Of Religion, Intolerance and Sensitization

I have not watched the movie. I do not know if it has enough material to cause any kind of communal problems. However, the movie has released everywhere else, is my understanding, and the country is yet to see anything communal because of it. More importantly, in my understanding, it is only by letting people watch movies or read books or any other form of exposure to intelligently and aesthetically made material, will we ever be able to sensitize people about the real issues and slowly try and reduce this deeply brewing intolerance against anything and everything "religious".

If politics and judiciary are going to take up the job of screening all kinds of matters that touch upon religion, isn't that extremely counterproductive, in the manner that people will be less and less exposed to things, and will hence get less and less tolerant, which will make them increasingly reactive and explosive towards ANY chance encounters to such material.

If religion and everything considered "sensitive" is actually discussed and debated openly (just like the necessity of sex education), if it is all around us, the sensitivity and hence the reactions these cause will only die down. But if the public is going to be screened and protected from the slightest of mentions, then we as a society are going to be so unused to hearing/seeing anything related, so sensitive and intolerant of any kind of the tiniest implications in the religious directions, that very soon there will begin random bursts of riots and fights and communal warfare in big and small scale all over the country because of totally innocent and no-harm-implied statements unnecessarily construed as "hurting religious sentiments". 

Sensitize the public. Increase the tolerance. Make religion a complete Non-issue. Simply a private, personal belief that it should be. THAT is the need of the hour. 

Not, protecting it (or us against it), making it some kind of a BIG, Sensational thing, a thing that is to be defended, dividing and ruling the country based on it, until finally the whole thing blows out of proportion and explodes into something totally uncontrollable and horrendous. 

As for Vishwaroopam, at least after seeing that the movie caused absolutely no issues in the rest of the (obviously more tolerant) world, isn't it about time, you know... But well, can't comment on it as the matter is  in court. :|

More importantly, next time on, unless things look really really ugly and communal, release the bloody book or movie, wait for the reactions and if you see trouble, then only ban, pull it back, if necessary make relevant people apologize and placate the public. But at least give the public the benefit of the doubt first. We may not all be as bad as you think. For all you know it is just one dirty, ugly, communal mind in that panel of decision  makers who felt this can cause issues, while the rest of the world may not sense any kind of intended insult. Give us that chance, man!

Nothing New to Add...

Enough has been said and written about the gruesome rape that took place in Delhi. Many opinions, many discussions, many demands and one of the biggest protests. And I have nothing new to add to all those emotions because I feel every bit of it as intensely as each person out there - as intensely as every girl who has traveled in a public transport in this country, who has walked along any street crowded or not (both have their advantages/disadvantages depending on whose aside you look from), who has been around strange (and also familiar) men.

I don't intend to discuss any of my own emotions or feelings about this. What I do intend to do is to try and make sense of the one thing that matters now. What can really be done. People talk about clothes, self defense,  not being out at certain times, maryada, bhaiyya and lakshman rekha, protests demanding hanging and castration that might act as deterrents. Enough has been debated about each of these items as well.

I just want to put my head around various scraps of sense I was trying to make in the last few weeks about what seems like the only practicality really keeping all hopes of ideal situations apart..

Crimes will happen. Rape, murder, even female foeticide, dowry killings, honor killings, fraud, and all the way up to terrorism. They will keep happening. Some of these we can try and fight with education, awareness and opportunities. But, to expect a situation of zero crime or to expect any government or political  party in any part of the world to provide a crime-free-state guarantee is stupidity. Protest and outrage all you want. We can only ask for two things, justice for the victim and most importantly deterrents. There really is NO 100% prevention. Let us all first accept that. What there is is deterrents.

So what can be the deterrent for these criminals? You say the fear of death or castration? Really?

I don't believe the extent of punishment is a deterrent to anyone. I don't think a would-be criminal actually says "oh! This is just 5 yr imprisonment, not life term/hanging. So let me commit this one instead". No. Every crime is committed because the criminal is stupidly confident that he will get away. Less "stupidly" in our country, but still. Hence, I repeat, it's not a new law (that also may or may not get implemented) that is the need of the hour. It is proper, efficient and quick administration of existing ones. So that tomorrow the only possible deterrent will exist. The possibility of the criminal wondering "will I manage to get away cos this is what happened to all the others." 

And like all really good things I don't think there is any shortcut to this one.

An Afterthought:

You may blame everything else that seems like the cause of a crime. For me it's a choice some people made to act a certain way. Most  men we meet might have been in similar situations right? Being with or around  women wearing "skimpy" clothes, late hours, maybe a little drunk,  having a good time in a pub etc.? They didn't make a choice to rape that woman cos of these things. These 5 men did. And no matter how justified their "provocation  " might seem to some of the "greater" men of our society, they made that choice and committed that crime and need to be punished. You can harp on about whatever provocation.

Also, by saying that the provocation was there so the crime happened, in my eyes you are kind of admitting that if you had been in that situation you would have made that same choice as well. You would have raped her too. Because there was "enough justified provocation". No?

So be very careful of what you are admitting to oh learned gentlemen.

Proud, Yes. But Responsible?

I usually defer from writing about the current HOT topics; Too many debates, too many arguments and discussions makes the subject too stale too fast. And any tuppence one adds to it, its already been heard before. However, this post has absolutely nothing to do with the games as much as the strange Indian attitude of extremities, very much propagated and influenced by the media and this time got so bad that one had to dwell on it.

So here we were, one day jumping up and down, booing the government, booing the CWG committee and booing the country as such because International media made a huge ruckus about the "facilities and infrastructure", the lack of it, at the CWG village and they were promptly and happily seconded by the Indian media. A lot of brouhaha took place - an Australian media person saying he entered the facility with a suitcase of explosive device and not being stopped, some athletes pulling out here and there, a snake, a fever and all this was blown out of proportions by our ever prompt media!

The very next day the opening ceremony took place and suddenly everyone was happy! My twitter TL was overflowing with emotional tweets - pride, tears, exhilaration and what not! Added to this the Indian medals tally and the touching closing ceremony made all of us Proud Indian.

So where was our National Pride when some outsiders were hell bent on making us look bad?

Why were we so ready to join forces with them and display to the world spit stains, a couple of removed false ceiling tiles and so forth instead of defending our country by showing the so much more beautiful bigger picture that we finally did get to see during the games?

No, let me make myself clear. I am not saying that there were no issues, the foot bridge collapsing, the corruption are as real as they could get. (And once again, the army to the rescue, now thats where we must all learn National Pride from ). But, corruption is a disease that is there in each walk of our life; and people, believe it or not it exists in every country. Just that they don't go around shouting at the to of their voices that their country is corrupt like we are so ready to do. When there is a 'black sheep' in our family, we all go around trying to protect that fact from public while trying to tackle the issue privately at home. So why don't we have a similar feel for our country?

Once the grandeur of the opening ceremony had the media and in fact the whole population who had believed the media's gory reports, thoroughly surprised, they suddenly backtracked saying 'we never questioned the facilities. The corruption is a serious issue and that has to be tackled'. Well, for one, if corruption were really the issue, why wait for a CWG to raise it? We have to fight it, we have to solve it, but the question is, was CWG the right arena? Did we have to wash our dirty laundry internationally?

Our country has enough and more departments and avenues where corruption occurs and the normal man is robbed in broad daylight. Why doesn't the media do something about it? (in lines of tehelka eh?)  But I guess the TRP attained over crying foul for CWG is way more appealing. Wouldn't we all have looked better if the media had gone onto to display the facilities and infrastructure of the village, the greenery, the roads, interviewed so many Indian sorts person who repeatedly and vehemently mentioned how good CW village was compared to many international arenas and overall spread a good will and then covered the corrution that is anyways being covered now. No, they chose to ignore all this for the TRPs.

More important question is why are the rest of us such putty in the hands of the media? There were such angst and hate over twitter and other such arenas over the media report. Why? didn't we all at some level or other know that the organisers would have definitely made crores and crores. We are by now so tempered about all that, what with politicians stealing money out of fodder and food & clothing for soldiers at the border. So if the media had shown the great infrastructure and talked about corruption on the sidelines we would have just nodded our heads and said, of course! Instead, the "lack of clean living quarters" was the agenda initially to gather enough eyeballs.

In all this TRP race and hate mails and tweets we never once bothered to stop and think what this was doing to the image of our nation. Countries with the "India Itch" happily rode the medias back to show how "useless" Indians were and we as citizens took the side of the media and the International community leaving the organisers scrambling on the other end with  not so much as "Oh, we shall do it".

The way I see things now, we had a mind blowing CWG. With the help of the army and the Delhi CM stepping in and acting (instead of cribbing), everything went on smooth on time. International media was silent. And now that all is over the necessary actions are being taken against the necessary. Only if the media had followed the same path of positivity and support in the beginning and questions and concerns (Negativity and Dramatics on TeleVision) after the games, they wouldn't have had to eat a humble pie.

The last weeks edition of The Week carried an article be some great mind India has become a joke in the international arena thanks to the CWG. Well, I am not sure when he might have sent that article to be printed, but by now I guess we all have realised that the joke is on the likes of him.

JAI HIND!!!