Monday, November 21, 2005

NDTV's 'Big Fight' on Khusboo issue

i find it ridiculously outrageous to find ONLY women being targeted by the people, who have so conveniently adopted 'moral policing' as their favourite pastime. NDTV 24x7 yesterday revisited the Khusboo controversy and to my delight, N.Ram(Editor of 'The Hindu') was also present. He attended the debate session in itself is a sign as to how much frustration this whole fiasco has generated in India. once again, just an expression of one's personal opinion about something has invited so much wrath from the others...just goes on to show the magnitude of intolerance among us. why should one bother so much about what someone's personal opinions about something are? what is so outrageous about a person being OK with pre-marital sex? even if it is assumed that she has crossed the line, is this the proper way to respond to it? condemning it in itself sounds very foolish(countering it is absolutely fine, everybody has got a right to present a counter-view), but what followed was completely ridiculous. more than 15 cases had been registered against her in the courts, various threats were sent and she was forced to tend an apology!! apology for what? prosecuting for what offence? now this was completely unaccebtable; you don't hijack the personal life of someone for such a silly reason. people who are doing all this should be ashamed of themselves. if you really seriously think that khusboo has committed a serious offence, then taking her to the courts should have been sufficient. why threaten her with her life, burn her effigies, take out processions against her and turn her life into hell overnight? even terrorists have relatively calm prosecutions.

isn't this all happening because all moral policing in our country is solely dedicated towards the women community and khusboo is a woman? why is the culture of our country so intricately woven only with the women community? where were the so called saviours of the culture when a school-going girl was raped by a constable on duty? but that should not affect the culture of ours because the offence was done by a male, which effectively turns it into a law-and-order problem rather than affecting the culture, and it was committed against a woman, which infact makes it cease to be even a serious law-and-order problem. where as every act of a woman is closely scrutinised with microscopes and all kinds of threats are used against those who fail to understand the rules set out for them by the 'society'. what is worse is that no political party is ready to defend her and assure her of safety(Left has just spoken in her support) and AFAIK no major organisation is supporting her(except the national women's organisation) in her present crisis.

N.Ram was right on the money when he concluded by saying that the only thing to come out of it all is the exposure of the 'intolerance' of a section of our society(he has also written a thought-provoking editorial on the same issue two days ago). as a pleasant surprise, it was a rare occasion when almost everyone finally accepted to atleast condemn the uncivilised behaviour against khusboo. except a middle-aged woman, that is; who believed that using the word 'culture' 10 times in a 15 word sentence would provide a lot of credibility to her argument(whoever said that the biggest enemy of a woman is another woman!!).

if what khusboo spoke should not have really been spoken, then the proper thing to do is to form a consensus on such matters and force the legislation to make a law barring people(or only 'women' as they would like to prefer) from airing such views. then we can collectively celebrate the ignominiousness of the entire civilisation of ours with out any discriminations.