When a book stall gets shut down by the police for having literature that may hurt religious sentiments, I think we all should be worried.
The age-old issue of free speech rears its ugly head again, and those of us on this side of the argument can do little to not sound too much like a broken record.
Yes, I repeat, the right to free speech is crucial. Yes, we cannot live in a democracy, a secular nation, without the free exchange of ideas. Yes, it is not right to oppress the dissenting viewpoints of the few to cater to the so-called sentiments of the many.
Those on the other side of the argument aren’t much better off either.
But shouldn’t there be a limit to how “free” free speech should be? Shouldn’t we try and keep the delicate nature of religious sentiments in mind when writing/talking about the issue?
If free speech is allowed to be so free, wouldn’t that lead to hate speech (and we certainly quell and ban when Islamic clerics are found to be haranguing on about being off with the heads of apostates and Jews)?
Shouldn’t we strike down any speech that is attempting to, intentionally or unintentionally, provoke certain members of the populace?
With regards to the incident itself, there really isn’t much to say. Last time this happened, as some of us may well know, the fair’s organisers, Bangla Academy, had shut down a stall because they had predicted some sort of incident.
This time, however, it was the police themselves who, without due process or the proper channels, came down on a stall, going by the name of Badwip Prakashan.
But, seriously, who cares?
Whether or not it was shut down through proper channels because it might offend someone is a red herring at best. But the outcome is still the same, someone wrote something, someone else might take issue with it, so why not pretend like that something never even existed?
That is taking the spotlight off of the real issue.
Words are powerful tools. They can move a man to tears, shake mountains, start revolutions, and end wars. Or so the romantic in me says.
Which is exactly why we cannot continue to bow down to extremists or the “sensitively challenged” every time a word is written or said that might rub them the wrong way.
Tell me: Where does the responsibility lie? Someone will always be offended by something and there is no way we can create a false cocoon of pretence where every single utterance is a mere capitulation to a more violent breed.
Is it not up to the consumer, the public, the common man to decide whether or not they wish to avail the words published in a book?
Or are we giving so little respect to the whimsies of the common man that we do not trust them with deciding for himself?
And it is also up to the common man whether or not he is provoked to such an extent that he has to resort to violence to carry out the will of an omnipotent god.
Does the responsibility not lie on him? Or her? Or them? Those that continue to blame the wielders of freedom? Even if it is in their very faces?
If such a situation does exist (and sadly, it very much does), why do we continue to persist in the endeavour of trying to oppress the publishers?
In a conflict in which one is peaceful and the other violent, why are we bowing down to the latter? Isn’t peace the better option? Shouldn’t we turn the violent not quite so?
If the common man is so susceptible to provocation and lack of judgment, shouldn’t we be changing the common man?
And considering publishing like this, even ones which are so ostensibly offensive such as Charlie Hebdo, as being hate speech, is a mistake of the highest order.
Tell me, does Charlie Hebdo ask you to hate your fellow human beings? Did The Satanic Verses tell you to wage a war on a particular people? Did Avijit Roy attempt to bring about an apostate coup?
On the other hand, certain books within the religious cannon do attempt to do all of these things, mostly against apostates, people of other faiths, women, children, and sometimes, nations.
Should we now ban these Abrahamic texts because they incite hatred? Because they say “kill,” even though they preach so-called peace?
To be part of a society, a group, a people, we must follow laws and rules, maintain certain etiquettes, so that we can function united, as a whole.
And that is why, no freedom, no matter how instrumental it may seem to individual existence, can be practiced fully. We must follow traffic rules, we must not harm others, we must pay for services exchanged.
But when it comes to not allowing an individual to say what he wishes to, what he thinks, then we are in fact murdering that person as he wishes to be.
We are forcefully choking the ideas out of a man who thinks different from us. And a person who is different is never wrong, but crucial to the continued existence of a society, because they show us what we ourselves were never able to see.
For each of us, God is in the details. You may find your God up in the sky and in the intricacies of the universe and be proud of it. But someone else -- be it a heretic, a Hindu, a Buddhist -- find it in other details, and see each detail differently, and they too can be proud of it.
Neither has to cancel out the other.
In the history of the universe, censorship has never led to anywhere but oppression and subsequent resistance.
If we do wish to practice it though, the only kind of censorship that is acceptable is self-censorship.