Ideally, I would like to thrash that guy smoking with relish and spewing toxins in style on his kid sitting on the lap. But that, thrashing someone and not smoking, is a criminal offence. It’s difficult also to resist the temptation to trample on the tippler sprawled on the street after a busy evening at TASMAC outlet while his family is starving back home. But again, booze is a birthright, dispensed by welfare States too.
I chose smoking and drinking as examples because they are known killers and their prevention falls in the ambit of health policing first, let alone moral policing. The individual, his/her family, society and environment, all suffer. But even in the case of such obvious evils, bans are not the way. At least, no longer. The restriction on smoking in public is observed more in the breach what with the bulk of the populace thronging and even living in public places. Also, will the stench go away if someone smokes in the toilet and enters an enclosed public place like a lift, bus or a theatre? Suffice to say liquor is another such personal, legal and moral quagmire that has gone beyond the pale of prohibitions.
There are so many things one might feel strongly against and also justifiably place it in the domain of public good. And when the law of the land itself allows them or is ambivalent the urge to take law in one’s own hands too is overwhelming. And there are many deeply personal don’ts that evoke a sense of revulsion when they are a ‘must do’ for others. It is also possible that many of the habits and practices that we deem natural and necessary are distasteful to some others. For every action by a person or group there is an unequal and more provocative reaction from some other. Really who is the arbiter of what is right? Can it ever be known? But first, does it matter at all?
Even otherwise, bans have long lost their edge as a tool of restricting social ill or for enforcing good. First, they have been blunted by gross abuse. Second, the credibility and motives of those who wield them have become successively suspect, giving easy space for equally dubious detractors. Three, most targets of bans have developed immunity owing to overdose. Four, they end up helping the cause that they were supposed to hinder, making martyrs of unworthy characters. But last, bans are simply unwieldy in the present milieu. The State and courts can ill afford to plunge themselves in petty bickerings over meat or movies.
A ban apprehending law and order problem is actually bad in law and shows a ruler in bad light too. Such a ban is a retreat and abdication by a duty-bound government which is expected to be assertive. It is the tendency to succumb to every such threat that has now led to a situation where even small groups under lame pretexts hold up cities and the country itself to ransom. Here, the popular projection is that things have got worse after Modi regime took over. In reality, more than the much maligned fringe Hindu groups which enjoy little patronage from the bulk of the populace, it is the mainstream of ‘minorities’ and their vociferous backers in intelligentsia who have often acted as vetoes on matters cultural. Minority orthodoxy has always been more effective than the so-called majority’s in securing bans.
There are millions of unreconcilable issues and taking an official position is impossible and impractical. Many of them fall in the realms of society and have little to do with governance. Communities developed their own cultural traditions and norms and as long as they were in their own geographical domains, it was not too difficult to remain opaque. But in a fast-churning social cauldron where consumerism and commercial media are acting as powerful catalysts, isolation and individuality are subject to severe challenges, sadly so, sometimes. Add to this the duplicity of some self-styled liberal champions who queer the pitch further.
The powerful, all through history, have always tried to control thoughts of others. Such tendency smacks of stupidity even more in this age of free-for-all social media. Freedom to think and the right to write are subject only to one restriction and that is one’s own willingness to face the consequences. Bans cannot derail the train of thoughts and expression.
The constant companions of contradiction and compromise mock at our ‘firm beliefs’ at every stage and station of life’s journey. They are the only censors who show with conviction that no idea is permanent and no ‘ism’, absolute. What enactments cannot achieve, experience will.
Despite all pretensions of purity and piety, I would want to reserve a secret portion in me for irreverence, just in case. Bans are a travesty of this basic human itch.
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