking Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen. “When the Bangladesh government has shunted Taslima out of the country, why is the Indian government protecting her?” he asked. Well, Nasreen has been living in Kolkata for the last two years. What was Owaisi doing all this while? Sleeping in the House? And come to think of it, this Owaisi's party is an ally of the United...

Activists of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), led by three legislators, attacked Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad on Thursday while she was releasing the Telugu translation of her Bengali novel Shodh (Revenge). Nasrin escaped unhurt as the organisers pushed back about 100 protesters, including the three bellicose Islamist lawmakers. In the melee, one of the protesters slapped her. A journalist, Innaih Narisetti, was also injured oin the melee. The protesters burst into the...

These are the temples of contrast — Kerala's Guruvayoor templte and Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati temple, certainly as far as women are concerned. The former has relaxed its dress codes for women; the latter is contemplating guidelines to help women look adequately pious. The management of the Sree Krishna temple in Guruvayoor last month decided to allow women wearing churidars to enter it. The Guruvayur Devaswom Managing Committee Chairman Thottathil Raveendran said the change was made as part of...

We have received a letter from Ranjit Hoskote, Secretary-Treasurer, Drishti Media, Arts & Human Rights, Ahmedabad, on the Mumbai police stopping a screening of Sanjay Kak's documentary. We write to bring to your notice yet another violation of the freedom of expression in India. On Friday, 27 July 2007, a posse of policemen attached to the Dadar police station in Bombay broke into a private screening of Sanjay Kak's documentary, Jashn-e-Azaadi, and confiscated the DVD. The screening, which was...

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has banned the transmission and retransmission of the advertisements of Lux Cozy Underwear and Amul Macho Underwear because they are "indecent, vulgar and suggestive." It is a different thing altogether that the two ads had been cleared by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), the self-regulatory body of the advertising industry. The venerable I&B ministry has directed all television channels to be more "careful" in future in...

Policement in Noida are grossly incompetent and inefficient when it comes to prevent crimes against women, even if those are eve-teasing cases. But they are ruthlessly efficient when separating a boy from a girl. Three constables attacked a Delhi University student Wednesday last and bundled him into a Gypsy. All because he was seen talking to a girl. CNN-IBN reports: He was allegedly talking to a female friend at the Sector 55 market of Noida when the three cops approached him, bundled him into...