Bald men fighting over a comb that no one is sure exists in the first place, and if it does, no one knows what it looks like and what it was meant to be used for.
It'd be quite funny if it wasn't so tragic.
I'm not quite sure what that was meant to convey, although it did sound funny, especially considering the state of my formerly bushy head of hair.
For the rest, taking a somewhat dense and clueless take on what was said, abhorrent behaviour exists; when people are intimidated, assaulted, injured and killed because of some absolutely trivial factor, such as caste or religion, or, sometimes, language, it is abhorrent.
Secularism exists; it is not the difficult matter that people make it out to be, in their very selfish ways. It consists simply of eliminating religion from all spheres outside personal life. It is not the poor emulation of the multi-cultural model that has been sought to be implemented, with the result being simply that all shades of opinion are offended.
I would be happy to find something funny about the situation, and perhaps, with the unflagging support and dry wit and humour supplied by some observers, it will appear miraculously.
What do you think of the pizza the girl students in Karnataka are being forced to eat or are being prevented from eating?
The question is whether people understand, or fail to understand, that it is about individual liberty. That a student should be allowed to wear whatever she wants to wear within the rules that she accepted right at the outset is a no brainer. Perhaps the precise reason why it has become a controversy.
When in this situation, one segment of society tries to hijack it and make it a religious issue, harassing the students concerned simply because they belong to a religious following that that segment feels hostile towards, it is clearly perverse. Those who then from the other side try to convert it to a matter of religious liberty on very dodgy foundations, foundations that are likely to be struck down by the court hearing the matter, are just as guilty of trying to hijack it for their own ends. It is a pity that the eloquent and articulate lawyer should have taken the tack that he has taken.
So the idea of individual liberty is completely lost, and it becomes a tussle for power between two sets of hijackers. It is not pleasant to equate the two sides, considering that one has consistently been responsible for a very long series of crimes of hate and of religious tolerance against the other, but in this case, it would be less than truthful not to admit that there has been a concerted effort by both sides to win the war of hearts and minds.
That, of course, is another matter; we have the Green Berets dictum on how to handle the winning of hearts and minds, if we wish to re-introduce the coarse humour that some detect in the matter. In a failure to see beyond the headlines and watch with anguish how an ideal was tarnished and defaced by the dregs of society, there are many ironic pieces of humour to be found. Good luck with finding them and having a hearty laugh at everybody else's expense.