Points of view

Pakistan has gone crazy after the cartoon “event” and is supposedly censoring anything and everything. Two comments on a BBC news article, one very sane, the other not so much-

No. It is a wrong decision. Ban does not do anything. Are you going to ban eveything on the internet that inflames someone’s sensibilities? Stupid! If someone is inflamed and feels hurt, then do not go to that website.

and-

People should respect each other’s beliefs and exhibit tolerance. We, as muslims, hold nothing dearer than our Holy Prophet and such a disrespectful, blasphemous act would not be ignored or tolerated!

Dissonance, or is it reciprocity.

Wimps

That’s what they are – the Indian media. Its been three days since the “secular” communist government of West Bengal arrested (and then released on bail) the editor and publisher of “The Statesman” because of “Muslim anger,” and barring very very very few exceptions, the whole Indian media is absolutely silent – as if nothing has happened at all. 20 people barged into a bar, and the Hindu Taliban is born; 4000 people riot in Calcutta and everyone behaves as if nothing has happened. Why is the Indian media silent?

• What happened to “The Masthead of India” – the world’s largest selling English newspaper? The mast broke, or the paper doesn’t represent India anymore? When the Ahmedabad police commissioner filed sedition charges against its city editor, it expected, and did get support from journalists across the spectrum.
• What about the “Journalism of courage”? Its on a temporary hiatus? What happened to the Ramnath Goenka spirit. Why give meaningless awards then? Saving grace – a column by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the man who resigned from the National Knowledge Council on the OBC quota issue. Nothing short of an editorial will do, though.
• What about the “Maha Vishnu of Mount Road”? Doesn’t it have an opinion this time round, or time to write more than a couple of paragraphs on the subject? It screamed bloody murder when Jayalalitha threatened to throw its editorial staff, including publisher N. Ram, in jail. (The SC, and Vajpayee, saved them)

Some decent “Indian” coverage from-

• The wires – Reuters, and the Press Trust of India, and the Indo-Asian News Service.
• Outlook Magazine – a story, and a commentary.

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Johann Hari, the man whose article made the mob go crazy for its Prophet, says he stands by his article-

A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence none of us can pass.

That’s why I wrote: “All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don’t respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don’t respect the idea that we should follow a “Prophet” who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn’t follow him. I don’t respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don’t respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand “respect”, you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade.”

An Indian newspaper called The Statesman – one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country – thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was “prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet” and I should be sent “to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech.”

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world’s largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with “deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings”. I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

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The foreign media has covered it pretty decently (see my original post) and this is from The Telegraph (Britain)-

Religious leaders – often self-appointed – are easily outraged and mobs easily incited into action that sees them torch public transport, block crucial nerve centres of already chaotic traffic systems and even bring about total city shutdowns (locally called bandhs).

But does that mean bowing before the diktats of a handful of fundamentalists at the cost of curbing free speech?

[...]

This was the first time that an editor of a respected daily was arrested for “outraging religious feelings”, which incidentally is an offence under the Indian Penal Code.

When I called The Statesman, they did not seem very keen to discuss the matter and pointed me to their and the Independent’s website.

But a former colleague at a senior editorial position of another city English daily (who wished not to be named) provided some insight. Despite “liking the logic of the article”, he admitted that his paper (with a significantly higher circulation than The Statesman’s) would not have reproduced it because it was simply “not worth getting into the trouble”. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for press freedom. But when you know the possible outcome, it’s best to be practical and avoid these situations.”

He also assured me that very few if any at all among the protesters had bothered to read the original article or were expressing anger they genuinely felt. That job was left to the religious bosses who pulled their strings. The demonstrations had only started after local Urdu papers picked up the issue and urged fellow Muslims to take action over it. The result – protests, clashes with the police and the subsequent arrests of the Statesman duo.

“Practical.” Figures. I am waiting to see what MJ Akbar’s take on the issue is – in tomorrow’s Times of India is – if he bothers to touch it. The next time an Indian newspaper or television channel editor talks about “the freedom of the press,” spit on his face.

“The Statesman” editor, publisher arrested for “hurting religious feelings” of Muslims

Damn it! Had barely finished my last post when I read this post from Sans Serif.

“The Statesman” republished an op-ed from “The Independent,” Britain – “Why should I respect these oppressive religions?”. Some Muslims in Calcutta went berserk like they did in the case of Taslima Nasreen. A case was filed against editor – Ravindra Kumar, and the publisher – Anand Sinha, and they were arrested and lated released on bail. Read more about it here and here.

I never heard about it before; I don’t think the Times of India even mentioned the story. They wrote pages when their Ahmedabad editor was charged with sedition for writing about the city police commissioner. And the Indian media is absolutely silent with even The Hindu issuing a terse two paragraph announcement. But I don’t expect too much from them – its each man for himself, ideology be damned. Rats, all of them!

I am linking to this article again (I did it in my previous post, at the very end) because it is incredibly well written, and talks about the same thing that Kumar is being punished for – the criminalizing of opinion – “hate speech.”

If a State doesn’t allow you to hold an opinion without throwing you in jail, the laws of the State deserves no respect. Compliance maybe – you comply with a thief who points a gun at you – but no respect. And that is my position on the Indian ‘Justice’ System.

Popper’s paradox

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

—Karl Popper

By what right

Governments don’t mind curtailing their citizens’ civil liberties – unrestricted wiretaps, cameras recording each and every movement, telling them what to eat, drink, wear, do. But at the same time, they walk on egg shells around issues that might raise a PC storm. Consider this -

“The current smears against Islam and the Sharia, the filthy cartoons defaming our beloved Prophet and the calls in Holland to ban the Koran are part of the propaganda used as part of the war on Islam, commonly called the war on terror,” Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman Taji Mustafa was quoted as saying by the Sunday Express.
“It is a supremacist war that aims to force one system, capitalism, and secular liberal values on the whole world,” he stressed.
- Radical Islamic group declares war on British liberal values

The British government is trying to reinterpret Islam for young Muslims so that they can fit into British society. No harm in doing that. But when secular governments start messing around with religion, you can be rest assured that the country is going to the dogs. Don’t believe me? Try India.

Mustafa is basically demanding an unrestricted right to be intolerant. Nothing wrong there – people should have to the right to be as intolerant as they want to be – but his right does not look like it will stop at verbal intolerance. The not-so-hidden baggage that comes along with it is violent censorship – you stop insulting our religion and our prophet, or else….Salman Rushdie, Van Gogh, you know the rest.

If Mustafa is not willing to accept the non-aggression principle, he has no right to demand any rights. Mustafa however seems to believe in the principle of freedom, go to hell.