South Asia Citizens Web

One wonders once again about the differences, if any, between a multi-party democracy like India, and a one-party totalitarian Communist state like China. In both countries the social media is under attack, bloggers are hauled over hot coals, punished with imprisonment and legal cases. In India the political class has taken to a wink-wink, nudge-nudge game. Let the police make the arrests, its a good way of teaching the ’culprits’ not to be irreverent towards the high and mighty. The IT law with its sinister section 66A is used time and again to ’straighten’ the ’rebellious’ online community. It’s time to scrap that offending section.

The Thane rural police have behaved arbitrarily and against the law for which the policemen involved must be prosecuted. Shiv Sena goons also vandalized a clinic being run by an uncle of one of the girls. It is condemnable that under the Congress-NCP Government it was not the vandals who destroyed medical equipment and threatened the patients at Palghar who were promptly acted against but two young girls who have every right to express their opinion.

For years now, as economic change has made it ever-harder for masses of people to build lives of dignity and civic participation, we have seen the inexorable rise of an as-yet inchoate youth reaction. From the gangs of violent predators who have raped women in Haryana, to the young Hindu and Muslim bigots who have spearheaded the recent waves of communal violence, street politics is ever more driven by a dysfunctional masculinity. Thackeray’s successes in tapping this generation’s rage will, without doubt, be drawn on in years to come by other purveyors of violence.

Two girls were arbitrarily and unlawfully arrested in India for making comments about the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s death in Bombay. Posted below is an article by Pranesh Prakash and a news report from The Hindu

the real legacy of Bal Thackeray. To make political violence so routine that it ceases to outrage. To make the strategy of scapegoating and targeting particular ethnic, religious, or political groups part of the calculus of everyday politics. To make fear and intimidation a legitimate, accepted part of political leadership. And to constantly remind any potential critic, in media or otherwise, of the threat of violent reprisal for saying something that Thackeray and his thugs might not appreciate.