Weekend musings - 03
Twitter's dilemma in India, freedom of speech's borderline and love is in the air
After the Emergency, when asked how Ram Nath Goenka(RNG) had continued to fight the government despite the enormous pressure on him, including the crippling financial and personal consequences. RNG replied, ‘I had two options: to listen to the dictates of my heart or my purse. I chose to listen to my heart.’
The above quote is from Coomi Kapoor’s book The Emergency - a personal history. ‘ In her own way, Indira Gandhi too was listening to the dictates of her heart when she imposed the Emergency - a heart filled with fear, suspicion, and paranoia.
RNG supported JP’s movement.
2021 began with a bang. In the first week, supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol Building. While the ex-president is fighting legal battles, the below image summarised the beginning of a new decade.
The incident marked the end of the ex-president on Twitter and his spew of fake content that ignited hate speech. Twitter was the first one to ban the president who had failed to accept his defeat.
While the move from Twitter was welcomed by people at large but Twitter’s CEO was worried about the president. In his 13-tweet thread, Dorsey said the "offline harm" posed by Trump's tweets drove the company to kick the president off of Twitter.
He said, "This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet. A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same."
Political governments of Mexico and Germany had their reservations about Twitter’s banning of Trump.
Free speech in 2021 get’s worse.
Should Twitter follow its own laws and who will decide these laws? Obviously, they will be done by humans and they will have their political lineage and beliefs. Or should Twitter comply with the land of law just like Facebook has agreed to do so? If it does then the Internet is molded according to the political dictate.
Twitter and Indian Government
Right now Twitter is battling a similar kind of situation with the Indian Government. Due to the ongoing farm protests in the country, Twitter witnessed a rise of “inflammatory content” related to farm protests such as the ‘farmers’ genocide’ hashtag and accounts backed by Pakistan and Khalistan sympathisers.
Twitter initially showed inhibitions but the Indian Government made its stand clear comply by the land of law or face the music.
Twitter has finally blocked over 97 percent of the accounts and posts flagged by the IT Ministry. Additionally, Twitter has extended a commitment to “restructure” its India team and assign more senior executives to its local offices so that it can better handle legal compliance-related issues.
Today it is all about perspectives and beliefs. If you are a right-wing supporter then you would support the move and if you are a left and dynasty sympathiser then you would blast the government on social media.
What happens when governments block the Internet to suppress movements? A trend that has been pretty active since telecom businesses would be keen to keep the government happy. India has been doing it whenever tensions or riots escalate at certain places. Turkey is a master and very recently Myanmar has done the same as the country is witnessing a coup.
I am not going to be the judge and declare who is saint and evil here. While it is all about individual beliefs but I really have a question for Twitter. If Trump would have won his second term, will the platform still ban him? His thoughts on the social media platforms were nothing new.
Freedom of speech is important but should be at the expense of someone. And what do you do when someone has been placed behind bars without even offending someone?
Who did Munawar Faruqui offend?
30-year-old Munawar Faruqui is a comedian who was arrested along with four other people just before he was about to start his performance at a cafe in the popular 56 Dukan locality of Indore. The case was filed based on a complaint by Eklavya Gaur, the convenor of the Hind Rakshak Sangathan and son of Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Malini Gaur.
Faruqui was booked under sections 188, 269, 34, and 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for organising the event without permission, flouting COVID-19 safety norms, and hurting religious sentiments.
According to Gaur he and his associates had gone to watch the show where the alleged indecent jokes were made about Hindu gods and goddesses and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
After spending a month in jail, Faruqui finally got bail from the top court after challenging Madhya Pradesh High Court’s order denying him bail.
Days after his arrest the police admitted it had no evidence. But the complaint’s verbal word was enough to put all the five behind bars writes Newslaundry. “It doesn’t matter whether Faruqui cracked a joke or not. We have been told by the complainant that he has mocked Hindu deities during rehearsals. He may not have told those jokes on stage, but he had the intention to do so.”
While Faruqui gets bail after enough media attention, 36-year-old Eklavya Gaur has now made himself a contender for a party ticket in the state.
However, the remaining four of the five people who were arrested are still in jail. It is still unclear how the others are connected to the alleged crime.
This won’t be the last time that people have been placed behind bars for mocking political figures and gods. Also most of the time the hidden agenda never surfaces and every political party has milked the situation.
Last year a teacher in France Samuel Paty, who showed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his pupils was beheaded. He showed the pictures during a class about freedom of speech.
Last year Bengaluru also witnessed riots after a Congress MLA a derogatory and offensive image about Prophet Mohammed on Facebook. The violence and the consequent police firing left four people injured, three of whom succumbed to injuries.
Where should we draw the line?
Love is in the air
This month most of the astrology sites predicted that Virgo’s will find true love something that will stand for long. And I was smiling, if we knew what the future holds the world would have been such a better place.
In the book, Sapiens - part four is dedicated to Scientific Revolution. The author talks about The Gilgamesh Project - the quest for immortality - science’s constant push to overcome death. A few serious scholars suggest that by 2050 some humans will become a-mortal. Not immortal because they could still die of some accident.
By and large, religion has looked at death as truth and a means to end. Most go beyond and sell the afterlife theory. No one knows the truth but we fancy the unknown.
Obviously, science has made progress, and decades ago diseases that would kill humans are now easily avoided with few medicines. COVID-19 vaccines are already in a year. But how can science stop road accidents or people dying from natural calamities?
My father could have lived a few more years had he placed a pacemaker. But he could have died of something else. I am not debating the effectiveness of science nor am I a believer in God or religion. I only understand the NOW and my struggle remains the same - how effective can I make it. Somedays I do make it count, somedays I just keep staring at the TV.
Anyways has love changed in the times of swiping. Modern Love an American romantic comedy anthology web television series, based on the weekly column published by The New York Times tries to answer it in the form of 10 unique stories.
Featured on Amazon Prime, the story I liked the most was of a 70-year-old smart and sexy woman who finds love in a fellow runner. The woman who is a better runner pushes the man to run better and live a life. Both become running buddies, move in together and do everything that a young couple would do.
And only death parts them. Standing right beside her love, she says that it will be very difficult to live a life without him but love will help her. The story ends with her going for a run and ending with a smile.
Another story that melted my heart was about a gay couple who want to be parents. They find a pregnant mother who lives on the road because she hates society and capitalism decides that the couple should take care of her child. It is also love - a mother giving her own child to a stranger and a gay couple taking the responsibility. Love has so many dimensions.
Be it modern or old - love remains the same across ages and times.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is asking how far will you go for your love? Why is it that we are always trying to associate things with feelings? Better be the ‘anti-body’.
A failure in personal life shouldn’t be giving advice on love to the world. But I have learned a bit from my mistakes.
Sex education wasn’t there in our curriculum and my parents didn’t had time to discuss love issues so the only hope is Bollywood.
I come from an era when writing love letters with a fountain pen and giving Archies card was cool. Anyways then love turned into sex, later it evolved into finding someone meaningful. But somewhere I never understood that “Love is a Verb.”
A year back while discussing life with my father, he asked me when do I plan to settle once again. “Why? Don’t you like me being happy. I don’t think I can find someone at this age who will accept me for who I am and besides our past is so heavy that kills any optimism. Also why spoil one more life.”
“You don’t need a partner now. Few years down the lane when we will not be there. You would need a person to share your life. Besides, you are in your best shape than ever I have seen and you are educated.” I stopped him by saying that nothing will happen to you and let’s have food. Enough of drinks.
Love can’t be forced or scientifically engineered. It is organic. And it is not about how far will you go. If you are in a relationship then please ask yourself:
How are you helping your partner to become a better person?
I never did.
And the less you judge and be more open to accepting the person as they are I guess it will be a better one.
Obviously, there is no guarantee that it will succeed or last life long. Nothing does but as long it does make it count.
During this week I also asked myself what is my favourite love song.
It was super tough and I will settle with this soulful number sung by Lata Mangeshkar, lyrics by Kaifi Azmi, and music given by Hemant Kumar. Sharmila and Dharmendra do the remaining in this black and white classic.
Happy Valentines Day - love doesn’t need a day but no human ever had a problem with extra love.
PN.