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Nearly 25 years later, I’m a little more grown-up and the idea of banning things, especially creative works, still makes no sense to me. These days, what’s coming on the ban radar seems more ridiculous than ever before...
I’m not sure what is more difficult to explain—that Reliance Entertainment thought Dangerous Ishq would have box-office earnings, or that anyone would want to waste bandwidth, time and storage space on the film; or that Vimeo, a favourite with indie filmmakers and known for hosting a lot of original content, was considered a threat. Meanwhile YouTube, the shady den that has everything from puppy videos to pirated films, remained unaffected because that’s where all the Bollywood trailers and song videos are put up. On the other hand, if you want to see some award-winning short films or see what’s the latest upload at the official White House channel on Vimeo, you’d learn that there’s a John Doe order preventing you from accessing the site...
To give Sibal the benefit of doubt, maybe he was referring to the freedom enjoyed by politicians because in that case, he’s absolutely right. For instance, it’s difficult to imagine an elected representative killing time watching pornography while attending the European or American equivalent of Parliament. And that’s just a trivial example. We all know that politicians are truly free to do anything they want in this country. The laws are as flexible as flubber for them. They’re enacted inflexibly for the benefit of us humble, everyday citizens, and it is to preserve our delicate innocence that Sibal wants a draconian set of rules that will regulate the content we can access on the net.

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We would, however, be deluding ourselves if we make believe that it is only the arts that suffer because of censorship. A free, uninhibited and open atmosphere is the oxygen that allows scientists, mathematicians, architects and those from other disciplines to think without walls, taboos and claustrophobia; and to dare to take risks and venture into unknown and unexplored territories.
But that too does not reveal the insidious but palpable far-reaching effects of an atmosphere of Big Brother looking over your shoulder every minute. The openness that should be the hallmark of all universities, educational and research institutions goes out the window. Much worse, the horizon shrinks at an alarming rate and all your values get skewered. Your air supply starts to dwindle. Creative minds in the sciences as well as in the humanities and the arts can breathe, thrive and contribute to their disciplines only when there are no barriers to knowledge and ideas.

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the whole principle of freedom of speech is predicated on the right to offend.
Consider a society where everyone said nice things about everyone else. Would such a society ever need to enshrine the right to freedom of speech in its constitution? There would be no reason to do so because nobody ever got offended.
You only need the right to free speech when you want to offend people...
Because the ‘giving offence’ argument is so weak in the Rushdie case, those who want to ban the book have fallen back on another argument. Now they say that if a book like this is published, then it will lead to violence.
And why should it lead to violence? Well, because the same people who had never read the book and who we agreed had no right to demand a ban will now run riot setting fire to property and killing people.
A genuinely liberal society should recognise this for what it is: a law and order problem and not a free speech issue...
But when it comes to free speech, we don’t act against those who threaten violence. Instead, we turn against those whose right to free speech we should be protecting.

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there will be no point to the festival if the invited writers are forbidden from challenging the fast-settling status quo. The fate of the festival is the same as the fate of free expression. The problem is not that four writers spoke up at JLF, the problem is that so few of us did...
19. It is wishful to assume the censors haven’t entered our heads. The space for thought has shrunk, is shrinking right before our eyes. They want not just that Rushdie shouldn’t come, they won’t even allow his image on a screen. They want not just that Kak’s documentary not be screened, they want the entire event cancelled. Each step they gain is harder to reverse...
22. Why read at all? For a sense of empathy and risk. Because only reading will prevent you from mistaking fiction for fact and help you see the internal borders of a made-up story. Why read? Because culture is conversation.

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the word of god grows best in fields watered by the state's pelf, and ploughed by the state's swords.
Salman Rushdie's censoring-out from the ongoing literary festival in Jaipur will be remembered as a milestone that marked the slow motion disintegration of India's secular state...
Few Indians understand the extent to which the state underwrites the practice of their faith. The case of the Maha Kumbh Mela, held every 12 years at Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain and Nashik, is a case in point...
Last year, the Uttar Pradesh police sought a staggering Rs.2.66 billion to pay for the swathe of electronic technologies, helicopters and 30,000 personnel which will be needed to guard the next Mela in 2013. There are no publicly available figures on precisely how much the government will spend on other infrastructure — but it is instructive to note that an encephalitis epidemic that has claimed over 500 children's lives this winter drew a Central aid of just Rs.0.28 billion.
The State's subsidies to the Kumbh Mela, sadly, aren't an exception. Muslims wishing to make the Haj pilgrimage receive state support; so, too, do Sikhs travelling to Gurdwaras of historic importance in Pakistan. Hindus receive identical kinds of largesse, in larger amounts. The state helps underwrite dozens of pilgrimages, from Amarnath to Kailash Mansarovar. Early in the last decade, higher education funds were committed to teaching pseudo-sciences like astrology; in 2001, the Gujarat government even began paying salaries to temple priests...
It doesn't end there: the state regulates, on god's behalf, what we may eat or drink — witness the proliferation of bans on beef, and proscriptions on alcohol use in so-called holy cities. It ensures children pray in morning assemblies funded by public taxes, provides endowments for denomination schools and funds religious functions. It pays for prayers before state functions, and promotes pseudo-sciences like astrology. And, yes: it censors heretics, like M.F. Husain or Mr. Rushdie...
the real costs of India's failure to secularise: among them, the perpetuation of caste and gender inequities, the stunting of reason and critical facilities needed for economic and social progress; the corrosive growth of religious nationalism.
India cannot undo this harm until god and god's will are ejected from our public life...
In a 1927 essay, philosopher Bertrand Russell observed that theist arguments boiled down to a single, vain claim: “Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must be design in the universe.”
The time has come for Indian secular-democrats to assert the case for a better universe: a universe built around citizenship and rights, not the pernicious identity politics the state and its holy allies encourage.

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This backdrop explains the fear over the government’s attempts to censor various new mediums like social networking sites. These mediums pose new challenges for the ethics of expression. Many states are trying to use these mediums as tools of discipline rather than platforms of expression. But remove the fig leaf of technicalities. Holding them pre-emptively responsible for offensive speech is like requiring a profit-making road operator liable for every crime committed on the road because they did not pre-screen every car and driver and let potential murderers drive. But the issue is not technology. Given the Indian state’s record, it is but natural that any whiff of regulatory control is seen as threatening. A measure of this is the fact that a platitude like “no freedom is absolute” sounds more like a threat when the state utters it...
Enlightenment was not spread only by sober, non-offensive philosophers. It was created by the most scurrilous lampooning of religious authority, often debasing it. A liberal democratic society can allow us to do that peacefully. But what creates conflict is not offensive speech; it is those using it as a pretext to exercise power over others.

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With politicians offering questionable placebos which have expired use-by dates, and clerics misdiagnosing the disease, is it any wonder that the patient’s condition remains grave?
In Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Iff tells Haroun how certain things are P2C2E, (process-too-complicated-to-explain). But this process is simple: politicians and clerics gain by keeping the population uninformed. They fight chimeric battles and offer illusory benefits to Muslims, who want education and jobs. Instead they get quotas, and not skills, with the added bonus: to protest Rushdie.

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“In all the arguments made against Salman Rushdie’s attendance at the Jaipur Literature Festival this week, the gist of them is just this: he disturbs the peace.” But all great literature (or work of art) disturbs the peace in its own way—by questioning tradition, urging us to see in new and different ways, even by being a call to arms. At its core is the concept of “doubt”, without which there can be no progress, no equity, and above all, nothing at all that is new. A world without doubt is a world of endless recapitulation. There can be no freedom of anything, at any level, if doubt is stamped upon. The Deoband clerics have every right to protest peacefully, and Rushdie has every right to seed doubt. It will be truly sad for Indian democracy if Rushdie is barred from coming to India.

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By demanding that Rushdie should not be allowed to enter India, fundamentalists are seeking to set the terms under which dialogue can occur in India. Muslims have been vocal in protesting against material they find offensive, with the Bangladesh-born novelist Tasleema Nasreen a frequent target.
But in the past quarter century, other groups have also joined in, increasing the clamor against free thought, and narrowing public discourse...
The inevitable result is deadened polity. While the People’s Union of Civil Liberties has admirably spoken out in defence of Rushdie, other Indian civil society groups have been reticent, unwilling to take on the intolerant, who respond not with argument, but with violence. A few columnists and Bollywood personalities have also criticised the fundamentalists. But no politician of consequence has done so.
We watch as India hovers over that precipice; it must decide what kind of society it wishes to be — where, as India’s greatest poet wrote, where the mind is without fear, or where words are swallowed, lest they offend somebody.

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But what bothers me is this: what next? What happens when the country goes to polls again? Who do you vote for? Who do I vote for? Why do I vote for them?...
Growing up, sporadically, in this politically charged, fairly well-informed environment means that I like to think before voting.
And the more I think about the next Lok Sabha polls the more… I am left thinking...
if I had to make a decision, I am going to do it on the basis of a wishlist. So here I am going to put out a list of things I’d like to see the next government do. Some of them may be impossible due to constitutional process. And some of them may seem irrelevant to the vast majority of readers. But it is my wishlist. And these are issues that I care about. I am pretty sure not one politician will read this blogpost. But at least the process of writing it down will help me as we get closer to the ballot box. It will help me take a call.

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A year of living wastefully. This is how India will remember 2011. We spent our political and economic capital recklessly as if we had so much to spare that we could afford to waste it. So most of the year went in discussing an idea put forward by a sincere but daft old man whose only claim to fame is village development. Slavishly endorsed by our breathless, unthinking news channels, Anna Hazare rose to such dizzying heights of glory that by the end of the year, he and his team of dodgy NGOs was lecturing the Government of India on how to run the country. The government foolishly allowed itself to be lectured to. And, our amoral opposition parties, transfixed by the crowds of urban Indians that Anna drew, leapt happily onto his platform...
Why are there not enough hospital beds? Why are there not enough schools? Why do fundamental necessities like electricity, cooking fuel and clean water remain so hard to get? Why do we need police verification to get a passport when it should be the right of every citizen? Why do we need police verification to get a driving licence? These are urgent questions but instead of asking them, all we talked about in 2011 was corruption and how what we needed was a ‘strong Lokpal’ for all our problems to be solved...
The Government of India was too busy placating NGOs with inflated egos and delusions of power. While all this was happening, the man at the helm of the Government of India, the man who became famous for giving India a new direction with his economic reforms, lurked in the background, silent and wraithlike. It was as if Dr Manmohan Singh forgot some time this year that it was his job to lead. So by the end of 2011 as fog and icy weather enveloped Delhi, there was general, gloomy agreement that this is the worst government India has ever had. Sadly, it can also be said that this is the worst Opposition India has ever had. Happy 2012.

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Sanjay sipahimalani's literary predictions for 2012 (so funny, it's not!)
3 The spate of books and articles on Steve Jobs will cease once people realise that many of those writing about him were simply repeating the same thing. Matters will come to a head once it is discovered that a much-linked-to blog post titled "My Recollections of Jobs" simply consists of the words "Stay hungry, stay foolish" typed over and over again.
4 After the furore over the proscribing of A.K. Ramanujan's essay on the Ramayana by Delhi University, members of the varsity's Physics Department will seek to stop the study of quantum physics, claiming that "some German fellow called Heisenberg" was out to promote uncertainty across the nation. "

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"Another year — and a spectacular journey coming to an end. We’ve had some very good books, films and music albums making 2011 special. From experimental to populist to downright intriguing — they have kept us entertained through many evenings. Let’s take a walk down recap lane with Jai Arjun Singh as he talks about the books and films that he personally loved this year. And Avirook Sen gives his take on the music albums of 2011 that, he feels, rocked. We wish you a very Happy New Year!"

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Mother India, that rascal, tricked me again. She sneaked in another lesson and blew my mind once more.

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Brilliant short rant on the income tax proposal of petroleum ministry

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The zoom-in from outer space towards the topography of India on the rotating globe suggests that when Gods wanted to come down to earth to answer individual prayers in the ancient days, they used Google Earth to find their way.

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Not far from New Delhi, Mindworks now has eight overseas clients, and it's mounting a big effort to go after more U.S. publications

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Travelling in style hadn't locked us away from India, from its conversations and people. Our children had drawn us to new experiences. And India... still showed little sign of wanting to be anything but its own unique self.

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So pronounced is The Hindu’s courage and integrity that it maintained its criticism of the vicious and savage Tibetans when they went on a violent rampage earlier this year.

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