Political Diary
New Delhi, 18 June 2019
Growing Chauvinism
BANDH KARO YE NATAK!
By Poonam I Kaushish
Your freedom ends
where my nose begins and one man’s food is another man’s poison. Two adages, a
succinct testimony to the ongoing maelstrom thanks to our netagan’s handling of two incidents, one in West Bengal and the
other in ulta-pulta UP. Which
underscore the ugly side of power out of control!
In the first, life
came to a grinding halt across India when junior doctors went on strike in support
of two colleagues’ in Kolkata who were attacked and seriously injured by
relatives of a patient who died at a hospital. Compounding matters, Chief
Minister Mamata’s high-handedness by threatening doctors to resume work resulted
in over 400 senior doctors of various State-run hospitals resigning. Even as no
hospital would like its doctors to be hit or strike, Mamata too should exercise
restraint and apologize.
In the second, a
journalist is arrested by the UP police for posting a video ‘maligning’ Chief
Minister Yogi Adityanath by a woman claiming she had sent a marriage proposal
on Twitter and Facebook to him. He was released after three days by the Supreme
Court asserting “the right to liberty is non-negotiable” and “free speech
cannot be gagged for fear of the mob.”
You could have fooled
me. For yet another presswallah was
thrashed, stripped, urinated in his mouth and arrested by policemen for
covering a train derailment. In Bangaluru, Chief Minister Kumaraswamy jailed
another for “belittling us. Do we look like cartoon characters to you? Who gave
you the authority?”
Dittoes, mercurial
Mamata who imprisoned bête noire BJP’s youth leader for a meme she posted on
Facebook which superimposed her face on actress Priyanka Chopra's Met Gala 2019
look. She was released on bail but asked to
tender an unconditional written apology.
In Tripura too, the police arrested
two newsmen for posting “fake news” about Chief Minister Biplab Deb's personal
life on Facebook. In Orissa a journalist was jailed
for a “derogatory and very, very objectionable” tweet about erotic sculptures
in the 13th century Konark Sun Temple, another
19-year old Uttarakhand village lad was detained for sharing an ‘offensive and
morphed’ photo of Prime Minister Modi.
Sadly, violence and
intolerance is the rhetoric of our times. Pick any newspaper or surf any TV
channel any day. Splashes of social schism gore into news headlines. Curse all
you want, it’s for a cause, remember. Undoubtedly, India thrives on protests.
Which has perfected the old saying “jiski
laathi uski bhains”!
Turn North, South,
East or West the story is the same. In fact, no day passes without a strike
somewhere or an arrest for intolerable behaviour. Be it a mohalla, district or State. Shockingly,
over 50 people were arrested last year for social media posts. Whereby any
film, book or story which pokes fun or is out of sync with our leaders
thinking, cause and outlook is considered an act of sedition and the writer or
film-maker arrested.
Worse, don’t like a tweet?
Arrest the person. Hate a film? Collect a crowd and burn the theatres down?
Don’t like a novelist’s book? Get the Government to ban it or issue a fatwa against the author.
Raising, a moot
point: Are strikes and cartoons, tweets, memes on social media actually
expressions of freedom or are they means of suppressing fundamental rights in a
democracy? Is the polity afraid of the clash of ideas in our public life?
Arguably, not a few
would simply shrug it off with “sab
chalta hai attitude, this is Mera
Bharat Mahan at its rudest and crassest best.” Many would assert ki pharak painda hai.
The cause is immaterial. It is all about registering ones protest, the louder
the better. Success is measured in terms of causing maximum dislocation and
discomfiture to people.
Instances are plenty.
Remember an innocuous cartoonist Assem Trivedi was arrested for sedition by
Mamata in Kolkata. Before him another of his tribe famed Shankar cartoons of
Ambedkar in NCERT school books were posthumously removed. Tamil Nadu banned
noted actor-director Kamal Hasan’s 100 crore magna opus Viswaroopam which dealt
with the issue of terrorism on the fallacious that it would hurt the sentiments
of ‘unknown’ Muslim groups and create a law and order problem. Notwithstanding
if India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, called sedition laws
“objectionable and obnoxious”.
What our leaders
seems to forget is that there is something called Article 19 of the
Constitution which states: “All citizens shall have the right (a) to freedom of
speech and expression…”. It is not an absolute right. Pertinently, democracy is
neither mobocracy nor a license to create bedlam. It is a fine balance between
rights and duties, liberties and responsibilities. One’s freedom pre-supposes
another’s responsibilities and liberty
The question thus
needs to be addressed is should abominable conduct by those in power be
condoned? Can leaders behave callously? Is the polity afraid of the clash of
ideas in our public life? Can a Chief Minister just issue an ultimatum without
hearing the aggrieved parties? Should netas
be a law unto themselves and rule by law? Only the other day, a MP threatened an
airline's staff.
Besides, if
politicians behave preposterously as some of them often do, why do they and
others expect not to be mocked? Don’t we live in a free country? Ridiculing the
ridiculous is not and cannot be a crime, at least in a democracy. One cannot
live life in the slim strip called the official and every joke, wit, satire,
humour or defiance treated as a monster.
In this milieu who do
we turn too? Certainly, we do not need self-appointed guardians to tell us what
we can see or read, what we can wear, eat or drink. We should be free to
believe what we want, whom and how we should love, worship the way we want. Else,
at this rate the day is not far when India could soon resemble Saudi Arabia or
N Korea which have dispensed with producing movies altogether and punish those
who lampoon leaders.
At the same time our
doctors need to understand that democracy is neither mobocracy nor a license to
create bedlam. It is a fine balance between rights and duties, liberties and
responsibilities. One’s freedom pre-supposes another’s responsibilities and
liberty. Paralysing the State, to get attention and policy reversals only exasperates
the public and inconveniences them. Using strong-arm tactics gets one nowhere
as temporary respite is no answer for building a socially cohesive
society.
Where does India go
from here? Our netas need to see how
public figures across the globe are more tolerant about what’s written or
depicted about them. A classic example of political freedom is former Italian
millionaire-playboy-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who was mercilessly
satirized in the print and online forums globally. Americans and Britishers take
a lot of liberties vis-à-vis their
rulers.
In
sum, the message has to go out clearly that the right of the citizen is
paramount. No leader or group can threaten violence, and if they do, they lose
their democratic right to be heard. We are a civilized democracy, remember coercion
has a thousand fathers, while liberty is an orphan. As George Orwell said, if
liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do
not want to hear. Can liberty survive in a country where even jest tends to get
criminalised? Our leaders must desist from using narrow-mindedness and
prejudices as pedestals to stand on to be seen. At some point we have to stand
up and bellow, “Bandh karo ye natak!”---
INFA
(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)
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