I think I should be frightened. India continues to curb our enshrined freedoms on a daily basis. The state is not humane. Instead, it is an authority, no different from our caste system and priestly power that held sway over our fates for many generations (and which still continues to do so).
Our state is turning out to be another of our masters who continues to chain us. We are yet to attain our complete freedoms. Our Independence Movement continues.
Here, in the last few days, the Indian State has curbed individual expression stamping on our freedoms.
In the South, in the city of Chennai, a painting exhibition was organized which displayed art work displaying Aurangazeb ransacking Hindu Temples. Indian Muslims felt infuriated and thought it was now their turn to show how ‘hurt’ their ‘sentiments’ were. Some of them showed up at the exhibition and ensured that it was closed. The Tamil Nadu government proceeded to close the exhibition. The Indian State, as usual, has lent its hand to ensure our freedoms are curbed, all in the name of some inane and vapid sentiment called ‘to maintain communal harmony’.
If the communal harmony is fragile that it will get affected by a painting exhibition, then I want to flush that communal harmony down the drain. I don’t want to be hijacked by fanatics, terrorists, superstitions, blind beliefs and most important of all, human stupidity.
Its high time we stand against all such irrational sentiments that allow the state to encroach upon our rights.
In another case, a documentary featuring the treatment meted out to Muslims in Gujarat was disallowed from screening in Jaipur. The police hounded the director and ensured he left the city, all in the name of ‘maintaining communal harmony’.
The rest of us are just being the silent spectators. We are interested in who the perpetrator is – if it is Hindu or Muslim. We have convenient justifications to explain our apathies. Slowly we are giving up some of our most precious rights, without a voice or protest. At this rate, that day is not very far away when the ‘moral police’ will be knocking at my doors for expressing my views.
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