"Whatever the question, love is the answer" said one of my colleagues. But we live in a country where love is expressed within walls or sometimes unnecessarily and annoyingly, on social media platforms. Freedom may have been officially granted to us many decades ago, but did we unshackle ourselves? Are we really free today? What is freedom in the first place?
A civilization as old as ours, must and should boast of a rich heritage and we do. We are a society where the basic unit is a family and not individuals like in the west. We put family and its honour before ourselves. Marriage to us is not just two people who love and live together, but a meeting of souls for eternity and along with it, their families. We are selfless towards it and always keep our families close to our hearts. We love our families. We entertain guests from overseas by showing off our culture of diversity and love.
When Obama gave a speech in the Siri fort, he hugged the lady who introduced him (Some of us may want to counsel the girl, may be she was dressed provocatively?). He then went on to mention his wife so many times in his speech; his wife and he had been thinking, his wife and he decided etc. He gave so much importance to his wife who wasn't even an elected public figure. He's not the only president in the west to do that. I see a contradiction here! Our country talks about family as the basic unit, wives as better halves and portrays a culture of love and mutual respect but how many of our ministers have even acknowledged their spouses? On the contrary, we stop people who express their love. We use words like westernisation and Indian culture to bully people into suppressing their love, into restricting their basic freedom to move about in the country and what not. We are the self proclaimed keepers of Indian culture which by the way is all about diversity, respect, family and love!
Yes, it takes time for us to accept change. But that does not mean we will deny people of their basic human rights. Everybody is different and everybody has a right. Just like we have a right to make our displeasure known. We have no business dictating terms about who people love or how they love. Somehow we all see gender as a binary concept and sexuality as a choice (and in some cases a disease). Again, even if it is a choice, who are we to dictate what is right or wrong? While we speak of hospitable environment and caring parents, there are so many out their who don't even get so much as a ear to listen to. Why? Only because they're supposed to be "different and not natural". If they were not "natural", they wouldn't exist. Love does not have a gender, it does not have rules, it does not have a timeline or whatever other filmy dialogues our "culture rich" movies throw away. Also, if Khajurao temples are part of our culture then so are these people we say aren't.
All this is too drastic for us. We have all had those moments of displeasure which come out as funny one-liners. We don't really act on them or make a big deal out of it. We use them occasionally to tease someone and/or laugh it off. Some of us go a little further down and use them in front of small kids (our own or others'). But they anyway hear all of that so why filter our right to speech? Our culture is not harmed because we use some profanity? It's okay even if some of our leaders incite hatred and violence through this (the speech is truth to some of us and offensive to some) but that does not make us talk against them. Because hey, freedom of speech. As long as you give us some money or throw promises of jobs, you can get away with whatever you say. But if the same thing you do with a little humour and you do it between consenting adults, restricting children from it, then it affects our culture, it offends our sentiments, it demeans our faiths.
If our faith is shaken by a handful of people taking a dig at it, offensive or not, I think we have to indulge in some introspection. If two people abusing each other is demeaning our culture then shouldn't we ban most of us from talking in public? We didn't have a problem with Owaisi or Varun speaking his heart out inciting actual violence and actually harming our culture, but when a group of comedians had a comedy show that intended only to make people laugh, we have a problem with it. We may express our doubts about the show, or hate it, we may even write to them requesting them to stop it, but can we or should we ban them? Can we curb their freedom? Yes it may have been offensive, yes it may have put down some religions but where were we when others did it? Also, we preach so much against other religions privately in our homes (to little kids) and friend circles, what about that? There are a millions of people out there who are far more offensive about India as a whole, do we even know them? What have we done about Yo Yo Honey Singh who by the way our children look up to and follow so religiously? What have we done about the fairness ads which offend more than half our country?
Freedom of expression is too important to be messed around with. Freedom to love someone, freedom to be what you are, freedom to talk are all part of our rich culture. None of us are the keepers of Indian culture. None of us can claim to know it perfectly, none of us can claim to understand it. It's an ever changing, ever accommodating melting pot of different minds working towards one thing, peace!
Comments
Post a Comment