Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Ours is a really ban loving country. You may be aware of fundamental rights given to us by the indian constitution like mundane rights of freedom, right of equality before law yada yada, but what you may not be aware of an even more fundmental right given to us as a birthright is the right to ban or atleast right to demand a ban. We really love that right, for most of the political parties it is their favourite right especially of the parties you don't even know exist. Now another of these nonexistent parties have come forward (pun intended) to exercise that right . This is what democracy is all about, right to ban things -doesn't matter whether you like those things or not. Gandhi, Nehru, Bhagat and especially Bose must be really happy that they fought with British so that every once in a while some nonentities can wake up from their deep slumber & decide that they should demand a ban on some particular movie, book or whatever else they can think of. Our governments have also been very encouraging with the idea of bans. Whenever somebody demands a ban, they are more than happy to oblige. Some years ago some very 'religious' fellows decided that a particular book hurts their religious feelings way too much and they demand a ban. Indian central government was very happy to accede to that demand, how can people's most basic right be voilated. A very healthy precedent was set and since then our governments have either banned or censored numerous movies, TV shows, books, plays , onions, tomatos and what have you. We all hope that this great tradition will continue and we as a nation will find more & more things banworthy. As they say, if you can't beat them, ban them.

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