FREEDOM? HOW FAR? WHY BIND?

FREEDOM? HOW FAR? WHY BIND?

People should have a sense of humour. If cartoonists have to care for people's soft sense of hurt and exercise restraint thereof, art will have taken to flight. 

Freedom of speech and expression ought to be total and not dictated by totalitarian authority that censors every expression that mocks it. Freedom is freedom only when it is absolute. Partial freedom is no freedom. It is camouflaged bondage. 

Where does one draw the limit to humour? Where idiots with no sense of sanity or a semblance of fun-lovingness draw the borderline? Is spontaneity to be thus checked in self-expression? Can controlled art be of high quality? If a group of people feel hurt by a certain depiction of their adored one, they ought to remember that it is their duty to toughen their souls and be indifferent to such depiction rather than raise a ruckus over it. If it is the artist's/cartoonist's right to draw the way he likes, it is the tendersoul's right as well to be offended by it but by no means his right to strike back in violent reprisal. Art must be countered with art, literature with literature, philosophy with philosophy, in fact, any form of human expression with its counter-form in the same genre. Taking to street violence by way of objection to any form of artistic or literary depiction becomes the rogue and not the soft, sensitive soul who has been apparently hurt. 

Art must be kept free, so must literature, music, dance, in fact all forms of artistic modes. Then alone will the polity mature unto tolerance, even acceptance of opposite viewpoint, and will move away from today's immature reaction to everything that goes contrary to popular notion and practice. We cannot allow regimentation of thought, programming of personal thinking and expression thereof, and we cannot stifle art and literature if we are to progress as a vibrant civilisation, for rigid controls inevitably kill creativity and culture. 

Written by Sugata Bose