Archives: Liberty

The decision of the University of Mumbai to drop the Booker-nominated novel of Rohinton Mistry Such a Long Journey from its BA syllabus following objections from the Shiv Sena students’ wing sets a dangerous precedent. This not the first time that the rightwing party has managed to armtwist someone into complying with its chauvinistic assertions, but this episode sends out portentous signals in being an exemplar for many things that are not right. ...

The Indian elite is known for many things good, bad and ugly, its ostrich syndrome being one. Any ill that does not plague it, simply does not exist. A liberalised socio-economic regime gives it all the privileges that it barefacedly demands; civil liberties always go to hell and stay there. So when civil liberties activists raised the alarm after the Indian laws governing cyberspace and online activities came into force, no one took any cognisance of them. Street dogs after all are wont to bark. At every one, at everything. India Inc was gung ho about development, never mind what...

One is amused and amazed at the fact that the terms ‘moral policing’ and ‘freedom of expression’ are much in the thick and thin of things these days. Is it because there is now an upsurge of conservative militancy? Or, is it because the world has not suddenly become a bad place; but that news travels faster now, and television and the Internet are there to blow things up? Look closely, you will know there is a little of both to it. A decade or so back when Shiv Sena hoodlums plundered the offices of a small Mumbai-based newspaper called Mahanagar, there were few to take up...