Shut your mouth, Indians: Welcome to the era of instant censorship
Lakshmi Chaudhry
The recipe for censorship in India is simple.
Take one or more organisations affiliated with a caste, community or religion. For best results, pick one with many angry young men. (Stay away mahila groups and NGO types.)
Add any mildly controversial cultural event, including but not limited to movie release, book launch, author appearance, seminars, or art exhibition. Size or quality is unimportant.
Bring said group to a boil.
Press firmly down on politicians and police until they warn of a "law and order" situation. Wait till organisers and sponsors are fully cooked and turn to mush.
Cancel event.
This is censorship for the fast food era. Easy, instant, and ready to serve. No bones or windows broken, no lawsuits required.
The state of free speech in our country is way past dire and now fast approaching absurd. In less than a month, three separate events have been cancelled for the frailest of reasons - and at the merest threat of violence. The wave-the-danda style of censorship is fast becoming routine, even unremarkable. So much so that unless the controversy involves an A-list celebrity like Salman Rushdie, most of us really don't give a damn. Taslima who? Some lefty guy's documentary on Kashmir? Yawn.
The anti-speech strategy is easy to discern, but here's the bigger question: why does it work so well?
One reason is that for all our 21st century pretensions, we remain deeply parochial at heart. We're deeply sensitive to any slight to our identity, be it caste, ethnic, religious, regional, nationalist, or just personal. The Sanjay Kak documentary would have been just as easily shut down if it critiqued Shivaji or - in the case of the Tamil Nadu government - if it depicteda collapsing damwhich cannot be named. And he's lucky the film doesn't take on the Ambanis, a cardinal sin which would surely merit a nationwide ban.
In India, free speech has its limits, and those limits are clear: No one has the right to talk **** about us and ours,....
democracy be damned. Of course, it is only the powerful who get to enforce the rule. As always, danda required. But while some have more power than others, the shut-your-mouth attitude is shared by the greater masses. The conservatives outraged at Rushdie's no-show are A-okay with shutting down Kak's film. Kashmiri activists hold the contrary position with equal fervency. We support free speech not on principle, but when expedient.
The other reason for our weak-kneed support of free speech is fear. For all our nationalist chest-thumping, we secretly believe that our country will fall apart if someone, somewhere says something offensive. All it takes is one incautious word to fuel riots, extremist attacks, or full-on secessionist movements. Hence, we've redefined tolerance to signify its very opposite.
Perhaps the most revealing moment in the entire Symbiosis affair is when college principal Hrishikesh Soman said, "The film has met with criticism from all corners. So we have decided to avoid unnecessary controversies and cancel the screening. If people have a very strong reason to protest the film, then we should be tolerant enough (emphasis added)."
Yes, we should now be tolerant enough of the bigots, the free speech tyrants, the self-serving politicians and their army of thugs. This is what passes for democratic values in India today.
Back in 2008, sociologist Dipankar Gupta told the New York Times that "India's leaders had become so focused on wooing votes for the next elections that they were losing sight of how to protect citizens, regardless of which caste or community they belonged to."
"Religion is important," he said. "Caste is important. Of course it's important, but so long as it does not offend the basic principle of citizenship. In India, we have forgotten it."
Or rather, we do remember it - but at our convenience.
Shut your mouth Indians Welcome to the era of instant censorship - Page 2 | Firstpost
some frustrated Lakshami I guess... hehe
okay okay got it.
