Month: February 2013

Our failure to protest loudly enough makes us complicit with weak governance. It’s a silence that threatens democratic ideas and places every citizen, regardless of ideology, at peril, Namita Bhandare writes.

HT Image

The right to be offended is now an all-inclusive Indian sport that unites citizens from Tamil Nadu to Kashmir, Jaipur to Kolkata, women, Dalits, Muslim, Hindus.

The events of the past few weeks have a depressing sameness. In Kashmir, an all girls’ rock band is declared un-Islamic and disbands. In Tamil Nadu, Kamal Haasan agrees to seven cuts to allow for the release of his film, Vishwaroopam.

In Kolkata, Salman Rushdie cancels plans to attend the book fair. In Bangalore, paintings of nude goddesses cause offence. An academic faces arrest for an intemperate idea. And on it goes.

These disparate events of the past few weeks have some common threads. The first is the growing power of assorted loonies to hold the State to ransom. Today, any group with five black flags can, and frequently does, threaten public order.

Feeding into this blackmail is a hungry media that provides the oxygen of 15 minutes of primetime publicity. Who do these rabble rousers speak for? They certainly do not represent public opinion. There has been no mass upsurge against a film or writer.

There is more angst in Kashmir over the hanging of Afzal Guru than ‘un-Islamic’ girl bands. We have seen nothing even remotely close to the raw anger in the wake of the December Delhi gang rape. The ‘banners’ are groups that seek to serve their own limited interests and do not reflect any larger protest.

The second obvious thread is the failure of the State to rein in these groups and protect the right of citizens to listen to a rock band, see a film or an exhibition, listen to an author, and argue with a bad idea.

Freedom of expression guaranteed by our Constitution, albeit with strictures, includes not just my right to speak (or paint, make movies and so on) but also my right to listen and watch.

It is preposterous that chief minister J Jayalalithaa says she doesn’t have the police force required to protect cinema halls.

It is equally preposterous that Mamata Banerjee’s administration should tip off groups about the arrival of Salman Rushdie. (And let’s give Omar Abdullah credit for arresting those who issue death threats).

Yet, ironically, guarantors of law and order demonstrate their reluctance to act against progenitors of real hate speech whether it is Akbaruddin Owaisi in Andhra Pradesh or, now, Pravin Togadia in Maharashtra.

Even worse is when the State itself resorts to suppression through means like Section 66A under which students get arrested for Facebook posts.

But it is the third thread, related to the first, which is the most disquieting. If there is no larger public demand for bans then there has been no larger public protest against the bans either.

In television studios and newspaper columns the same few people argue for tolerance. But this liberal voice has no larger resonance. Yet, every ban, every compromise whittles away at our constitutional freedoms.

Our failure to protest loudly enough — as we did against corruption or growing sexual violence — makes us complicit with weak governance. We are meekly handing over our rights as citizens to an enfeebled State that clearly does not trust us to make judicious choices.

“Democracy in India,” said BR Ambedkar, “is the top dressing on Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.” Sixty seven years after Independence we seem to be becoming less democratic, less liberal.

The restrictions placed on freedom of expression in Article 19 of the Constitution places strictures presumably on the assumption that it is easy to stoke enmity between disparate groups in a fledgling republic.

But when Supreme Court judges tell sociologist Ashis Nandy that he has ‘no license to make such comments’ then we have to conclude that even our highest court recognises that we continue to exist in a fragile State where citizens lack the maturity to peacefully reject unsavory ideas and so, it is better not to voice them at all.

It’s a silence that threatens democratic ideas and places every citizen, regardless of ideology, at peril.

Namita Bhandare is a Delhi-based writer
Twitter: @namitabhandare
The views expressed by the author are personal

The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate should know that national pride lies in not wanting the world to look at India in admiration. It lies in making your country a better place for its citizens. Namita Bhandare writes.

The man who hopes to be India’s next prime minister is talking about national pride. It will be built on the foundation of the world’s tallest statue, a statue of a man neglected by the Congress and now appropriated by its principal rival, the BJP.

When completed, the 182-metre high statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, built by melting iron pieces of used agricultural implements collected from farmers across seven lakh villages, will be twice the height of the Statue of Liberty and four times that of Christ the Redeemer in Rio.

It will, says Narendra Modi, force the world to look at India in admiration.

The world has indeed been looking at India but perhaps not in ways that Modi would like it to. The world looked at India when citizens were massacred under Modi’s watch in 2002. It looked at India when the Commonwealth Games crumbled under the weight of corruption and inefficiency.

It watches as politicians under the UPA regime have allowed it to slip in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index to 94 of 176 countries surveyed.

It has watched as India emerges as the worst place in the world for women among G20 nations. It has watched as our sex ratio remains abysmal and crimes against women continue with impunity. It has watched as malnutrition in India becomes worse than that of many sub-Saharan African countries and where now one in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.

Do any of these inconvenient truths vanish with the construction of a Rs 2,000 crore statue, funding for which will come from the state treasury that will finance the land and the cost of transportation of agricultural implements? But what is cost when it comes to the issue of national pride?

National pride is the reason put forward by pint-sized politicians to rationalise their giant-sized political ambitions tarted up as statue-building sprees. Chief amongst these is Mayawati who made it her personal mission to install statues of BR Ambedkar, Kanshiram and, of course, herself in practically every mohalla of Uttar Pradesh.

Ironically, the Dalit Prerna Sthals she established in Noida, Lucknow and elsewhere have been described by the BJP as a ‘misuse’ of public money.

In Maharashtra, BR Ambedkar’s grandson, Anandrao had occupied land in the now defunct Indu Mills, not far from Chaitya Bhoomi where the ashes of the architect of India’s Constitution are interred. Plans for an Ambedkar memorial include a 109-metre high statue. Yes, it will be taller than the 93-metre high Statue of Liberty.

We have been hearing promises for a — wait for it — ‘taller-than-the-Statue of Liberty’ 95-metre-high statue of Chattrapati Shivaji ever since the NCP-Congress combine put it on its 2004 election manifesto.

Building a statue at tax-payers’ expense is easy – and no party seems exempt from the potential of its heady populism. Building an institution, say a world-class cancer hospital takes initiative and administrative acumen.

Narendra Modi likes to project himself as a no-nonsense, decisive leader. If he truly believes in shauchalyas before devalayas (toilets before temples) why not build the world’s largest sanitation scheme and name it after the man who unified modern India?

In a country where nearly half our citizens have no access to a toilet, where 1,600 children below the age of 5 die every day because of sanitation-linked disease like diarrhoea and where 24% girls between the ages of 11 and 18 drop out of school because they lack a toilet, what would be a more fitting memorial to India’s first home minister?

National pride comes not from building statues but lasting memorials that benefit citizens. National pride lies not in iron structures but in honest, human endeavour like the Mars mission launched by our Isro scientists. At a cost of Rs 450 crore, the mission’s ambition is far, far larger than any concrete statue our politicians can sanction.

National pride lies in not wanting the world to look at India in admiration. It lies in making your country a better place for its citizens.

Twitter:@namitabhandare

(The views expressed by the author are personal)