Individual Liberties in India

The chief minister of Rajasthan, Ashok Ghelot, of the Congress Party doesn’t want you holding hands with your girlfriend (or boyfriend), wife (or husband), sister (or brother) in the mall. It is anti-Indian.

The chief minister of Karnataka, Yeddiyurappa of the BJP doesn’t want you to go to pubs, especially if you are a woman. Be moral, loyal woman citizen of India, do not go to a pub.

The talented director Anurag Kashyap has probably given up on the Central Board for Film Certification, which bans and cuts his art into pieces, in the name of morality.

The central Government gets into a three way fight with (huh) its own health minister, and the Supreme Court over homosexual rights in India. The immorality!

Morality! How wrong our politicians are about morality. Contrary to their definition of morality, consider these questions: Is there anything more immoral than curbing an artists freedom of expression? More immoral than preventing couples from holding hands in public? More immoral than disallowing two people in love from marrying just because they belong to the same sex?

BJP and Congress may be Left-of-center and Right-of-center. They may disagree (hypocritically) on the nuclear deal. They may squabble about economic policies. They may call each other names like “communal” and “pseudo-secular”. They will also make sure there is no uniform civil code in India. Certainly, all efforts are directed towards ensuring that the parliament has only 32 sittings in a crucial, eventful year like 2008. Yet, in total unaninimity, the opposite poles of our great democracy agree on curbing individual liberties. It looks like controlling individual choices and freedoms has become a national pastime at the Lower and Upper houses of the Country and the states.

So all you and I do is sit and crib about what the government is not doing. We don’t even do as much as get up from our cozy couches, and vote, now and then, when the elections happen.   How will there be a grass roots movement (of the Obama kind), if we, as patriotic citizens of India, don’t even exercise suffrage?

Visit http://www.jaagore.com/ and do your duty. You ask for freedoms and individual liberties? They come with responsibility. The responsibility to vote, to make our democracy successful.

The people who suffer and crib the most about the above incidents are the urban middle class youth. I can safely claim that this group, among all the demographical divisions, have the lowest voter turn out proportional to their population.

Some nice insights by Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (no relation to the late leader, the great Lok nayak JP):

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

PS:

In a country which had women leaders like Kittur Rani Chennamma, Jhansi Rani Lakshmibhai, Sarojini Naidu, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Sucheta Kriplani, etc. in the modern era- long before even the enlightened west had its share of women leaders; in a country where the two most important aspects of life- money and education are represented by Goddesses in religious symbolism; where the pinnacle of art and aesthetics were beautiful sculptures of women (if your moral sensibilities cloud your appreciation of the aesthetics, Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran might have a cure for it); politicians talk such chauvinistic trash and get away with it. They are even elected to serve multiple terms.