Monday, March 8, 2010

Javed Akhtar on Devil's Advocate on Art and Freedom of Expression and of Dissent

Javed Akhtar trumps Karan Thapar who sits there looking like an idiot after having failed to pigeon-hole the discussion while Akhtar makes complete sense. Loved watching the videos.

See the transcript and watch the videos here.

2 comments:

  1. Enjoyed it.
    But one interesting point about Babri: if Bajrang Dal had registered a case (there was a case, I remember), this would have been a 'civilized' way of registering their protest. Let's say the court had actually reached a decision that the mosque be razed to ground for whatever twisted historical reason, and given that courts and judiciary are a 'part of society', that would have meant that the demolition would have been given a seal of approval by the majority of civil society. But civil society includes dissenters (Muslims in this case perhaps) as well and not everybody's views can be successfully incorporated into every decision a court makes. Where would it have left them, after the ground had been leveled? What meaning would have been there in launching another 'civilized' protest by Muslims (I am assuming them to be the chief dissenters) against the demolition?
    To distill what i just said, 'a tradition of healthy argument', and 'civilized protest' are the definite debate winners. But isn't there something fundamentally ugly with some forms of 'the right to get offended'?
    The mosque was beautiful, it should have been for everyone, no matter how bloody the history. Would we ever stop using history as an excuse to get offended?
    As always, I have no clue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. For the sake of argument:
    >>'Where would it have left them, after the ground had been leveled?'
    It would have left them where the courts leave other people who have lost their case (fair or unfair).

    >>'What meaning would have been there in launching another 'civilized' protest by Muslims (I am assuming them to be the chief dissenters) against the demolition?'
    You are also assuming that they will treat the verdict as fair only if it is in their favor. You have also assumed that they already have a verdict in mind and anything short of it is meaningless.

    So what if it was an 'unfair' (btw who defines that?) verdict?
    The system in this case would just be guilty of being a system and not an oracle.


    Finally, if there are some people who feel strongly enough about it to resort to violence (as will happen sometimes), go ahead. The state must be strong enough to take care of them.

    ReplyDelete