After a climbdown at the Centre
over a ban on the Da Vinci Code film, we learn that three Indian states
have enacted state wide bans - Nagaland, Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh
and that more are likely to follow this devious lead. These are states
where the ruling coalition in India run the show and the statewide ban
on this film are little more than a fraud played on the country�s people
in banning a film that has not been banned in Italy itself, leave alone
in any other Catholic country in the world.
India has a long record of suppressing it�s people�s individual
liberties, and the fact is that Indians have progressively (or should
that be regressively?) enjoyed fewer rights year after year under Indian
rule than they did even under the country�s erstwhile British colonists.
From the heady days after independence was declared in 1947 to the
founding of the Indian Republic in 1950, there has been a steady loss of
rights as far as the common Indian has been concerned with all kinds of
freedoms suppressed from the Right to Property thrown in the dustbin by
the 44th Amendment Act of 1978 to the freedom of expression gradually
whittled down by successive governments irrespective of their political
leanings. And this is a country that touts itself as the world�s largest
democracy while it arms itself to the teeth with nuclear arms and
attempts to sell itself as an ally to the world�s democratic nations.
The ban in Tamilnadu, my former home state and my birthplace has been
more disturbing to me personally than those elsewhere - Andhra Pradesh
is, after all, ruled by a Catholic Chief Minister who has never made any
secret of his fanatical beliefs, and he was bound to go by the diktats
of the local church hooligans who have been threatening violent
agitations though nothing of the sort has actually happened anywhere. M
Karunanidhi, the Tamilnadu Chief Minister, found his own plays banned
several times in the past along with those of his mentor C N Annadurai
and other playwrights and writers like C P Sittarasu under the Congress
government with which his party is allied in the current coalition in
New Delhi. He has been a man who has been known to talk about the
freedom of expression, having been a script writer for the film industry
before he came into politics and a hobby script writer right through his
political career. This hypocritical move by a politician who came to
power claiming that he would end the fascist rule of his predecessor J
Jayalalitha has been all the more telling - the entire political system
has been shown to be nothing more than pitch black pots and kettles each
screaming loudly that they are whiter than milk, purer than the driven
snow. Jayalalitha had been responsible for the country�s only ban on the
Vagina Molologues, a play that had been allowed to run even in Pakistan,
a country that India is fond of denouncing as a dictatorship.
The Gujarat state government banned Amir Khan�s film Fanaa because the
actor participated in a meeting for the rights of tribal people
displaced by dam constructions there. The ruling coalition protested
this and then it went straight on to ban the Da Vinci Code film in a
more devious way than the obviously fundamentalist Narendra Modi
government used in Gujarat. What does this say about the world�s most
heavily touted democratic whitewash? The Indian fraud continues merrily
onwards while the rest of the world seems content to go along with it.
Let it not be forgotten that the Nazis denounced and destroyed art that
they did not like - before they started killing people. If the world is
to make sure that India does not do this to it�s own people or to it�s
neighbors, it had better keep a wary eye on this huge, powerful and
increasingly wealthy banana republic.
And no other political party in India is innocent in this fraud on
Indians� rights or on the cooked up image of a democracy that India
touts to the rest of the world - the Congress famously banned Salman
Rushdie�s Satanic Verses even before Iran�s illiterate thug Ayatollah
Khomeini did, the Communists have banned Taslima Nasrin�s writing in
West Bengal and the BJP openly supported that ban and also refused to
withdraw the Satanic Verses ban even though there was a time when they
had the clout to repeal it in the country.
India is not a country that respects human rights or their freedom of
expression at all. Tamilnadu is a wealthy state that has been the
recipient of hundreds of million dollars in US and European investment.
If the west continues to put money there it may as well invest in Iran
or in the provinces in Afghanistan and Pakistan where Bin Laden is
supposedly lodged. There is little difference between these state
governments and their partners in the Central Government in India as far
as their actions are concerned and the actions of the Taliban or Al
Qaeda. The only difference is that Al Qaeda does not have nuclear
weapons - the Indian state does.
