The monk, The 'dweep' and the grand diversion!

हे जी रे.. (4)

हे..

रामचंद्र कह गए सिया से (2)

ऐसा कलयुग आएगा

हंस चुगेगा दाना तुन का (2)

कौआ मोती खाएगा

हंस चुगेगा दाना तुन का

कौआ मोती खाएगा

हे जी रे..

फिल्म : गोपी (1970)

संगीत दिया है: कल्याणजी-आनंदजी

गीत के बोल: राजेंद्र कृष्ण

गायक: महेंद्र कपूर

Apple music link to the song: https://music.apple.com/in/album/ramchandra-kah-gaye/1352497375?i=1352498126

Would Dilip Kumar while filming the song have thought that 51 years later, a relatively unknown, slightly overweight, average looking 36 years old from the cage of his residence in Gurgaon, would borrow from his song to attempt succinctly summarizing the India of 2021? Perhaps, not. And yet, here we are!

Who would have thought that a nation whose founding fathers back in 1947 cobbled 552 princely states, (the balance got included in the Indian republic subsequently) and the provinces under British control together, a landmass which housed not just the most impoverished 31,86,60,000 people (1941 census) but also 1/8th of humanity; masses barely educated, with a literacy rate of just about 12%; would have shown the farsightedness of including ‘scientific temperament’ in its founding document, and yet they did. The first PM of this country and also the one to have got elected the most number of times till date (3 straight terms) made sure that India got premier institutes of science like IITs, AIIMs alongside laying the foundation for reasoned enquiry, data-based decision making and statistical analysis, by instituting various census and surveys as an effective arm of the government. India has achieved quite a bit in the last 74 years, it is a thriving country with an active and alive democracy (though under serious existential threat for the last 7 years) but she could not do enough to rid herself of her ‘unscientific approach’, deep-rooted backwardness and moronic entanglement and fascination with anything resembling ‘spirituality or ancient Indian tradition’. 

Needless to say, we are paying a heavy price for it in these pandemic times. Society is naively and naturally falling prey to misguided and downright unlettered suggestions, being made by those in power. Reproducing a few for you here to familiarize you with the degree of the absurdity of these statements from the ruling party of the day.

• BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur believes that drinking Cow urine will cure Covid-19. The lady in the past has also claimed that she cured herself of cancer with Cow Urine!

• BJP HRD Minister Pokhriyal denounces the theory of evolution, he says that ‘no one has seen a money turn into a man’!

• BJP Culture Minister for MP, Usha Thakur proposed ‘yagna chikitsa’ for preventing the 3rd wave!

• BJP MoS of health and family welfare Ashwini Kumar Chaube had suggested that standing in the sun for 10-15 minutes every day will kill the Covid virus!

• Lifelong RSS prachhakar, BJP karyakarta and current PM Modi put forward the instances of Karna from Mahabharta and Lord Ganesha’s trunk to suggest that cosmetic surgery and reproductive genetics were in use in India thousands of years ago! 

• BJP Union minister of railways Piyush Goyal is confused about who discovered gravity, he also believes that mathematics did not play a part in the discovery of the said physics principle. 

The theatre of the absurd does not end there. The satellites of supporters orbiting the ‘political narrative’ of the BJP almost involuntarily, have also paid their dues in furthering the cause of utter nonsense’.

As ludicrous and crackpot as it may sound, in India lead by Fakir Narender Modi (मेरा क्या हैं मैं तो फ़क़ीर हूँ जी झोला उठा के चला जाऊँगा, words of the honourable PM) of 2021, qualified and respected doctors are being forced to defend ‘the science of allopathy and modern medicine’ by arguing with a saffron-clad self-styled Ayurveda and Yoga guru with questionable past, who did not even complete his primary education; in TV studios, at a time when the world is reeling under Pandemic and India has emerged as a hotspot of the world, recording the most number of cases and deaths. What is even more grotesque is the fact that he seems to be winning the battle thus far. Poor doctors, who studied their lungs out, wrote an all India entrance exam, qualified in it, studied medicine for a minimum of 6 years and a max of 15, stand ‘assailable’ in the world of narrative. 

You may wonder why I pronounce Baba the winner in the fight, at least thus far? Here is why.

• Baba openly and publicly lampoons the whole science of modern medicine in the most scurrilous tone imaginable, and yet continues to roam free. He floats his pronouncements on Youtube and other social media platforms, where he enjoys a thick follower base. 

• The quack has bought about 20% (approx) of all advertisement slots on all popular commando comic news channels (a term originally coined by Shekhar Gupta of the print to describe BJP propaganda news channels). Advertisements for his products are flashed even on debates that they organise to banish some of his fallacious claims. Such is the might of the Yogi.

• The Saffron clad Yoga Guru’s wealth and social reach gives him the political muscle needed to make the health minister, who by the way is an allopathy doctor himself and current union minister for road transport & highways and the minister of micro, small and medium enterprises in the Government of India; stand in acquiescence on his either side when he publicity unveils ‘Crononil’ a collection of herbs, untested by any scientific means, as preventive and curative medicine for aliments induced by “Covid-19”, a deadly virus that has killed people in excess of 35.2 lacs, globally. 

• Nothing stops him from selling the ‘cure’ to Indian consumers.

At this point, you might be thinking how do these ‘men of tradition, spirituality and Yoga’ make it so big? To understand it we will need to take a little dip in the history of the nexus between politicians and “Babas and Gurus’. 

• PM Indira Gandhi, daughter of the man, who professed scientific temper; in her days of power had Dhirendra Brahmachari as her Yoga Guru. He used to be just as powerful then, as our Ramdev is now.

• Spiritual guru Chandraswami provided mentorship to PM PV Narasimha Rao. Stories of his influence are part of folklore in the southern part of the country.

• PM Modi is known to be close to Ramdev and many like him, some of his favourite people are also currently serving jail terms for heinous sexual crimes.

I have listed three PMs here but if you dig a little you’d find that over 90% of elected CMs too have some or the other affiliations with one or more ‘men of faith’. 

The unholy alliance between power, politics and these ‘Godmen’ is not hard to understand, these men have a huge following, running in several lacs. They wield enormous influence over their followers who willingly let these godmen tell them who they should vote for. Politicians naturally have an affinity for these people. 

It may be ill-omened that the Government led by PM Modi allows flimflammers like Ramdev to defame the authentic and scientific line of treatment and even speak disloyally of the effectiveness of vaccines when seen from the vantage point of governance and public health and safety but we will need to concede that its political dividends are enormous. And perhaps that is why, he is allowed to rage and rave, as he wishes. The monk who can buy a Ferrari and much else said and I quote, “What can the doctors do, they could not save themselves,1000 of them died despite taking double doses of the vaccine”. Would such a comment not add to already grave vaccine hesitancy in the hinterland of India, you be the judge of that. The government chooses to not intervene with the penal action, no prizes for guessing why.

Politics is a field in which genius moves are often cacodemonic in character. I would like to call your attention to the brilliance of the timing of Ramdev’s attack which is no less crafty,  in the unit of malevolence with which politics measures itself. You might wonder why am I saying such a thing? Let me uncover the bigger act in play here for you.

The peak at least in official numbers for the 2nd Covid-19 wave seems to have passed now in India, with daily caseload reduced to nearly ½ of what it used to be at the peak a few weeks ago. The public attention had started shifting from delinquencies in the cure (Oxygen, beds, ventilator, meds and medical staff) to deficiencies in prevention (vaccine). The number one conversation currently running on the minds of people is vaccines or lack of it. People have understood, by and large, that there is no alternative to getting inoculated when it comes to meeting the challenge that the virus and its many variants in circulation pose. PM Modi’s preoccupation with elections, disdain for the advice of the scientific community, contempt for knowledge and ill-informed bravado came in the way of his administration procuring the number of doses needed to protect the Indian people. As a result, India is experiencing a vaccine drought, of sorts. The mammoth gap between supply and demand, as can be seen in the attached numbers which are a testimony to dwindling rate of vaccination in India.

The administration leaves a lot to be desired for and it does not want the public to understand, acknowledge and discuss its many failures. If there is one thing that PM Modi is concerned about then it is his own image. Recently, BJP’s president joined PM Modi and RSS members to brainstorm ways of recovering from the dent in the image of his leadership, the performance of his government and particularly the mess in UP. The meeting ended with BJP National president, Nadda making a public appeal to the party workers and elected representatives to become ‘more visible’. They understand that the truth is out there and people are taking note of it.

The government desperately wants the nation to look the other way, so it in its masterstroke has expertly manufactured a number of controversies to completely hog the headlines of the newspapers, discussions in prime time and by extension the attention of the people.

 

• They have effectively fashioned a dispute at the peaceful arcepalogo of Lakshadweep. Twitter trends are abuzz and the national media has been forced to turn its gaze to the disturbance that Modi’s trusted BJP party member and currently the administrative head of the island, Praful Khoda Patel has created by suggesting to bring in new laws. Including the one to allow alcohol in the island, mind you, it is coming from an ex-minister of the state Gujarat, which has been in prohibition since time immemorial. Some of his other radical ideas are: 

• Land Development

• Beef and Cow slaughter ban by implication, the draft, however, hides direct mention. It must be noted that the BJP is fine with beef-eating in Kerala and the NE.

• Goondas act; ability to arrest anyone for a year!!

• Ferocious and published feud with Social media giants (Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp), OTT platforms and digital news organisations. The televised theatre of sending Delhi Police over to Twitter’s headquarters in India and several letters being written to Whatsapp have all been timed to coincide with the crisis so that the shortcoming of the Government on the handling of the 2nd wave gets drowned in the noise of these issues.

• Whilst at the Whatsapp topic, you must know that neither parties are fighting for the interest of the users. Whatsapp wants to send metadata freely to Facebook to strengthen its advertisement business and also employ mountains of data for future product creation. The government wants Facebook to break ‘end to end encryption in the cover of identifying the original originator of a ‘fake message’. Many believe that Modi Govt will use the access to clamp down on free speech. Triangulate and bring down posts criticizing the Government, as it has done several times in the recent past, particularly with farm bill protests and the Covid related posts exposing failing of the GOI.

The BJP knows that when these measures are announced there is going to be a widespread protest, noise and chaos. It not only understands and estimates but also anticipates groundswell in opposition to these measures, coming from all directions - and that is exactly what it wants. So that the nation does not find time and attention to focus on the sparsity of vaccines, hiding of deaths and massive undercounting of infections, prominently. With the mess hidden those responsible for it will also get an opportunity to distance themselves from it.

Like it or not, it is indeed a political masterstroke. 

Fight with the Social Media companies, Socio-political disturbances in Lakshadweep and Baba Ramdev’s deplorable, injudicious and irresponsible remarks together provide the best cover that PM Modi and his associates can ask for and create at this point in time. They have succeeded thus far in shaping the national narrative. Whether they continue to march ahead unchallenged and undefeated in the future or not, will depend on how much attention we the people give to what issue? People will need to decide to not get distracted from the number one issue of the day, which is ‘vaccination of a billion people’- nothing that they throw our way will break our resolve. 

We got to use the currency of our attention, judiciously. 

Let's unite in demanding accountability for mismanagement of the pandemic and above all for the quickest possible vaccination for all, not just those who can afford to buy their way out of the pandemic.

Till then take care, goodbye!

#MeToo & Us!

Half a million people responded to a tweet from actress Alyssa Milano within 24 hours of her asking anyone who has ever been 'sexually harassed or assaulted' to reply to her post, she wanted to demonstrate the scale of the problem and thus was born the most successful and the most scary movement of our time - #Metoo. In the week since, there has been a flurry of posts leveling acquisition against many high profile men in entertainment, politics, academics, business and in social life. Last autumn a watershed moment in the history of mankind happened with painful revelation and in less than a year, victims from all over the world .. of all genders, social and economic background have come out with their horrific stories, each one more painful and daunting than the previous. Ever since Tanushree broke her silence on her agony.. spotlight of sorts have got fixed on the issue, at least in the Indian context .. many have come forward too with their stories implicating some very senior, accomplished and respected people. The tainted names include journalists, writers, politicians, businessmen, actors, directors, singers, music composers - in short, it is profession agnostic.

We grew up learning that humans are social animals .. we are however reminded that it is not true for all of us, some of us, are just animals dressed as humans. We live, learn and grow together but that does not necessarily make us alike. Many among us are predators, cold-blooded criminals ... with a crooked sense of belonging and we surely did not need a #MeToo movement to know this for a fact. Crime against women both physical and sexual in nature are brazenly normalized in our society.  I wrote an article on 7th Jan 2017, titled “Crime Against Women - Why?”

Liking it here (https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/01/crime-against-women-why.html ). I won’t repeat what I wrote back then .. but would say that in that article I tried dealing with the “why” part of it and in my own limited way suggest “what” could perhaps be a remedy. Oppression of women, inequality and organized injustice to the gender has a long condemnable history which has been kept under tight covers carefully by those in power .. occasional whispers have always surfaced but nothing to the tune of what is happening now. Silence is no longer a companion to the atrocities .. Skeletons are falling off the closet people are making conscious effort to stir the still waters .. and I couldn’t be happier to know that the truth is coming out, finally. Newspapers are tired of carrying the dead weight of rapes happening across the length and the breadth of our country, it is not merely a coincidence that what is the political capital of India is also the rape capital of the largest democracy of the world. 

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” for the longest time I’ve resisted this philosophy because as a thinking individual I have firmly held that neutrality is the key unless we distance ourselves from the extremes we can’t make a fair assessment or an objective evaluation of the situation. When you subscribe to a certain viewpoint .. you tend to give it preference. But recent developments have shaken that belief a little bit... Look at the names that have come to the fore, MJ Akbar, Pachori, Nana Patekar — these are all, educated, successful, wealthy, politically connected and thus powerful men.

Power must have had a role to play in this. We will come back to the power and some of the other elements that I think are causing these but before we get there I’d like to address the elephant in the room which has to do with trivializing the incident because it is being reported late or by someone who isn’t seen perhaps as a credible figure. And I’m picking this up from an incident that happened to me at the Bangalore airport, I was returning to Hyderabad after a fulfilling day at work and was one among 100 other people who had queued up in the line for security check. I was talking to my mother on the phone in Bhojpuri ( 2nd most popular dialect of Bihar, Magahi is the most spoken one. I’m fluent in both. if you happen to know someone from my home state who says Maithili is the most popular .. you should just ignore that person because .. it is not true) was louder than my usual self because I carry an Airtel SIM card and if you do too you’d know that sometimes speaking louder is the only way to send your voice over to the other side. The gentleman standing behind me .. asked me politely if I was from Bihar .. I responded happily and in a hurried manner, we completed the first 3 questions .. which part of Bihar .. why here .. and how traveling is a pain etc and went back to minding our own businesses. That is when another gentleman wrecked the topic of Tanushree Dutta’s indelicate commentary on Nana, the actor most of us love. I was quietly listening while also surfing through my Twitter timeline. He said that Tanushree is trying to defame Nana to grab limelight which she has lost long back, the person added how her career was nearly over and if it wasn’t for this controversy none of us would even talk about her and then another friend of his pulled out a video from YouTube of one of her songs in which she is seen getting comfortable with Imran Hashmi in a scene that is clearly written to flame passion. The person based his argument on her openness in the song and her being out of work to suggest that it was all false. Nana should file a case against her and how media should ban her etc. A few unparliamentary comments were also made with a few gross remarks on women in the entertainment industry.. at this point, I felt obligated to interject. I wanted to say very many things not all in polite tone but maintaining how unimportant their beliefs were to me and that the setting wasn’t suitable for an argument .. I just said that Tanushree hasn’t denied filming that scene .. it had her consent and therefore she isn’t voicing displeasure on that incidence but the other one in which she felt violated by Nana. I also said that it would have been wonderful if she made her telling to form an FIR back then .. but then truth is not perishable and therefore is not guided by the limitation of expiration. if what she is saying is correct .. she can say it now, a decade later even a century after the incident. Doesn’t matter all that much. Dignity is everyone’s right .. no matter what they wear, how they talk, which part of the world they come from or how they make their money or their gender for that matter.. while I was making my argument I got to the yellow line, which meant that I had to cross over, allow the security personnel to go about his business .. I collected my belonging from the conveyer .. thanked the CISF jawan and walked towards my boarding gate. Telling myself that idiots like those come in the way of creating equitable society and then .. boarded . 

By means of this article, I’m not trying to sit in judgment on what happened. I think due constitutional process should decide punishment after free and fair investigation & trail, hurling accusation doesn’t make someone a criminal. Civil society maintains that unless proven otherwise no one is guilty and certainly not of a crime that can’t be substantiated by hardcore evidence and facts. Those being accused are also equal citizens and deserve to be heard .. we know the legal process and we also know how difficult it is to prove a dirty look or an inappropriate touch. In all likelihood, 95% of criminals will walk free leaving the victim sore, ridiculed and perhaps more melancholic. It is sad, and the order of the day .. but does that make #MeToo inconsequential, certainly not.

In many bold and meaningful ways .. this social media campaign has done three important things which will bring about positive change. Let’s not forget all historic changes have had similar revolutionary past ( not the sexual oppression but people voicing against injustice), from voting rights for women in the US to the most recent abolishment of triple talaq, allowing women the legal right to enter places of worship like Haji Malang Dargah in Bombay , Shani Signapur temple in the west, also the Sabarimala temple visiting rights. Injustice .. needs united voices and therefore I say, this movement will not go to waste. It won’t be the Lokpal Andolan. 

Coming back to the three things. 

Unite voices for meaningful change: This movement gave the weak voice, the Internet got people together, amplified the concern to the right tune. It gave people the belief and courage needed to feel for one another. I salute all of those who have come out, it wouldn’t have been easy.

Detailed narration to change behavior: Victims have literally re-lived the horror in documenting what is it that they had to go through. It serves the twin purpose of alerting others of being mindful of such advances at the same time give those who would like to arrest situations like this enough details to formulate policies and encourage social norms to make our society a better place.

The power of culture: Over 95% of these incidences have happened at the place of work, which underlines the need to re-look at the culture that makes and feeds such monsters. Balancing of power, holding people accountable and creating an open environment which encourages people to blow the whistle is needed.

Harassment is born out of inequality either of real terms or of perceived value. Low self-moral fed by fear is the key reason why victims did not react right at the very first move that the predator made, in my view; reasons could range from economic liability to the desire to succeed in career to lack of support or an understanding or one being an introvert personality trying to avoid confrontation. 

It is upon us to create a just society, one which is based on respect, one that doesn’t violate personal space, one that does not believe that the weaker is to be exploited carelessly. We have to encourage people to speak .. tell their stories .. if needed provide them with security, not just emotional but also financial and legal to enable them to live a dignified life. 

If you let someone walk over you .. you are guilty of not protecting your own dignity. 

I render my support to every victim and offer my apologies on behalf of all from my gender. May you win!!

Padmavati is not the only issue!

Dear Readers - You’ll find the tone and tenor of this write up cynical and even negative to some degree, it on purpose focuses on things which are not quite alright. It is my attempt to tell you ..romanticising without reason or results in view will not serve your long term interests well. For larger good sometimes you need to leave the neutral plain and lean towards one of the two extremes. Go forward, only if you’re up for it, too!

A country, that, under arguably most corrupt regime in independent India grew at a rate of 9% has come shattering down to 5.7% under a nationalist who is not only brutally honest, insanely hardworking, reclusively righteous but also sports a 56’ inch chest. Superb schemes likes start up India, skill India, stand up india has forcibly made job creations sit down in a pit that someone unknown seems to have dug quite deep, govt took a target of creating 2 cr. jobs in the formal sector every year on itself, so far as per their own figures they have created just about 1% of their own target. FDI kept headlines hot and brewing for good about six months, but in real terms, those promises have not even transformed in one nail getting driven into the ground for real, as Dr. Tharoor exclaims in his famous talk. A rather healthy and agile country suffered a massive fracture in its right limb when it was hit by a rod that read ‘creative & courageous’ without a reason and inflicted upon itself a wound that’s sore even after a year of the injury. Demonetisation monetised banks and rendered the informal sector crippled. If that blow was not enough ‘one country one tax' idea that was originally conceived by the very economist who opened India’s economy to the world, was snatched from him made someone else’s and then implemented in haste - resulting in one confused country with 3 taxes and 6 GST rates. Nothing in the recent decades has been known to create perplexity this grave - every businessman is trying to wrap his head around the rates and the filing methods - accountants are spinning their mills like crazy though. 

We live in times when dissent is perceived seditious, sloganeering and sensationalism fills the air, cows feel safer than those who even dream of seeing source of protein in its flesh, stories of people getting lynched float with ease and repeatedly. The whole nation is busy, registering PAN numbers, linking Aadhar with banks and SIM cards and then back with PAN, so much so that they have no time to notice that prices of commodities like fuel and cooking gas have been revised over a dozen times in last three year and on an crude comparison basis, prices have gone up 30%. The railway platform ticket which used to be 2 rupees at one time not too long ago in the past is now 20 bucks but we’re so overwhelmed by the news of a bullet train on loan and the idea of hyperloop between already well connected Mumbai and Pune that we have no time to take note of the fact that poverty line that was wrongly defined at 32 rupees per day hasn’t been revised and every year more people are getting added to that lot, helplessly.

Children’s are dying for lack of life saving oxygen but the administration  is busy finding ways and means to erect another temple!

God knows what has happened to the quality of discourse, we do not speak or critique jobless slowed growth as much or put our heads together to solve the pollution issue but we are hurt immensely when we do not see a man on a wheelchair stand up for national anthem before a movie screening.We are too busy sending disagreements to Pakistan , glorying Bharat by disintegrating it from its own glorious past, TAJ has suddenly become undesirable. Mugalsarai Jn. has been remanded "Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Jn.”. Not just journalists and writers but also qualified judges are killed in cold blood and no one knows who murdered them or is even bothered finding out. Will you please pinch me and wake me up to the India that I used to be in the year 2013 when I believed my vote for BJP will pull India out of the mess that then seemed unbearable. In reality it has thrown on our faces arrogance and mindless race of finishing first in elections. PM’s love for winning elections after elections in eyes of many Indians has made him suitable for trumping Mr. Trump in next US election. 

What is this stupid thing that we’re trying to chase? Why does a Modi postcard on Times square, New York, makes us go swell? Don’t we realise that the money that got our man up on that wall would have fed many kids who die of hunger in world’s larger democracy? Grand respect for Patel doesn’t have to be shown by wasting monumentally in erecting a statue. India would be better served if that money is invested in ensuring timely supply of oxygen cylinders to hospitals where kids die. What kind of India are we living in? Where an elected CM has the audacity of saying criminals will be killed in encounter - where does this man get the courage from? I fail to understand!

Padmavati, yes, an imaginative figure occupies centerstage today! I’m a student of history have read it all my life, I specialise in Indian history - I haven’t read one .. yeah you heard me right, not even one historical account of Padmavati, who is now being referred to by an honourable BJP member as mother of the nation? Can we ask father of the nation his views please?

People have taken to streets, men and women alike, all in no uncertain terms are threatening to create mass ruckus if a director who merely tried  to imaginatively and creatively tell a story about a character that never really lived in flesh and blood, is allowed to go live on the 75 MM screen? What saddens me even more is that it is not the first time when we Indian people are behaving unreasonably.. our past is full of such foolish instances. Satanic verses was banned even before the physical book made it to the indian shores, ‘Mohammad, the Idiot’ article by times of India met the same fate. A flick on Jesus was not allowed to get screened in India become handful of people found it offensive. Taslima Nasreen is a living proof of the fact that we are people who have not become intolerant suddenly but have actually never been quite accepting of differences. Our constitution provides us freedom of speech but it unlike the west imposes reasonable restrictions in interest of morality, foreign relations, religion etc - so you can and at the same time can’t express freely - Article 19 (2)!

The Apex court has on innumerable occasions said that it is duty of the Government to provide its citizens with security so that they get an environment to freely express their views but because the government is also the upholder of law and order it often take hiding into that fact and for a perceived threat chooses to dismiss freedom of expression. States like Rajasthan, UP, MP etc have already banned the movie in their states sighting the same reason - but in reality what they care about is votes and just that!

Offending Rajputs means loosing a state .. so even if their demands are utterly rubbish it must be met! This is the truth!

In a democracy everyone has a right to disagree but as the great Mahatma once argued that so long as we agree on the ground rules of disagreement, expressing disagreements will never be a problem! But in present times disagreement has found ‘threat’ as it companion.

So here is what I’d like to say to all of you who are opposing Padmavati or just glorifying any such stupid move without really checking facts. 

If you find the director taking liberty with historical facts .. why don’t you make a movie with facts? If you find a book or an article offensive - write one carrying your views! You are free to not watch it but you can’t stop others from watching it!

On that note .. I would say that we really need to become a little critical sometimes to understand what is wrong around us. Unless we scrutinise we would not know how urgent we need to correct our course.

Bye for now .. see you in the next one.

Free Speech - Status check!

Absolutism is the virtue that applies to Freedom, if freedom is not absolute, It is anything but free! When it comes to free speech, I’m a not only a big supporter but also a fan of the concepts. Given the realities of our times it is all the more important that we have nothing less than free speech. Look at it, we live in a world that is watched over by cameras, run on web, every tiny detail is in the public domain. And here don’t you make the mistake of thinking if you are not a Facebook check in addict you’re discreet  When you pay digitally you leave an impression which is not only recorded but is also traceable- this is one of the many ways in which what you’re eating, what you plan to buy are all floating in thin air! I do not mean to discourage you from going digital. Because anything which is offline is making little or no sense in today’s world where between confidentiality & convenience- the obvious choice for many in most matters is the later. So, by all means you must & you should be digital. Mr. Modi has been spearheading this change initiative and it is only fair that we Indians support our PM when he is trying to bring about a positive change.

Traditionally, those in power have not openly denounced absolutism in free speech - everyone from Pundit Nehru to Narendra Modi have on occasions more than one made public speeches, even written articles supporting it. And as a nation we are making progress, one can’t deny that! Regulations such as RTI bought in Dr. Singh’s regime, to an extent does extend the power to the common man to know things which they do not have direct access to (well, the debate on validity of items exempted from this act is for another day – right to privacy is also what is dear to us). But is knowing enough? At a personal level perhaps it is all that is needed but when we talk of a society essentially thriving on exchange of all kinds - from goods to money to Ideas to even identities in some cases ..only knowing is not good enough! Let’s me give you an example if Mahatma Gandhi kept the knowledge of power of truth and non-violence to himself would we have managed to get out of the clutches of British oppressors? The answer to that question is simple- NO, we wouldn’t have. It was needed that he communicated the goodness to other people, he used the twitter of then – Radio, Newspaper, magazines apart from every effective deployment of public meetings, prayer gathering to reach masses to ‘network’ to gather support for his ideas - and we have today a whole nation to ourselves.

 

So, knowing alone is never enough. Communication of what is known is knowledge when kept relevant. Then we come to that aspect of free speech that is often debated and discussed in societies which are progressive and consultative. How much should be allowed? Well, if you are wanting to regulate you’re not a supporter of free speech, very clearly! For two reasons, when we allow people to speak their minds freely without fear or pressure, we not only let ideas out but also get to know how good or bad our knowledge or morals are.

 Let’s take an example -  when an MLA is allowed to freely say - “Cow is the only animal that exhales oxygen and that cow dung can neutralise radioactive substances". We know it for sure the level of education and general awareness is so pathetic in our county, so we know that there is work to do! Had our man not been allowed to say what he believed in we wouldn’t have possibly understood that gap that exists - therefore it is important to let people say what they have to, even if what they are saying is stupid or plain dumb.

 

The other aspect is shouldn’t we draw lines as people have often misused the right to free speech by spreading misinformation, abusing people, hurting and insulting sense and sensibility of others on purpose. These are valid concerns. Some may not like to have jokes about Jains eating potatoes, or Sardars having common sense or Biharis being well groomed etc . But if we take everything out, what are we going to joke about? Or in other words express our discontent/observations, freely? A good way of looking at a situation like this is comparing it with food options available at a 5-star restaurant - it offers all kinds of food, veg and non-veg, Indian, Chinese and Mongolian and other kinds but do we choose all? No, we don’t, we eat whatever suits our taste. Same should be the case with free speech and insult, take only what suits your taste ignore the rest and like you do not ask to ban an eatery that also sells food that you don’t like, you shouldn't go crazy after those who say things which doesn’t sound nice or appropriate to you. People must and should have the right to say whatever they wish to.

 

Those who want to gag free voices, more often than not – take refuge in hate speeches to say that regulation is a societal need.

Free speech on ‘hate speeches’? As a county we have seen enough instances of violence and public disorder which were cause by motor mouth hate mongers. They on purpose have said and done things which have hurt sensibilities of people who in turn have raged causing severe damage to the state and society. Goes without saying, we shouldn’t let a hate monger walk free inciting uncalled for disturbance but to say that you can’t hate anything is as logical as is the statement that peacocks breed on sweat. 

 

Nothing can justify putting those who say things you do not like to permanent silence of death, in any society . In past 2 weeks, we have seen noted thinkers and writers being tortured & then murdered. If we were to believe the report, since 2013 in UP alone more than 200 journalists have been killed? What does it say about the state of free speech in our country? We must never forget that we live in a great country, it provides for, all of our needs. But that does not mean that we as citizens shouldn’t question the very well-being of the very nation we call home. One and all should be allowed to say whatever they have to. Killing a writer or silencing a contrarian view will never do this country any good!

 

Let us not forget, death is not the end! Mahatma was killed but his values continue to live and guide people around the world, even today!