Nothing Worth Saying is Inoffensive to Everyone

Johann Hari responds to the riots, outcry, and the hysteria in Kolkata around his earlier article:  Stand up for the Right to Criticise Religion.

The answer to the problems of free speech is always more free speech:

[. . .] You do not have a right to be ring-fenced from offence. Every day, I am offended – not least by ancient religious texts filled with hate-speech. But I am glad, because I know that the price of taking offence is that I can give it too, if that is where the facts lead me. But again, the protestors propose a lop-sided world. They do not propose to stop voicing their own heinously offensive views about women's rights or homosexuality, but we have to shut up and take it – or we are the ones being "insulting".

It's also worth going through the arguments of the Western defenders of these protestors, because they too aren't going away. Already I have had e-mails and bloggers saying I was "asking for it" by writing a "needlessly provocative" article. When there is a disagreement and one side uses violence, it is a reassuring rhetorical stance to claim both sides are in the wrong, and you take a happy position somewhere in the middle. But is this true? I wrote an article defending human rights, and stating simple facts. Fanatics want to arrest or kill me for it. Is there equivalence here?

The argument that I was "asking for it" seems a little like saying a woman wearing a short skirt is "asking" to be raped. [. . .]

Read the complete piece: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote

Muthalik Realises the Cost of 1500 Sarees is Prohibitive . . .

This guardian of Indian Culture is planning to file defamation cases against the senders of "panties parcel."

Earlier posts: 

A 1,000 Sarees for a 1,000 Chaddies

Pink Chaddies for Valentine's Day

A 1,000 Sarees for a 1,000 Chaddies

This February 14th, I had said earlier, is going to be one interesting Valentine's Day.

In response to The Pink Chaddi Campaign, rediff reports  Sri Ram Sena's Muthalik will send sarees to the women who send him and his Sena chaddies.

Muthalik, in keeping with the traditions established by his Sena has said that women "should debate across the table instead of resorting to such gimmicks."

I agree with Muthalik. Gimmicks are best left to Muthalik and the "boys" of his Sena. Meanwhile the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women should invite Muthalik to debate if pink sarees are appropriate return gifts.

And people, this is a rediff report, how can you give the messageboard comments a miss?

Pink Chaddies for Valentine's Day

If you have a pink chaddi (or are willing to buy one), take part in The Pink Chaddi Campaign and send it on to the Sri Ram Sena.

If you don't have one, not to fret, you can join the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women on Facebook. 

Of course, you can join the Facebook group as well as send a pink chaddi to Sri Ram Sena.

Pink chaddies and Pub Bharo on Valentine's day . . . you have to say this is going to be interesting.

Link via: India Uncut

We Shall Overcome (Maybe) . . .

According to this rediff report, Amitabh Singhal, a spokesperson of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), has said that the blockade on blogs by various Indian ISPs will be lifted in another 48 hours.

Apparently the ISPs would have to tweak their Domain Name Servers (DNS) in a way that they block only the sub-domains DoT wants blocked while allowing other blogs to be accessed as before.

I hope this news is true.

For the moment I am willing to accept this partial upliftment of the ban. Ideally I would like all the sites to be free of censorship -- even the ones that the Government feels are inflammatory and against our nation's interests. Blocking these sites will not help much. If these sites are accessible, at least bloggers and readers can counter the "dangerous" rhetoric on these sites. For such arguments have to be countered by engaging these people in a debate and countering their ideas with logic, rationality, and understanding. Blocking these sites won't make the problem go away. Rather we the risk of festering a wound instead of trying to cure it.

And face it: By blocking websites, by refusing to acknowledge the "other," by censoring thoughts and words that are unpalatable to us, aren't we at risk of falling a victim to the same separatist hatred that some of these sited are advocating?

So people, 48 hours it is. Let's wait and watch.

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My earlier posts on this issue:
Blogs Blocked (workaround link) and What's Missing From our Lives (workaround link).

What's Missing From our Lives

Just came across this on The Hindustan Times:

"Officials" have this to say in defense of the decision to block blogs:

We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites.

What am I missing? How about:

• I am missing reading a number of blogs that have some of the best writing that I have ever come across. Or is it that the government expects us to read only their circulars?
• I am missing the freedom to go online and read whatever catches my fancy -- and yes even if it is something radical, anti-India if the argument has been logically and excellently made. And no, that doesn't mean that I get influenced by these "radical sites."
• And since I spend a substantial bit of my day on reading blogs, my life is suddenly bereft and empty (well actually nothing that dramatic, but it is irritating to workaround the ban to access the blogs I want to read).
• I am missing the feeling of living in a democratic nation. I know the government controls a lot of my life in ways that I probably can't even fathom but this is too intrusive. I hate this big brother approach. I hate to grouped along with nations (Pakistan, China, the Middle-East nations, Ethiopia . . .) that censor the Internet.

That quote just confirms what I said earlier. Whoever thought of this and authorized the ban is so incompetent, clueless, stupid, dim-witted, and idiotic that the mind boggles.

And I hate to have a government of dolts.

update:
The Protests By Bloggers page on the public wiki is now available here.
Any lessons to be learnt from the ban on blogger? Quite a few.

Blogs Blocked

At least the blogspot ones are. And the ones hosted on geocities and typepad as well. Soon it might be the turn of other blog hosts too. And this evidently is on the orders of the Government of India. The gag has been put in place because apparently, terrorists are now using blogs to communicate.

When I received an email from Mridula, I thought that it was just a temporary ISP glitch. (Ban in India? For us Indians these sort of things happen only in Pakistan or China, but a gag on the Freedom of Speech in India -- never.) Moreover, whoever I contacted confirmed that blogs were accessible. However it looks like some ISP's were just slow in implementing the gag order. I came online a while ago to catch up on my blog reading, to find that not a single blogspot blog is accessible through my Sify broadband connection.

I would like to know which incompetent, clueless, overbearing fool ordered this gag. Doesn't the government have anything better to do?

And it is all so irritating, frustrating, and pathetic.

I can access blogger. Which means that I can log into my blog account, write a post, edit it, if I feel like it -- color the text, change the font style, wonder if the government doesn't have any serious "governing" to do, and while I am it -- call the government overbearing, foolish, clueless, incompetent (might as well add stupid, dim-witted, and idiotic to the list), and then publish it.

But I can't read my own post on my blog without resorting to what seems like underground resistance.

Bloggers have already banded together: there's a bloggers' collective on Google groups. A wiki: Bloggers Against Censorship has come up that lists the ISP's that have blocked blogspot and typepad. A page very helpfully lists various workarounds so that people can still access blogs. And of course a page that lists bloggers who are at the picket line voicing their protest.

If you are a blogger please write a post and join the protest. And if you are not a blogger, join the protests too -- email your friends, talk to your neighbor -- spread the word. Stop this policing now.

Or before you realize it we'll be back to typing letters in triplicate because some idiot in the government might decide email too needs blocking.

And it would mean that for once the terrorists have won. We can't allow that to happen, can we?

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Here's a quick list of workarounds:

Use a feed reader -- I use Sage which comes as an extension for Firefox browser. But I guess any feed reader (Bloglines, Google Reader) will work as well.

Use http://www.pkblogs.com/ -- this is a Pakistani website that came up when the Pakistan Government had blocked blogspot. This works fine but is a bit on the slower side.

Use http://www.shysurfer.com/ -- allows anonymous browsing and is quite fast.

There's Always the Book

The Information & Broadcasting Ministry has temporarily halted the release of The Da Vinci Code.

Meanwhile, the government of Goa, having nothing better t0 do, has passed a resolution seeking a ban on the film.

As always the one who protest the loudest are heard.

Never mind. You can always read the book. It is not banned. Possibly the protesters haven't noticed it yet.

Indians Like Protesting

Vir Sanghvi in his Sunday column in the Hindustan Times takes off on the late Pramod Mahajan's cynical perspective on our nation while writing about the storm that seems to be slowly brewing around The Da Vinci Code that's hitting the theaters this Friday.

Pramod Mahajan, Sanghvi tells us, believed that

[. . . ] the propensity to protest and the desire to censor had nothing to do with Hinduism, or Islam for that matter. It had to do with Indians. We are a nation of protestors. Give us an issue and we will demand a ban.

[. . . ]

India’s Christians are Indians first and Christians second. In other words: give them an issue and they will protest, protest, protest.

[. . . ] it is not Muslims or Hindus who are illiberal when it comes to religion. It is Indians. Even Indian Christians will demand bans on films that Christians elsewhere in the world regard as entirely acceptable.

So in this fresh and unnecessary controversy we have one of Bombay's former corporators, Nicholas Almeida, offering a reward of Rs 11 lakh to anyone who brings Dan Brown before him “dead or alive.” Almeida also has gravely declared, “God may forgive Dan Brown. But Almeida will not.”

Adding their own mite to this cause is The Catholic Social Forum (CSF) which has called people of all religions to fast unto death at Azad Maidan until the government bans anti-Christian films like The Da Vinci Code (Tickle My Funny Bone is the other film under fire).

The Bombay Catholic Sabha (BCS) has already petitioned the Chief Minister of Maharashtra to demand a ban on the film because according to its president Dolphy D’Souza, “Freedom of expression is being used in a whimsical way.”

Vir Sanghvi concludes with this:

And the tragedy is that because we give in to anybody who protests loudly enough, we risk becoming an illiberal state, held to ransom by any nutcase who claims that we have insulted his religion.

We have already become an illiberal state. The sad thing about this is that most of us, or at least a good number of us, have accepted this as our reality. We know that whenever there's a small chance of a controversy, there'll be one. We just shrug at the inconvenience and work our way around it. It has become just another inconvenience that we have learnt take in our stride.

When we (that's my friends and me) talked about putting this movie on our viewing list sometime back, I recall how the discussion immediately moved to and cursorily discussed the possibility of protests and a ban on the film. We spent more time wondering how we could work our way around the inconvenience. That there would be a protest and a demand for a ban was assumed as a given. We spent more time figuring out if we could get the tickets to the preview show or at least for one of the shows on the first day before the protests gather volume and the movie is banned or screenings disrupted.

Yesterday during the course of a conversation with a friend we touched upon this easy and indifferent acceptance of illiberal ism. He nodded and said something like this, "Yup. Religion and religious fanaticism seems to be occupying the same status and amount of thought in our minds as a late local train or a disruption of train services. We curse a bit, consider if this is a situation where the train is five to ten minutes late as always or is it one of those times when a train isn't going to be coming in for at least the next half an hour or so. If it is a five or a ten minute delay we grumble a bit and wait for the local train to arrive. If it is a half hour -- one hour delay, we come out of the station and take a rickshaw or a bus. If it is really serious, we go back home. We know that next morning train services would be normal. None of us think about protesting or questioning the railways. . . We seem to increasingly moving towards a similar acceptance of fanaticism. We accept that there will be the occasional spurts of intolerance in our religious landscape. If it is some idiot asking for the head of a cartoonist or asking for a ban on a movie, it no longer merits more thought than deciding how am I going to watch the movie inspite of this inconvenience. If it looks like the idiots are going to take to the streets and slit a few throats for their religion, we stay at home. We know that normal services will be restored in a day or two. That Sanghvi is right -- we have accepted illiberalism as a part of our lives. Any religious nutter can claim that his religion is insulted and make noise. None of the regular junta is going to take a stand and say that we want to watch a movie in peace and yes, we know it is entertainment. No one of us is going to ask the fanatics to go home and get a life. We take it for granted that we will never make as much noise as the fanatics. In fact we hardly even whimper." And we moved on to discuss more pleasant subjects.

Sigh.

I guess blogging doesn't count even as a whimper. After all how many people read blogs? And a blog can't make a fanatic stay at home, can it?