The Right to take Offence

The Danish Cartoon controversy is back in another avatar.

Apparently, the creators of the series South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, sought to portray the Prophet is a bear costume recently. Some islamic (in this case call it terrorist) organisation hurled death threats at Parker and Stone and as a result, the episode in question is no longer available for viewing, anywhere. The terrorists compared Parker and Stone to Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker who was shot and decapitated for what his murderer considered a vile depiction of the Prophet. No doubt, some Koranic scholar will be able to dig up some obscure verse in the Koran which enjoins upon the faithful to be very tolerant of their fellow humans’ religious beliefs , but its high time we put our foot down and called an end to all this taking of offence.

The internet has increasingly become the stronghold of the extremists of all types. The internet Hindus spew venom against anyone who dares raise a finger against Narendra Modi, notwithstanding the fact that he was politically responsible for the Gujarat riots of 2002. The fundamental ‘secularists’ will not even make an effort to let go and bury the ghosts of the past, so that normal people may get back to normal lives.  A group of Christians recently took umbrage, to Jairam Ramesh saying that convocation gowns are a needless relic of our colonial past. Why were they offended you ask ? Its because he said that the graduates shouldnt be dressing like ‘medieval vicars and popes’. This group, whatsitsname, was absolutely outraged that a mere union minister had the temerity to say that the Pope’s wardrobe  was not upto date with current fashion ! The horror I tell you ! Such heresy !

Lets take a look at the Hindu right in India. They say valentine’s day is against Indian traditions and customs and even go so far as to try and ‘teach a lesson’ to people who want to celebrate it. What they hold up as Indian ‘culture’ is in fact a distorted sense of Victorian morality, which the British themselves trashed long ago. M.F.Hussain was hounded out of the country because he dared to paint Saraswathi in the nude. I’m offended too that Hussain did such a thing, but that doesnt mean that I should go around threatening to take his life. It would be stupid, and plain silly. I used to think that freedom of speech and expression cannot be absolute, that it can only go so far as to not hurt people’s sensitivities. But where do we stop ? As can be seen today, every second person will say that his sentiments have been hurt by someone who said something objectionable.

We’ve got to stop this foolishness, where we ban books because it offends a particular community’s sentiments, where the govt allows hooligans to disrupt shooting of movies because it portrays the truth in a very unflattering light, and ban just about anything because some person/group says that they are offended by something said or done. Its absolute tommyrot that Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is banned in India, the country of his birth and his declared source of inspiration. Equally shocking is the fact that Taslima Nasreen was pretty much pushed out of the country because she dared to write about the horrific plight of women in Bangladesh. Where was the famed Indian hospitality, when Nasreen came seeking protection ? The government spinelessly bowed to hardline Muslim demands in throwing her out of the country. The argument can be advanced that the government’s primary duty lies in preserving the peace in India and not to provide asylum to foreigners.Such an argument cannot be faulted.However, if we are to preserve our so-called democracy from degenerating into a free for all, the right course of action would have been to give her protection and deal firmly with the hardline muslims. They have every legal right to protest peacefully against the government’s actions, but there’s no reason why violence should be used or public property be destroyed.

At the end of the day, the question is whether free discourse is possible in India, without people having to go into hiding for saying something that someone found offensive. It is a mark of exceptional culture to be able to comprehend an opinion which is found objectionable and still accept its existence.

“…But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don’t have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don’t have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read…”

– Philip Pullman, about his book The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ.