freedom of speech – Abhinav Bhatt

Dear Bhakts, we need to talk

Firstly let me break it to you –

THERE IS NO BHARAT MATA. Nopes.

She doesn’t exist. Get it? It is just a figure of speech. Alright?

How do you feel when I say that Bharat Mata doesn’t exist? Do you feel blood boiling? Feeling of rage? Urge to punch my face and take out some teeth? Edging towards feeling where you need to… err.. *gulp* behead me? If your answer to any of this is yes, then we need to talk.

Come sit here. Let’s have some fun. Now tell me, do you like this tag: Bhakts? I am guessing No. Normally Bhakt means anyone who is a believer. But this Bhakt means that someone who is a blind believer. So which kind of Bhakt are you? See, you have made this word sound so derogatory.

The one who believes that as a Nation should progress and everyone gets equally benefited? Or you the one who thinks that your… I mean our Savior, the Messiah, the one who can’t be named is the best and whatever is happening in our country is awesomesauce kind of good? If you are latter, then I feel sad for you. (Are you the one who sends all those Whatsapp messages which say that India’s National Anthem is #1 as per UNESCO?)

Of course, all those who voted for the present Union Government are not Bhakts. And those who stereotype everyone who occasionally applauds few rare good things (and probably ignores few really stupid things) are plain ignorant minds who draw their inspiration from parrots who just keep repeating things.

But then there are a lot of actual Bhakts who think their savior is here. And this is as true as Ganpati Idols drinking Milk. Do you know that you are overdoing it now? There is no need to keep reiterating that everyone who doesn’t say Bharat Mata ki Jai is some sort of a criminal and deserves to go to Pakistan or such. NO NEED. You can do fine without doing any of this drama. You needn’t go to everyone and make them shout this slogan. We are not at war against anyone. You are not standing on border with a gun and ready to pounce on the enemies. And you are not encouraging anyone by saying this as if one shouts ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and everything falls into place and we become a Superpower. Also, WTF is a Superpower? Is it some sort of Divyashakti or Brahmaastra which will give us some edge over others that nobody else has and with it we can rule whole of the Solar System? Seriously. WHY DOES INDIA NEED TO BE A SUPERPOWER? We just need to do things right. Our things right! We just need to be good to everyone around us. And scare off those who scare us by strengthening our bonds. Slogans won’t help immediately. ‘Saare Jahan Se Achcha Hindostan Humara’. How? Other countries are not participating in this, is it? You just do your things right. It should be ‘Saare Jahan mein one of the best Hindostan Humara’. There surely are people in our country who don’t feel the same like you do. But that is OKAY. Happens everywhere, everytime. You can very well state your stance without poking flags into everyone’s face and challenge their views or standard definitions about patriotism. You need to chill. You are not a Nazi. Or favorite word Fascist. Are you? I am not going to lecture, nor I can, that showing patriotism is a matter of one’s choice, circumstances and context and there is absolutely no need to explicitly show off your patriotism. Please show your love for the country when it needs it. During a Sports Tournament when you are in a Stadium. Or when PM visits your middle east country if you happen to be slogging there. Or just do your job right. It doesn’t take that much. Stop making life of normal people awkward. Stop misusing the word patriotism and stop disrespecting the Saffron color by being its sole champion. Nowadays, it becomes more weird to see people coming to you with Saffron band on their head as compared to LinkedIn requests from your neighborhood aunties. You don’t need to do that. You want to show that you love your country, just be a part of M.O.D.I.

And I am not even going to say like everyone has said that “I say Bharat Mata ki Jai all the time but you are overdoing it”, I will just say that you are making a mockery of yourself and overfeeding the media who loves this crap. I am just going to politely ask you to shut up and do the work assigned to you. Bharat Mata wants you to do that. Thanks.

P.S. I am sure you know that the header pic is a fake?

Going too Fast?

These are totally my views and my philosophy when it comes to Humor. Yours can be different. I am writing this to get a closure on this issue as I have wasted/invested a lot of thought this past week.

Govt. has got you a road. That road has a speed limit which has been made so that both you and fellow travelers have safety. There’s even a Red Light at some point on the road but that is unmanned and Traffic Police is absent, as they consider you sane enough to abide by the rules and guidelines. Now you buy a vehicle which can run faster than others. You keep crossing the speed limit as it gives you thrill. Even the fellow passengers who piggy bank on you for their own motive find it fun and adrenaline pumping enjoyable. Now you have excelled at going past the speed limit without harassing (or hurting the sentiments) other travelers on the road. Since the traffic is less, you think of taking the red light head on and zoom pass it as well. Till there is no one crossing the road, you are fine. But one day, someone will be crossing and since you are already confident of yourself in breaking the boundary on a regular basis, you might end up scarying them, or brushing past or even colliding with them. In that case when someone tries to ask you to slow down a bit, do you have to slow down and think about your speed or do you have to stop driving at all. The road after the red light isn’t very smooth either.

Also remember, we are a country full of people who drive on the Wrong Side of the road frequently. And they are not going to vanish soon.

TL;DR?

Wherever you work or study or live, it has a written or oral Code of Conduct. You might not be punished right away if you go beyond what is acceptable. But some people will take the onus on themselves to have you pay sometime later. For example, if you don’t get a good hike inspite of good work, you can cry foul and curse your manager publicly. And you deem it fit to do so because you didn’t get your deal fairly. Now manager knows that and he won’t punish you instantly. But wait for next appraisal which might get your rating even lower. Also expect some work assigned to you at weird timings like Friday evening. 🙂

You might want to read Jerry Seinfeld on the use of profanity by clicking here.

Also check out the GOLDEN take on Freedom of expression by XKCD.

Take offence, but politely

If I might, let me throw some light, from my side on this issue on our mind, far and wide, You may or may not take my bite into your stride, however I may add, this fad, kind of bad, is here to stay anyways till we realize that mostly all kinds of freedoms, come with a price. Nice? Read on but if you are looking for any surprise, there is none but you are already wise. This is about Freedom of Expression, an Utopian feeling which always stays in contention. While we act all up for that ‘FoE’ but it makes people less friendly and more our foe. Most of us, are anyways hypocritical and thus, we want our liberty all the while, while we ourselves stay in denial. That all is well and we shall raise our voice, as long as our havens stay safe and our steps have poise. The jokes you laugh at and you laugh at quite a few, work only when they are not on you. Your tantrums are pretty well known, you get offended on calling you anything, now please don’t moan or groan as you look to me as a person who is a grown up. Any joke made in haste, are often not in a good taste, but waste is your opinion or any reason on it, as someone else is getting splits because of it or may be even fits, if it fits.

Here’s my take on Freedom of Speech:

If you decide to create some content (in any form be it written, spoken or drawn) which doesn’t coincide with the usual[1] norms of the society, you are bound to get applause as well as hate. There will be many who will praise your ‘crossing the boundary’ and ‘pushing and kicking the envelope’. There will be many who won’t like it. You may claim that it is your freedom of speech and right to express (be it crass, vulgar and downright abusive or wonderfully created satire with wit and bit of double entendre which many aren’t capable of because it requires more effort). Now when you have right to express something (and serve it as comedy? Heh it is not funny though), you should expect retaliation and criticism of your work. It should[2] range from straight faced ridicule of the content and call it non-funny and not-so-awesome-as-people-claim to laughing it off as totally nonsense and in some cases getting very angry over it being non-funny and not-so-awesome-as-people-claim. This Anger[3] can sometime lead to people lodging complaints against you using the democratic way of using some Indian Penal Code law citing that your content hurt their feelings. Or, more importantly, it was not suitable to be shown in public. But, there will be a fringe group[4] which think they are beyond law and take it as their utmost duty to silence the creator by use of fear and may be violence.

While I am 100% totally against these fringe moral brigade who think this is damaging our culture[5], the other non-violent people who got offended have full right to be offended and lodge a complaint with the police. Now here comes the question of whether they are so offended that they got up, went to a police station and actually complained because someone created some content which they didn’t like. Unfortunately, we people do have such people. And they are in plenty. Their LinkedIn bio boasts of skills like Joblessness, Ability to take offense at almost anything, knowledge of IPC laws (appreciable) and free time.

So when you create something and people get offended, you should STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHT TO SAY STUFF and not delete the content out of fear while you yourself admit that nobody threatened you. If you are shutting down shop without giving a fight to the people who take your stuff to heart (and possibly to their grave or pyre), what is the point of pushing the envelope? Was that just a way to get quick publicity and establish brand name? The brand name which creates less intelligent stuff (some stuff is really very witty and definitely more intelligent than I can ever make) and more of crass, cuss word usage which can make you popular faster as compared to the other harder way for making it to the top by pure satire.

Then there are people who condescend you since you didn’t like the Roast. Well, to be fair to them, I need not waste any space of this blog, except this line, on them. 😛

One more thing… I want Freedom of Speech to be Absolute. But it is not possible. You cannot ever have consensus on everything, all the time. I am not being pessimistic, I am being realistic. In a country like ours which is so divided on so many lines, circles and triangles, it is next to impossible to agree on everything. The laws which currently exist, do exist because govt. can only be preventive. It cannot ensure your safety from violence all the time. This is a fact and you should know it. Plus, I also believe that our society is evolving, getting more open minded and it will surely be able to be more tolerant. Still, even after hundreds of years from now, someone somewhere will continue to feel bad because of you. If not anything, sometimes people’s faces or dressing styles can be offensive. Like someone getting their name’s embroidery all over their suit. So offensive I tell you. There is certainly a scope of getting our laws fairer. And making them more understandable and less fearful for cases like FoE. But I reiterate, the laws are for preventing bad things to happen. And if I recount human history, people have got offended usually on the basis of speeches and waged wars and what not.

That is all.

[1] Usual here means what most people are comfortable with and have accepted as normal. This again depends on context, place and mood.

[2] But in realistic scenario, it isn’t.

[3] We have a huge population so people who get angry in our country are in huge numbers as well.

[4] Totally jobless idiotic guys with no sense of humor at all. Not even sense of humor, but no respect to the law and order situation, or respect to anyone’s human right. Totally unwanted scum of the Earth and fully deserving to be sent to Kalapani for their whole life where they could mate with each other and overpopulate the islands and die of starvation. Or become Zombies, whatever and get extinct.

[5] Doesn’t exist. Please go and find a different country.

P.S: I am not at all fond of AIB sort of comedy. I find those guys ugly. Of course they are funny but I cannot watch them or hear them, in fear of getting totally bored. May be this is my confirmation bias speaking against them. But that’s how it works, right!

P.S.S: I got so much bored of this issue that I wrote another useless rhyme: http://toomuchgraphic.tumblr.com/post/109964186359/a-good-rhyme-nay

No News Day

Nothing happened today. No news. Zilch. Of course, usual life carried on. People went for work. Unemployed people didn’t but they don’t anyways. No big event occurred. No hate speech happened. There was sudden dearth of stupid remarks. Some people did speak their mind but nobody heard them so it was alright. There were no weddings. There were some divorces and they were settled peacefully. People obviously cried but that was just a stress reliever. No protests happened, no cease fire violation happened. Nobody died in any accident. None. There was usual traffic at most places and occasional jams at deadlocks. People took them for granted and didn’t show their anger anywhere, neither on the road, nor on Twitter. Some cars got into accidental-y situation and almost collided too but both the drivers were so busy in their own affairs, they thought shouting at the other won’t improve the driving skills, so there wasn’t any point. No celebrity of importance died. Some people did die though. Those who died, died of natural causes, so nobody gave much whimper except their families and close friends, some of whom were, sort of, relieved. No loot happened so security guards spent their day mostly snoring, but acting as if they are fully awake and active. No rape happened. It was indeed surprising but may be it was the arrangement of planets that made sure nobody got insane. No killing happened. Neither in the name of God or language or money or anything. May be the perpetrators’ alarm got into some mess thanks to some seismic activity which geologists failed to capture and they now must be wondering what day it is. Cartoonists took the day off and spent the day by watching at blank TV screens.

Most of the people didn’t pay any heed to the lack of happenings around, but it was a very dull and long day for news channels, newspapers and news websites. They were restless for most of the afternoon but eventually someone had a brilliant spark, which spreaded from one agency to the other and they all published their news of no news. The newspapers published 28 blank pages, with ads of course. The news channels made way for news about TV shows of last weeks and the news websites listed 20 point lists without any content. It was as if they were just hitting enter after every bullet points and eventually got bored after 20 points, randomly.

So today, nothing happened.

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

– John Lennon, Imagine (1971)