Taaq’in about a revolution
Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.
That’s what this space is all about. To liberate ourselves from silence. To give equal voice to everyone who has a right to speech. And to unite all TAAQies.
If the punning on TAAQ makes your bones grate, do let us know. We’ll give you a free upgrade to business class — which means an hour with Sunil Chandy.
that’s business class? 1 hour? what am i in? platinum class?
Donno if this thread was specifically for Freedom of PJ’s but i just didnt want to start a thread specifically for Talking about Revolutions and freedom of speech,
SO.. im posting this profound post in here – enjoying my freedom of writing achieved thru blogs
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Talking about a revolution and talking about freedom of speech – i watched ‘Rang de basanthi’ yesterday.
On the way back while discussing the usual ‘major crap this country is’ and all that, i got a bit of information from a friend, i don’t know if its true but apparently the first constitutional amendment made by the USA was to include freedom of speech as a fundamental right type thing, and the first constitutional amendment made by India was to remove freedom of speech from its set-up. Maybe that’s the reason for years we had only Salma Sultan on DD giving us news that the ruling party decided was news.
We talk of India as this amazing free democracy and stuff – in reality that’s a whole lot of crap. I think we are still as captive as we were while being ruled under the Britts. Try going against the system now and for sure you are gonna get beaten up and probably killed like any of those freedom fighters.
I’m sure you can argue that removing freedom of speech was very important to get a billion blokes/bhaiyaas to shut up and listen to one voice and move ahead and help in progress – like the corporate vision training handed out at any big company these days.
But giving freedom to all didn’t deter the USA from progressing into a pretty prosperous place.
But hey according some folks America is apparently going down the drain
And according to some others India is on the brink of spectacularly wonderful things
Maybe ‘freedom of a nation’ is just another marketing gimmick, brand ‘FREEDOM” the best one to believe in. It’s just another F all form of systematization.
In the end you are captive within your freedom.
There muss be some kinda way out of here,
Said the joker to the thief
Theres too much confusion
I cant get no relief…..
etc etc.
dude,
robert zimmerman also sang: “I shall be released”
I don’t think any constitutional provisions restrict freedom of expression or socio-economic freedoms in India.
Our poor economic development (compared to countries like Singapore and Japan) was probably caused by our reluctance to embrace capitalism. Nehru (and most of the polity at that time) believed that socialistic democracy was preferable to straight out capitalism in a country with so much socio-economic diversity. We can’t say whether he was wrong or right, but while he did industrialize India, he maintained public sector monopoly and trade restrictions (and isolated India from foreign trade and investment).
His ideas were probably a sort of hybrid between Gandhi’s vision of an Agriculture-based economy and the western capitalistic models (that south-east asian countries like Japan embraced).
Regarding social freedom and freedom of expression, I agree with you to some extent. India isn’t as uniform and conservative as the Middle-east, but we still live in a restricted society. While the media/press isn’t under very much pressure, we still can’t choose our lifestyles as freely as westerners can. For all our cultural diversity, it is very difficult to choose alternative lifestyles while remaining economically independent.
Sad, but true
Hey Tarun, sorry about the delay in replying to your post. Been trapped in the many Freedoms ive chosen to be a part of
I sometimes wonder if this diversity thing is over hyped in India. I haven’t lived abroad but do suspect that similar diversities exist across various societies there too, but here in India we just give it so much more importance. Hence making us more diverse than we are. The inherent racist nature of us Indians reflects directly on us, making the Indian more diverse than we actually are. Bongs, Dings, Malls, Gultus, Tams, Gujju’s, Punju’s, Northy’s, Southy’s – and hundreds more.
To me the core nature of people are the same anywhere yet some people see others so differently
and some nations do much better than others.
Can’t resist at this point talking about the “Cartoons Row” that’s blazing through the News Maker Charts.
First a loose understanding of what I could gather about the incident – I know this is bad – I should be putting up facts – but hell its all about FREE dome of Press etc so ill just jam – if anyone wants to correct and put in actual facts please do so.
1. The Dutch press runs a contest to find a cartoon to depict Prophet Mohammed – this happen a few months back
2. People submit entries and they get printed in the “FREE” Dutch Press.
3. No body has a problem till some head priest from Deutschland decides to sneak this to the Fundamentalists
4. Some ppl make announcements of this over the mass media to all Muslims.
5. Most of the Muslims carry on with their work/lives peacefully – some extra sensitive ones get upset and start gathering rioters
6. Riots spread all over the world – loss of life and property damages make a medium scale impact so far. The event organizers of such riots must be hard at work now on retaliation which could be stronger than making blasphemous Christian cartoons.”
7. Dutch press refuses to Apologize for all this saying that it would be fundamentally against “FREE” press to apologize.
My serious take on the issue – “Save FREE Press” – don’t let sensitivities of any religion come in the way of FREE Press as this will percolate into every serious issue that needs to me communicated fairly to the masses.
My alternate take on the issue – ” As long as dope is grown and sold from say Afghanistan etc, and as long as ppl in say Amsterdam etc keep BUYING and smoking it – there will be no Sorry’s and no Thank you’s required in World Politics. Keep Smoking Amsterdam
”
I often assess the Brand Equity of the word “FREE”. As things stand today the annual turnover of Brand “FREEDOM” is really going strong and raking in the moolas. Wonder what the next event for brand “FREE” will be.
Hey on the Fun side – this Valentines day the Shiv sena were pretty cool about guys n girls feeling FREE to be lovey dovey in Bombay. In most cases nothing comes FREE in Mumbai. Apparently they only threatened to take Video clips of couples and send it to their parents to get them married off quickly – me thinks that HAHA Funny ?