Talk about knee-jerk reactions and this takes the cake. Cowardly Muslim terrorists bomb trains in Mumbai and the spineless Indian government bans blogs in India.
Agreed there are blogs out there that preach hatred. Agreed there are blogs out there that talk of blowing up non-believers.
But does that justify a ban on all creative writing in the country?
More light is the solution, not more darkness. The Indian government seems to think otherwise. So it puts off all the lights and hopes that in the darkness the terror will go away. What they seem to have forgotten is that terror thrives in the darkness, it feeds off it growing stronger with deeper roots.
I personally like to believe that there are more good blogs than bad blogs out there. It stands to reason that the number of harmless creative blogs far outnumber the one that preach hatred.
What this, in fact is, is a reflection of is the state of affairs in the country. The majority is only required at the time of elections. The rest of the time nobody gives a damn about the majority but it is a small minority that is catered to, or in this case taken notice of.
After 9/11 the United States in all its foolishness, which only a Bush is capable of, declared war on terrorism. Today in hindsight we know that America’s call for war was the wrong path to take. But the fact remains that at that point in time Bush said the right things. The people of America were promised justice and the hope of a new life without fear.
Contrast that with the Indian government’s pathetic lack of response.
I don’t mean we should go to war, far from it. But we would like to see some spunk here. It would be nice if our “leaders” pulled up their dhotis and made an effort to bring the culprits to book.
Instead, Mumbai being Mumbai has gone back to daily life. Not for us the whimpering of New Yorkers and Londoners. No sir, call us callous, call us greedy. The fact is the spirit of the Mumbaikar cannot be broken. Life calls and we are answering.
So unlike the tsunami or 9/11, there is no tragedy being played out on the world stage. All the media got was a few hours of carnage to air and then nothing.
It is precisely this which has allowed the government to get away with such a pathetic response as banning blogs.
We didn’t need for our PM to sound like Amitabh Bachchan. We didn’t need our army to go rushing off in search of ghosts.
But we certainly did not deserve having our freedoms curtailed in return for our bravery and resilience.
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