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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Zero tolerance

Zero tolerance

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published Published on May 15, 2012   modified Modified on May 15, 2012
-The Indian Express

Where are the tall leaders who could put an end to this experiment in censorship?

The UPA government may have only been true to character when it keeled over at the first hint of political uproar against cartoons in NCERT textbooks. Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal hurried to withdraw the book with the newly controversial Ambedkar cartoon, without a minimal attempt at debate, and Pranab Mukherjee said that books with cartoons of leaders will be withdrawn and “appropriate action taken against those who indulge in such acts”. But what’s most disturbing is the unanimity with which all political leaders in Parliament agreed — no, competed — to show zero tolerance. The Ambedkar cartoon was just a first flimsy excuse, the entire tradition of political caricature may be under threat. Other anodyne cartoons in the NCERT political science curriculum featuring Jawaharlal Nehru, A.B. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh are said to have incurred the “strong displeasure” of a section of MPs. Lampooning leaders will now bring heavy consequences. Given that many MPs — from Arun Jaitley to Ram Vilas Paswan — have strong memories of the Emergency, and of defying it, it is indeed sad that they now seem so comfortable simply whiting out material from a textbook. We rely on the good sense of our legislators to uphold free expression, and this inability to see an old cartoon for what it is makes them more laughable than anything dreamt up by a satirist.

What explains this eruption of intolerance now? After all, India has travelled a long way in terms of textbook politics. After years of BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi spreading the saffron agenda, and Congress’s Arjun Singh retaliating with the same tools, sanity had finally set in with the National Curriculum Framework, and its determination to create textbooks with a wider debate. Instead of being authored by a single, all-knowing authority, the aim was to involve several scholars in the preparation of the texts and to encourage students to think critically for themselves. Introducing the Constitution through classic political cartoons is exactly in line with this approach.

Who could have predicted that today’s MPs, stung by the so-called lack of respect for the political class, would choose this absurd way to demand it? Our experiments with censorship have gone too far. It is now up to our tallest political leaders to put an end to this competitive intolerance, and speak up for an increasingly disused freedom.

The Indian Express, 15 May, 2012, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/zero-tolerance/949405/0


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