The Culture of Ban

In the wake of the Maharashtra Government slamming a ban against 'Deshdrohi' a Bhojpuri film about the plight of migrants from Bihar in Bombay (i refuse to say Mumbai) in the age of Goonda "Raj'. The state government explained its action on the grounds of avoiding further clashes between the Biharis, UPites and MNS (Maharashtra Navanirman Sena). Pragmatically speaking no one should have any problem with such a step as the state government had to take such a step to prevent any retaliatory, violent attack by the Raj Thackeray and his bunch of delinquents. But i guess this is one of those rare cases where i would choose idealism over suitability. In country which calls itself a democracy and has freedom of speech expressed as one of the basic tenets of its constitution would have to resort to the culture of bans, embargoes and muffling. A society which uphelds the freedom of expression should protect any kind of discourse, however derogatory or inflammatory it might be, as gagging a particular speech in anticipation of social instability,is rather myopic. It is the case of a mother who always thinks that her child is not old enough for sex education until the child comes back home with a lethal STD. We might think of protecting our society from any kind of disharmony by banning The Satanic Verses', Parzanias, Bandit Queens, Fires, M.F Hussain paintings but by curbing a particular discourse and not allowing enough space for independent speech to occur we are basically damaging the democratic fibre of our society. As Voltaire said-I might vehemently oppose your speech but i shall protect your right of making that speech with my life. If a frenchman could say this in the 18th century, why we still can't seem to get it? We must understand that the trend of censorship would not take us a long way, as our society would become increasingly intolerable. I detested every speech given by Narendra Modi on how he thinks that Sohrabbudin should have been killed anyway because of him being from a particular community during the last year's Gujrat elections but i would always stand up for his fundamental right in a free society to make such a speech regardless of its provocative contents. We must allow our people to grow. Why do we underestimate the intellectual capability of our men and women? Why do we think that they would not be able to take a point of view which opposes theirs? As a contradictory standpoint can sometimes enlighten us and moreover we are intellengent enough to shun provocative harangue of Narendra Modis. These days everyone seems to have a problem with any work of art in the subcontinent. We have suddenly become so 'oversensitised' that we can ban a film on the basis of a line in the lyrics of one of its songs. The culture of hooliganism and vigilante moral policing by right wing politicians negates our constitutional right of expressing our ourselves in whichever way we want to. Though i believe in a certain amount of personal restraint and self-censoring as that is the best tool by which free speech can be accomodated in the truest sense in a society. For that to happen the regulatory body setup by the central government to censor films has to go. Everyone should have access to read, watch, listen to, whatever they want to as right of choice should not be taken away from us. Moreover banning is extremely sensationlist in a way. The popularity of a work of art increases by leaps and bounds once an embargo is laid upon it. So lets not trivialise our freedom of speech, lets popularise it.