Censorship & Silence in India

• Freedom’s just another word – Books – livemint.com

  “The three forces, God, Money, and the State, are using all the force at their disposal, to prevent ideas that challenge their belief, facts that undermine their wealth, and dissent that speaks truth to power, from flourishing. European law—which guarantees free speech but also guarantees the right of privacy—doesn’t help. Nor will most politicians. Only a handful of British parliamentarians have been firm in their support of overturning the libel laws (most would prefer tinkering with the legislation), just as no mainstream politician in India spoke up for Rushdie’s right to visit Jaipur, or speak to the festival through a video-link.

  That’s because India has another powerful force ranged against free speech: the vigilante, who will ransack a gallery, assault an artist, burn books, and attack theatres that show films he doesn’t want others to see. Most gods are happy with that; most people with money, therefore, wouldn’t take any risk; and most politicians jail the artist or the writer for disturbing the peace.”

  tags: free_speech freedom censorship salil_tripathi wp

• A remembered day – Columns – livemint.com

  All voices need to be heard. Silence some, you silence others; silence many, and you are left with only a few safe subjects, as the late Behram Contractor, or Busybee, noted about the emergency—cricket and mangoes.
  …At a time when prosecutors are considering charges against four authors and the organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival, after the four read from The Satanic Verses, it is important for the government to remember the kind of state it is—letting writers speak, or letting rioters silence others.
  This profound conversation needs to begin. Our being able to express ideas, challenge one another and question beliefs establishes our humanity. Our ability to settle differences by talking through things, by moving away from conversations we don’t like, by being sceptical about claims we disagree with, and by letting others have their say so that we can have ours creates that virtuous circle that restores our dignity. Do away with that, and we belong to the Land of Chup, or silence, as Rushdie points out in Haroun and the Sea of Stories: “All those arguments and debates, all that openness, had created powerful bonds of fellowship… the Chupwalas (those from the silent land) turned out to be a disunited rabble, suspicious and distrustful of one another. The Land of Gup (talk) is bathed in endless sunshine, while over in Chup, it is always the middle of the night.”
  That afternoon it felt like dawn. It was the beginning for all of us to speak what we think, read what we want, and shut the book if it is not interesting. The choice should be ours, not of the state, or men (almost always men) who claim to speak in the name of gods.

  tags: free_speech freedom censorship salil_tripathi friends wp

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Pay Attention to Your Employees’ Needs

• 8 Things Your Employees Need Most | Inc.com

  To truly care about your business, your employees need these eight things—and they need them from you:
  1. Freedom. Best practices can create excellence, but every task doesn’t deserve a best practice or a micro-managed approach.
  2. Targets. Goals are fun. Everyone—yes, even you—is at least a little competitive, if only with themselves. Targets create a sense of purpose and add a little meaning to even the most repetitive tasks.
  3. Mission. We all like to feel a part of something bigger. Striving to be worthy of words like “best” or “largest” or “fastest” or “highest quality” provides a sense of purpose.
  4. Expectations. While every job should include some degree of latitude, every job needs basic expectations regarding the way specific situations should be handled. Criticize an employee for expediting shipping today, even though last week that was the standard procedure if on-time delivery was in jeopardy, and you lose that employee.
  5. Input. Everyone wants to offer suggestions and ideas. Deny employees the opportunity to make suggestions, or shoot their ideas down without consideration, and you create robots.
  6. Connection. Employees don’t want to work for a paycheck; they want to work with and for people.
  7. Consistency. Most people can deal with a boss who is demanding and quick to criticize… as long as he or she treats every employee the same.
  8. Future. Every job should have the potential to lead to something more, either within or outside your company.
  Employees will care about your business when you care about them first.

  tags: management employees people_management business wp

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Black Farce of Jaipur

• Notes from a subversive bureaucrat: The Black Farce of Jaipur

  There are several voices of apology attempting to justify the conduct of the Government. The most favoured argument is to range the freedom available to a reckless writer belonging to the most privileged section of society, living in a foreign country against the sensitivities of a complex multi religious, multi cultural society. It is posed as a case of freedom of creative expression of one against the ‘sentiments’ of the masses. The second is the ‘limits to freedom’ argument. The argument is that no freedoms are absolute and romantic notions of freedom of speech borrowed from the liberal west are not applicable in our context. Restrictions have to be imposed in the interests of public order. The third argument is to make this an isolated case of Rushdie versus the Rest of India, where the focus shifts to Rushdie’s intemperance and his lack of contrition at his continued acts of blasphemy, his dubious merits as a writer and his penchant for attracting publicity to himself. The fourth argument is the one coming from the Indian version of secularism which while ostensibly treating all religions/faiths as equally deserving of deference believes that minority faiths, such as, Islam deserve a more aggressively visible demonstration of deference to protect its followers from a predatory majority.Posed in this manner it seems almost reasonable that in the case of the latest Rushdie episode the ‘larger’ interests of the nation prevailed against the interests of a minority of liberal intellectuals.
  These arguments are both perverse and fallacious. Freedom of speech and expression is not just one of the Rights available in a democracy, it is its very foundation. Everything else is dependent on it. It is fundamental to democracy in the most fundamentally defining way. Safeguarding the Right, conserving it and promoting it is the foremost responsibility of the State more important than anything else that it does. It is an enforceable Right and failure to protect it amounts to the complete abdication of its most primary responsibility. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to listen, to receive information, to demand information, to discuss and debate and is therefore universal, not just the right of one individual to express himself. Limits on it can only be imposed by law and not by executive action. The limits/restrictions have to be exceptional and justified in the rarest of circumstances.

  tags: salman_rushdie offence free_speech freedom JLF wp

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

An Author’s Dyslexia

• With Dyslexia, Words Failed Me and Then Saved Me – NYTimes.com

  I couldn’t tie my shoes, tell time or left from right, or recreate musical notes or words. I not only couldn’t read but often couldn’t hear or understand what was being said to me — by the time I’d processed the beginning of a sentence, the teacher was well on her way through a second or third. When I did have something to say I couldn’t find the words with which to say it, or if I could, forgot how to pronounce them.
  My situation then seemed hopeless; I had no idea what a learning disability was, or that it had nothing to do with intelligence…

  I didn’t know then that I was beginning a lifelong love affair with the first-person voice and that I would spend most of my life inventing characters to say all the things I wanted to say. I didn’t know that I was to become a poet, that in many ways the very thing that caused me so much confusion and frustration, my belabored relationship with words, had created in me a deep appreciation of language and its music, that the same mind that prevented me from reading had invented a new way of reading, a method that I now use to teach others how to overcome their own difficulties in order to write fiction and poetry…
  We knew so much less when I was a child. Then, all I wanted and needed, when I learned so painstakingly to read and then to write, was to find a way to be less alone. Which is, of course, what spoken and written language is really all about.

  tags: dyslexia reading writing learning wp

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

#flashreads for Free Speech – III

Another reminder that #flashreads will happen on 14th Feb. (You can see the #flashreads invite or read more about it here)

I’m posting one of my all-time favorite poems below.

सबसे ख़तरनाक / पाश

मेहनत की लूट सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होती
पुलिस की मार सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होती
ग़द्दारी और लोभ की मुट्ठी सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होती
बैठे-बिठाए पकड़े जाना बुरा तो है
सहमी-सी चुप में जकड़े जाना बुरा तो है
सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होता
कपट के शोर में सही होते हुए भी दब जाना बुरा तो है
जुगनुओं की लौ में पढ़ना
मुट्ठियां भींचकर बस वक्‍़त निकाल लेना बुरा तो है
सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होता

सबसे ख़तरनाक होता है मुर्दा शांति से भर जाना
तड़प का न होना
सब कुछ सहन कर जाना
घर से निकलना काम पर
और काम से लौटकर घर आना
सबसे ख़तरनाक होता है
हमारे सपनों का मर जाना
सबसे ख़तरनाक वो घड़ी होती है
आपकी कलाई पर चलती हुई भी जो
आपकी नज़र में रुकी होती है

सबसे ख़तरनाक वो आंख होती है
जिसकी नज़र दुनिया को मोहब्‍बत से चूमना भूल जाती है
और जो एक घटिया दोहराव के क्रम में खो जाती है
सबसे ख़तरनाक वो गीत होता है
जो मरसिए की तरह पढ़ा जाता है
आतंकित लोगों के दरवाज़ों पर
गुंडों की तरह अकड़ता है
सबसे ख़तरनाक वो चांद होता है
जो हर हत्‍याकांड के बाद
वीरान हुए आंगन में चढ़ता है
लेकिन आपकी आंखों में
मिर्चों की तरह नहीं पड़ता

सबसे ख़तरनाक वो दिशा होती है
जिसमें आत्‍मा का सूरज डूब जाए
और जिसकी मुर्दा धूप का कोई टुकड़ा
आपके जिस्‍म के पूरब में चुभ जाए

मेहनत की लूट सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होती
पुलिस की मार सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होती
ग़द्दारी और लोभ की मुट्ठी सबसे ख़तरनाक नहीं होती ।

#flashreads for Free Speech – II

A reminder that #flashreads will happen on 14th Feb. (You can see the #flashreads invite or read more about it here)

RULES FOR CITIZENS
A poem by Jeet Thayil

Let us govern those who undertake the telling of stories.
Censorship is good governance. Self-censorship is an attribute of the highest civilization.
If an actor speaks of God, he will be chastised. He will be refused an encore. If he repeats the speech, he will have his license revoked.
Let us govern those who undertake praise of the next world, since what they say is neither true nor useful to us.
Our best recourse is to be warlike.
We do not deny that storytellers are good at their job and give people what they like to hear. But the better they are, the less we wish our children and men to hear them.
We shall refute their attempts to be wise. We shall scoff when they repeat their vile allegation, Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.
We will do away with the dirges of famous men and leave them for women, and not the best among women either.
Let us abolish those fearful and terrific names, Cocytos, the River of Lamentations, Styx, the River of Fear, Ganga, the River of Death in Life, Lethe, the River of Bliss, Tigris, the River of Affliction.
We shall disallow travel and the mingling of songs.