THE DEATH OF FREE SPEECH AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY

THE DEATH OF FREE SPEECH AND THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY

So, quoting from the Qur'an and the Hadith are to be deemed blasphemous from now on if the verses somehow 'hurt' the sentiments of the Muslims? Only praise, even if insincere, to be allowed? Criticism, valid and sincere, not to be tolerated? This shows that Muslims, by playing the victim-card, are imposing Sharia principles on us. Free speech disallowed under the provision of Constitutional 'reasonable restrictions'. Whither democracy then? Whither the scope for open dialogue, rational discourse, fact-based discussion? This is dictatorship of the minority. Why must medieval absolutism hold progressive modernity to account? Where's the scope for social advance then? Are we going anticlockwise then, back to subjugation by the Turks and the Arabs?

At this rate of curbing criticism to avoid 'hurting' the sentiment of the easily offended political Muslim, only one thing remains to be enacted, the criminalisation of all criticism of Islam and its ilk. With such a blasphemous legal option becoming operational what will remain of the fabled 'argumentative Indian' (quote, courtesy, Amartya Sen) then? Where are we headed -- the extinction of everything Hindu? the obliteration of truth? the perpetuation of prophetic injunction on this purest of peoples that knew high spiritual  civilisation when the rest of humanity lived brute-like in forests?

Written by Sugata Bose 

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