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June 12, 1998
SPECIALS
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How Readers responded to Ashwin Mahesh's recent columns
Date sent: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 01:19:58 +0530 I find myself agreeing with every single thing Ash says in this piece -- in direct contrast to his disagreement with mine! And no, I haven't lost it -- yet! :-) It is not my intention to reply to this piece at the same length. My intention is two-fold. First, to apologise -- I realise now I should have written a plain, straight piece instead of clothing what I had to say in sarcasm. The second intention is to, rather belatedly, get my point across. And to do that, I'll borrow your own analogy, Ash, if I may. No, I am not advocating that a doctor in a hospital tell the guy with fever to go stick his heated head under a cold shower while he goes off attending to the terminally sick. I am merely arguing that a doctor has to treat both -- the fever, and the terminally ill. He cannot say to the latter hey, this illness is too big for me to cope with so what I'll do is I'll sit here handing out Crocins to the feverish ones. Which, I submit, was what Navalkar was doing. It is not my case to support obscenity, exploitation of women and all the assorted other ills we are unfortunately plagued with. It is, rather, my case to call for a complete cure. And to condemn the chappie who lets the big ones go unattended to, preferring rather to hold a pulse here, prescribe an antibiotic there, and make his living. Navalkar, if he were even halfway earnest, would have come out with a list of do's and don'ts. Not just for that miniscule segment that attends a rock concert, but for the entire state whose morals he is custodian of. He would have said, this is obscenity, this is not; this is permitted, that is not. We may have argued with his definitions. But at the least, we would have known what we were permitted to do, and what we couldn't do. A standard Code Navalkar unfortunately falls far short of -- apparently it is acceptable for Michael Jackson to grab his crotch, not for Savage Garden. Last heard from before he mercifully shut up, he was on the verge of doing something about the costumes to be worn by women beach ball players -- but much more obscene attire in film after mindless film is permitted. It is this that I objected to. Not because I think it is okay for a Garden to grab his (its?) crotch. But because it is not okay for a law-maker to be anything less than complete, thorough, and fair to all. Hey, in the days of Queen Victoria, they insisted that women couldn't show their ankles. But they insisted, too, that even a piano should have its legs covered! Extreme example? Sure. Used here merely as an over the top illustration, no intention of advocating any such excess. By all means let's do all that needs doing, to give women their sense of self-respect back. But let us do it across the board. Let us not say that the most obscene of lyrics can be sanctified merely because our party boss is sitting in the front row. Just a passing thought: Navalkar is now minister for PR. And suddenly, it appears, the morals of the city can go hang -- ain't no one bothering with it now. That tell you anything? Prem
Date sent: 29 May 1998 19:09 EDT This is in response to Ashwin Mahesh's column about the need for a morals havaldar like Navalkar to get rid of social ills. First of all, you have to get a few facts about yourselves right. Judging from your column -- nothing personal, mind you -- you think you are a rebel and you have obvious pride in crossing the cultural lines as a B-school student. What did you do? Drink beer and puke all over? Woah, your rebellion astounds me. OK, I will come to the core issue of what Prem is protesting about. It is called the attack against personal choice and personal freedom. Rebels like YOU will have a very hard time understanding that. The whole point of protest against Navalkar is his willingness to enforce whatever he thinks is right on the general population and the selective enforcement of morality. Now nobody says patients with a cold should suffer until the terminally ill patients get treated. But when you are in an emergency room with your hands hacked off by Navalkar just because you were waving at a lady friend in the street, I believe you would prefer that the doctor treat you first than treating me for a broken nail. It is called a matter of priority, my friend. Time and again the argument that the Shiv Sena and Navalkar just give their opinion and people simply protest against it comes up in your article. I repeat that they are not just giving their opinion but are actually enforcing it, which is extra-constitutional. It is the extra constitutional authority people like Navalkar possess that scares the hell out of people like Prem. Rebel boy, here is some Morality 101 for you: There is no perfect definition of morality. Your morality is not my morality. Navalkar can yell and scream about his moral view points but he has no right to force his morality on people just because he has the power to do so. So do not talk about deviancy from morality. The fear is not about where it begins, but where the whole thing ends. Today they may talk about bad advertisments on billboards. Tomorrow they will talk about hair cuts that do not confirm to their standards. So you have to be careful with people who have specific ideas about how people should live and behave. People in India inherently know what is acceptable and what is not in their cultural context. Do not try to choose things for adults, let them choose. Why don't you campaign against buying underwear from companies that advertise their products with semi-naked models? You have a right to do that. Let the people decide whether to buy the product or not. So do not harass them with petty lawsuits and threaten them with physical violence. Now coming to the point of women being treated as sexual objects. Don't worry about the women that do that. For they have made a conscious decision as adults to act in movies or pose in their underwear. What is your problem? We have people in India who squeeze the breasts of 50-year-old ladies who cover themselves from head to toe in sarees. What do you say about that? Don't tell me it is because of the advertisements they show on billboards. You simply blame the victim. Let us say you are taking your bath in a river in your trunks. What will you say if somebody fondles you then? Whose fault is it? Yours or the other person's? According to your logic it is your fault because you should not be bathing in your trunks in the first place. People should be made aware of various choices and should be let to choose what they want. How pathetic of you to compare Navalkar with your mom and dad who frowned on you when you were a kid. Wake up, I hope you are an adult now. Adults make their own choice. Maybe you need guidance, but not all others may be like that. How sad to hear that you rebelled against morality and came at an entirely wrong standard! Maybe not all people feel your way. Sultanas of chic dom getting raped is not a bad idea than being a sex bomb themselves, is it? Nobody can do anything if people have attitudes like this. Somebody may get turned on by women who walk with shopping bags -- so tomorrow wouldn't we have to ban women from walking around with shopping bags? A few things that need to be taken into account: if you want to have your personal freedom, if you want to do whatever you feel like doing (legal and supported within the Constitution, that is), you have to respect the rights of other people. We have agreed to be a democratic republic; it means we agree to obey certain rules that we made to keep our society peaceful. You get your personal freedom by tolerating other people's personal freedom. People like Navalkar can go on enforcing whatever they want just because they have the power to do so only for a short period of time. When you break the cardinal rule of tolerance by taking to arms, it doesn't take other members of the society to take up arms as well. If people in power start treating the citizens of India as adults half our problems will be solved. We do not elect our leaders to tell us what we should do. Rather, we elect our leaders because they tell us what we want them to do. (Think about it) If you don't want to watch porn, don't watch it. If you don't want to drink, don't drink. If you don't want to see people kissing in concerts, don't go to concerts. Don't tell me not to watch porn or not to drink or not to kiss in a concert because you don't think it is right. As long as only adults who are mentally normal are involved, why should you care what their morality is? A free country is where the weakest and meekest of the population can express their thoughts in action and speech without the fear of reprisal. People like Navalkar make culture stagnate. Anything that stagnates becomes a gutter as the Indian culture has become these days. It is high time that other cultural influences are allowed freely for our culture to find its way again. Nagaraj
Date sent: Fri, 29 May 1998 14:00:48 -0400 Very well written article.
Date sent: Fri, 29 May 1998 11:42:39 -0700 Very good.
Date sent: Sat, 30 May 1998 13:43:35 +0530 Agreed that self-regulation of morals can sometimes lead to a "wrong" set of behavior patterns (regarding marketing of women as bimbos et al), but I still do not see this as a convincing argument for the need for state regulation of "morality". The risk is one which Mr Mahesh seems to have missed entirely: the entire principle of democracy is violated by self-appointed moralists. The only reason democracy works at all is because of its inherent nature: it mirrors human society as transparently as possible without the need for too many restrictive conditions. A democratic system contains checks and balances within it to ensure that even corrupt politicians cannot get away with too much (as they can, for instance, in dictatorships). Democracy upholds the dignity of the common citizen by allowing her/him the freedom of opinion and entrusting her/him to use this wisely. Imposition of a moral code by the state is an insult to this dignity as it implies the citizen is unable to distinguish vulgarity from sublime entertainment, needing a "helping hand" to make up her/his mind. Indian culture, I believe, is resilient enough to survive intact without having to be hijacked by cynical political interests. It is hoped that Indian people do not play into the hands of our "morality police" by blindly endorsing their "vision".
Jayant S
Date sent: Fri, 08 May 1998 13:05:04 PDT Swadeshi... A big NO. While every developed country is going for globalisation, why are we going towards localisation? We have given 50 years to this so called local businessmen to give quality products. But we ended up only making these guys rich enough because they will tend to give poor quality products with higher profit margins.
Nobody gives a damn about customer service. Once you buy their
product you are off the hook. Why? MONOPOLY. Customers were
never given an option. MNCs and privitisation should be made
possible. According to the latest reports:
Why not in India? We cannot categorise the entry of multinationals. If an American wants to start a company he would need a good and convenient atmosphere in India. He would like to feel at home. An Indian in the USA feels happy to eat in an Indian restaurant. Same is the case with an American in India. He would be happy to eat in Burger King or McDonalds rather than in the local restaurants. So we have to allow all types of MNCs to exploit the Indian market. Let the market play. The Indian government has enough things to do. Selected sections of the market cannot absorb all the dollars. In a nutshell, we have given enough chance for the so-called local businessmen. Now its time for Indian consumers to enjoy quality products.
Date sent: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 11:48:44 EST Very appropriate. You cannot have your cake and eat it too!
Gaurang G Vaishnav
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