Ritu Menon in The Indian Express:
“These days, one could be forgiven for thinking that the only people whose freedom of expression the State is willing to protect are those who resort to violence in the name of religion—Hindu, Muslim or Christian. (Let’s not forget what happened in progressive Kerala when Mary Roy tried to stage ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’ at her school. Or when cinema halls screened The Da Vinci Code.)
“Indeed, not only does it protect their freedom of expression, it looks like it also protects their freedom to criminally assault and violate. Not a single perpetrator of such violence has been apprehended and punished in the last decade or more that has seen an alarming rise in such street or mob censorship.
“Not in the case of Deepa Mehta’s film; not in the attack on Ajeet Cour’s academy of fine arts in Delhi; not in M.F. Husain’s case; not in the violation of the Bhandarkar Institute; not at MS University in Baroda; not in the assault on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad this August….
“Rather than safeguarding and upholding the fundamental right to freedom of expression, all of us who try to exercise that freedom are told to mind our language. In much the same way that women who are vulnerable to rape are told to behave themselves, or stay at home.”
Read the full article here: Is this a mobocracy?
Not trying to pacify the “freedom of expression” issue, but I found Water from Deepa Mehta particularly disgusting, once the movie was completed because she invokes a “stanza” from teh Manusmrithi to make a claim that women are to be mistreated by denying them education or they are accorded second-class rights. My contempt to Deepa Mehta is fairly simple: .1 If she wants to make a movie exposing Widow exploitation at Varanasi or elsewhere, I am perfectly open to seeing it and acknowledging the problem. But I found it distasteful and completely inaccurate when she relegated the status of a women to be second class depending on a book that no one in India considers sane enough? Is proving a point more important that exposing the problem? By delibrately misquoting facts, Deepa Mehta made the issue of Widows a “Religious: problem sanctioned by Hinduism rather than what it is, a “social” problem/evil.
—End of rant.
SumneNeeve,
Excellent! That is how I felt! Some of these so-called ‘secular’ rypes by the same token have swallowed (if that is possible), ‘lock-stock-and barrel” the religion of peace as Peaceful Religion. Why because their holy book says so:)
Bashing Hinduism looks good in the West–at the same time I am not protesting on exposing the warts of inequity in our religion.
Why is that all secular intellectuals including churumuri not uttering a damn word abt the killing and perscution of hindus in malaysia? Plausibly because infidels desrve to die in the same of secuularism and non intervention in ‘internal affairs’.. At the same shikandi singh is doling out largesse to bangladeshi enemies in terms of millions of tonnes of rice and wheat ( remember $700 million to Pak earthquekae relief?). How can those islamic states take any help from kafirs? sickening seculars
haidabhai, welcome to society :-)
KH, who cares about Malaysia?
that is the funny part, we care about iraq, iran, palestine but we couldn’t careless about malaysia, tibet, srilanka or even sudan.
the wierd thing is we cannot write an article criticizing not just trampling of freedom of expression but orgazing a seige of a city without dragging others into the picture. yeah right, what happened to roy , ‘code, hussain, mehta is the same as what is happening to taslima.
how many books/articles offending islamic sensibilities have been published in secular india, how many have been published for others?
mj akbar wrote a scathing article on the happenings in kolkatta, he didn’t go far enough to uphold taslima’s rights but he dug into the fundamentalists who layed the city siege.
God’s name now is Allah.
AG…
http://sharanyamanivannan.blogspot.com/
“In April 2006, while still a student in Kuala Lumpur, I wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on my blog (sharanyamanivannan.blogspot.com), calling upon the Indian government to speak out on this issue of clear religious and ethnic discrimination in the same way that it had responded to the Danish cartoons parodying Prophet Mohammed.
TS,
Malaysia’s problem no?
BTW Thiru Karu tried to interfere for the sake of his long lost ‘brothers’ (who anyway consider themselves superior to him and his ilk). And here’s what he was told by Malaysian Minister, Mr. Nazri Aziz:
“His place is in Tamil Nadu, not Malaysia. He should worry about his own state. His own state has got problems,” Aziz was quoted as saying by the local media.
“This has got nothing to do with him … lay off,” he was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times.
i posted this before i deleted it. too aggro for one day..
this is pure racism covered in islamism covered in racism.
I want to know what Mr. Aziz’s take on Israel and Sudan is.
The thing is we tend to use this ‘their business’ concept rather selectively. Where it is politically convenient they will make it their business. Remember Iraq?
The thing is people in the center are counting beads and their calculations show no gains for them even if they as much as register a complaint. Remember even the US protested. (you are very selective even in cutting and pasting i see)
somebody ought to set the HRW on these turds trail.
you can call me whatever you want but saudi money is causing too much trouble all over the world. malaysians make some of the most alarming statements when talking at OIC. ofcourse they also have track record to back it up. some of the worst characters in the world have operations in KL.
With ThiruKa on this one. atleast he has the gumption to stand up to his people.
test.
Still Malaysia’s business. Not the US (they interfere when they want, they got the weapons to back it up) or anyone else.
‘His people’?
I bet none of his people want to return to him or Tamil Nadu. Not in a 1000 years. Let Malaysia deal with its troublemakers. We have our own.