The country we are
living has become a pathetic place where:
- Singers
are threatened and forced to quit without any sense of reasonableness
shown by self-declared protectors of religion and culture.
- Movies
are banned even before the public can actually see them to debate or
justify their contents.
- Users
of social networking sites are harassed, threatened and even charged by
police for pointing out and acknowledging injustice.
- Books
are banned along with their authors if they are critical about certain ideologies
and beliefs.
- Paintings
are torn, destroyed and painters forced into exile because some
fundamentalists doesn’t have the eyes to appreciate and understand
artistic sensibilities.
- Cartoonists
are arrested because some politicians don’t have an appetite for humor and
the minimum capacity to digest criticism.
- Police
in the name of morality, raids, drags, beats and arrests young people for committing
the “crime of enjoying life” in a metro.
The article 19 (1) (a) of
the Constitution of India gives its citizens the right to freedom of speech and
expression but it seems that a handful of fringe elements and some vested interest
groups have made a clear mockery of the whole concept of Freedom of Expression.
Every Indian citizen has
the right to like, dislike, agree, disagree, accept, reject, appreciate, and criticize.
But no one in India has any right to dictate and impose his/her views on others
even to their own children if they are above 18 years of age. The most
unfortunate part of all these is that the government which is supposed to be safeguarding
the people’s rights has failed miserably in doing so. Due to narrow political
compulsions and perhaps shortsightedness, the government thinks that they are playing
safe by not interfering with certain groups and their exaggerated sentiments. The
political parties (either in power or in opposition) believe that they are protecting
their vote banks by projecting themselves as protecting sentiments of others. However, this shortsightedness is because of
the fact that in India the voices of the ‘Silent Majority’ have long been
dominated and often been overpowered by the voices of the ‘Aggressive Minority’.
Therefore the time has come for the Silent Majority to come out on the street
and say it loud and clear that we won’t tolerate any Talibanization of our
society and our country. It is perhaps a high time to hang the “Rapists of
Article 19”.
