The debate over whether to ban Honey Singh’s music has been wrongly characterised in terms of obscenity and censorship. The real issue is of recognising hate speech, and addressing a legal framework that does not view women as full citizens.
The debate over whether to ban Honey Singh’s music has been wrongly characterised in terms of obscenity and censorship. The real issue is of recognising hate speech, and addressing a legal framework that does not view women as full citizens.
Respected Bhagwat Ji, First you said that rapes and gangrapes happen in India, not Bharat, because the former has embraced Western ideas and abandoned Indian values. You’ve spoken again now, to put women in their proper place: serving their husbands in their marital homes. Some people think you’ve put your foot (make it plural) in your mouth. But I say, right on, keep talking. Young India, the middle class especially, is listening. And I am sure you’ll be hearing from them soon. Meanwhile, permit me to point out that your views are pretty close to many voices from the Muslim world: from the Taliban in Pakistan to the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. Perhaps it’s time votaries of Hindutva and champions of Islamic fundamentalism came together in a new coalition of the culturally constipated: “Us vs the West†.
In a society that has traditionally defined a person through her relationships rather than her individuality, a woman is certainly a person when she is a mother, a daughter, a sister or a wife. Any woman who does not fit into these mental categories is a female, a ’stree’, who, in the notorious public pronouncement of a former president of India, Zail Singh, ’bhog ki cheez hai’ (is an object of enjoyment). Stripped of relational categories and just as an individual, a woman is not a person but an object, a body for male enjoyment.
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