 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
India�s Taliban Acts Again Published on February 13, 2007 After the international uproar over the harassment of actress Khushboo by a political party led by the father of India�s Minister for Health, Dr Anbumani Ramdoss died down, we now have one more high profile case of Indian busybodies interfering in displays of affection in the public eye. Many years ago when the then South African President Nelson Mandela kissed actress Shabana Azmi, a woman young enough to be his grand-daughter, on her forehead, a certain prude wrote to the Times of India asking if this implied that Ms Azmi would welcome other men to her bed as well. It wasn;t the letter itself that was disgraceful. What was worse was that the Times allowed it to be published instead of throwing it into the waste paper bin. But then, this kind of journalism is an old tradition in India. When the Miss World pageant was held in Bangalore many years ago, a writer in the Indian Express, Amiya Ganguli, started screaming hoarsely about the �Apasanskriti� that this contest represented. On his goading sundry Hindu fundamentalists appeared out of the woodwork with a young woman lawyer from Bangalore claiming that she had access to cyanide capsules and that she would consume them if the contest actually took place. There was also a farmers� representative, Dr Nanjundasamy, now deceased, who threatened to set the cuty afire if the contest was permitted. Nanjundasamy conveniently went off on a junket most sponsored by his NGO to the USA when the contest took place and the woman lawyer who threatened to consume cyanide was consigned to the dustbin of history after her 15 minutes of fame. This time, another otherwise unheard of lawyer has filed a lawsuit against Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia and Biocon India Chairperson Kiran Majumdar-Shaw for kissing in public. Perhaps, this is a cynical ploy by the lawyer to gain some attention for himself and be seen while he is otherwise a non entity. Perhaps, it is his quest for his own 15 minutes of fame. Perhaps, it is yet another expression of India�s periodical bouts of Talibanist madness. Perhaps, India�s madness actually inspired the Taliban as it is a considerably older phenomenon than the late 1980s origin of the worst bunch of thugs to ever rule a country since the fall of the Nazis. For a long time, India, especially after Independence, practiced a prudery that would have done the Victorians proud. Kissing scenes were banned in films while scenes featuring bloody and violent rapes were gleefully permitted by the Central Board of Film Censors, a body that must have attracted the worst perverts the world had ever seen. Until the Taliban took Afghanistan over. A Devika Rani may have done kissing scenes in the 1940s but there would be none until the late 90s when several public voices started speaking up against the sheer hypocrisy of the official Indian position on matters like this. Actresses whose morphed images were misused by pranksters ended up being sued by Mahila Mandals who did not have the brains to recognize that these poor women were victims and not perpatrators of any crime. And these days, inspired by Anbumani Ramdoss� partymens� thuggery which they very nearly got away with, there are sundry lawsuits filed against virtually every actress from time to time in India�s courts. My question is simply this � why is it so difficult for India�s courts to ask the people who come up with these ridiculous lawsuits before them to take a hike? Why can the courts not tell these thugs that adults have a right to displays of affection that are none of their business? That it is no one else�s business what sexual orientation someone follows, if, indeed, the now much publicized kiss between Ms Scindia and Ms Majumdar-Shaw was more than merely a formal one? Is it because, the courts, acting as they are as interpreters of the laws created by the Indian legislature, are only telling the world that India is a Talibanist state masquerading as a modern nation? India is, as anyone with even a slight interest in world affairs would remember, the nation that saw riots over the Deepa Mehta film �Fire� because it depicted bisexuality, though the Indian media went out of the way to tell the world that it was about lesbianism, hinting that lesbianism was a horrendous crime as far as India is concerned. For a nation that is determined to portray itself as smugly superior if not to the rest of the world then at least to it�s neighbours, this latest incident is just one more indication of Indian barbarism. With the most powerful newspapers cheerleading for the thugs in India, it is doubtful whether the situation there would get better anytime soon.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|||
|
|
|||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |