Monday, January 28, 2013

The Hypersensitive Bharatiya

Last week Kamal Hassan’s 100 crore mega project Vishwaroopam was banned from theatres in Tamil Nadu and subsequently in Karnataka. It was cleared by the censor board, but then the government decided to ban it because it thought it insulted the Muslim community by portraying it in a manner unacceptable to some unknown Muslim organization.

Its woes does stop here, earlier Kamal Hassan was criticized for the name Vishwaroopam. The reason? it’s a Sanskrit word and it’s a Tamil movie. So Kamal Hassan has not shown respect to the Tamil culture by using a Sanskrit word to name his Tamil movie.

A friend on Facebook had recently put on a status about how rude and unpatriotic a guy was as he refused to stand during the national anthem played before screening a movie. He didn’t stop here, he also mentioned that he gave the guy a verbal thrashing about how he should be grateful to be born in India and is indebted forever to the motherland.

Recently Amitabh Bachchan was in trouble because he used the word ‘racha gaya’ for Quran, while someone claimed it was revealed by God himself and not composed.

These are just some instances that I saw or read about in the recent time. We are so insecure about our religion, motherland, and language or so called culture that we b urst into anger even at the slightest remark. Or we are just looking for an opportunity to get angry over anybody saying anything. It’s like we have just lost it. There is no tolerance for art and no tolerance for humor at all. Anyways the only humor we like is cheap takes at our women or perverted jokes.

Mindless things are imposed upon us and then an organization comes up to uphold them and we still call ourselves a democracy. Take for example the national anthem before a movie screening. Do I need to prove my allegiance to my country by standing up every time before a movie? By this viewpoint every day before going to work couples should read their marriage vows to each other.

We have become so occupied with such small things that it literally made up puppets in the hands of political parties. It is so easy for a political outfit to disrupt something and call itself the messiah of a particular religion, state or even the whole country. They know they never need to talk about development, better healthcare or law and order because our sensibilities have been killed by our hypersensitive nature to these mindless and irrational things. And to keep us occupied with that, let the drama of banning things, protesting against art continue.

It’s a shame that we a developing nation, a democracy are so easily swayed by such behavior. Just the reason I couldn’t help using the word Bhartiya and not Indian, in case I too might land myself a PIL.

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