Is India becoming a
playground for the intolerant? The evidence is mounting that it
is. Jodhaa Akbar cannot be screened in
Rajasthan because some Rajputs have taken umbrage at the heroine's
name. Sania Mirza has court cases slapped against her for resting her
foot too close to a national flag; Richard Gere for resting his lips
too close to Shilpa Shetty's. Viking Penguin has been served a legal
notice because Jaishree Misra's historical novel on the Rani of Jhansi
actually treats her as a human being. Our most famous living artist, M
F Husain, is living in exile because he fears harassment if he returns
to his own country — at an age where he should be able to live with
love and honour in his homeland. An exhibition in Chennai on Aurangzeb
is shut down after protests by Muslims claiming it misrepresents the
mediaeval emperor. Taslima Nasreen, a persecuted author to whom India
had given asylum, has now fled the country, her peace of mind and
health broken by the relentless hounding of fundamentalist Muslims and
the cravenness of both the West Bengal and Indian governments.
Where is our society heading? The rise of illiberality reflects a
breakdown in our national consensus on the limits of the permissible.
Some Indians feel strongly that in our culture, freedom comes with
responsibilities, and that untrammelled freedom of expression carries
risks of social and political disruption that should not be allowed.
The example of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed is often
cited; not just India, but few governments hosting significant Muslim
populations would be happy to permit the publication of material so
derogatory as to offend and provoke a large segment of the people. We
all know the famous American dictum that freedom of speech does not
include the freedom to falsely shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre.
Similarly, your freedom to move your fist stops just short of my face.
Such restraints are obvious, and no reasonable advocate of freedom of
the press would seek absolute freedom for the media, unconstrained by
the well-being of the society in which it flourishes.
But there is a world of difference between accepting this principle and
implementing it reasonably. Societies are self-correcting mechanisms;
when the press goes too far, it rapidly discovers the limits for
itself. The press everywhere adopts the restraints appropriate for its
social environment; no American newspaper, for instance, would print
the so-called 'n' word when referring to black Americans — not because
the government disallows it but because the editors are conscious of
what is the decent and socially acceptable thing to do. Indian editors
are capable of the same judgements, as they demonstrated during the
episode of the Danish cartoons. Leaving governments to decide what is
reasonable and responsible substitutes the judgement of the authorities
for the judgement of the media, and so jeopardises press freedom. But
leaving it to unelected and unaccountable bigots — to whose uneducated
opposition our governments cave in all too easily — is even worse.
It's not just an Indian problem. The arrest last year of a cartoonist
in Bangladesh and the suspension of publication of the leading Bengali
weekly, Prathom Alo — over a cartoon that sought to satirise not the
Prophet but the social custom of naming everybody after the Prophet —
is a disturbing example of this. If restraints are expected, fine; but
if that means giving free license to the most intolerant elements of a
society to censor ideas that are not in themselves blasphemous, then we
are all in trouble. Asians are all too quick to make the argument that
Asian societies are not European ones, and that not every standard
applicable in Europe can be transplanted wholesale to Asia. But most
Asians are capable of understanding a joke in the spirit in which it
was intended. Such actions as Bangladesh's merely empower the
humourless, whose agenda has little to do with society as it exists but
everything to do with the society they wish to create, one in which
people of their political persuasion will prevail.
But India is not Bangladesh. It is shameful that in a democracy like
ours, we have become so vulnerable to the pressure of the mob — that
those who claim they are offended prevail over those who seek to
exercise their freedom of expression. Today, in our country, it seems
the ultra-sensitive are making the rules. It is high time that civil
society stood up for the tolerance on which our entire civilisation has
rested for millennia — allowing different forms of expression and ideas
to flourish undisturbed, rather than allowing the easily offended to
dictate terms to us. We should say to those whose outrage is easily
sparked: if you're irked by scantily clad ladies on a fashion channel,
watch some other channel; if you don't like Taslima Nasreen's book,
read some other book. But don't try to persecute her for writing a book
that you don't want to read.
Yet, we don't say that. We've allowed the narrow-minded to set the
terms of the debate, partly because our governments, of whatever
political hue, lack the courage to assert the values embedded in our
own Constitution.
To the cravenness of politicians, anxious not to alienate every little
vote bank, must be added the pusillanimity of the elite, who fear that
somehow the protestors are more authentically desi in their outrage
than we are in our liberality. But, in fact, it is tolerance that is
the most authentic Indian tradition; as Amartya Sen has shown, the
spirit of allowing assorted heterodoxies to flourish is deeply rooted
in our country's soil. Every time we give in to the forces of
intolerance, we are betraying that tradition. We are letting ourselves
down as a civilisation.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/S_Tharoor_Stand_up_for_tolerant_society/articleshow/2890122.cms
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