The Fundamental Right to Offend
The Right to Offend has to be made a fundamental right.
Right under the lion wax seal. You know the old fashioned one with the red wax. I am a huge fan of it. As a little girl I loved sitting in the dak ghar of my father’s sarkari daftar and watch the peon heat up the was on a tiny candle, and then stamp the three headed lion on it. It meant that the solemn sarkari work was done. Finito. How I longed to get my hand on the wax which Upendra the peon guarded so zealously.
Khair, chodo, humko kya lena dena?
Social Studies text books taught us that we, along with all the liberal world had been granted certain fundamental rights. They were listed right under the three headed lion.
1. Right to equality: Which includes equality before law, prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, gender or place of birth, and equality of opportunity in matters of employment, abolition of untouchability and abolition of titles.
2. Right to freedom: Which includes speech and expression, assembly, association or union or cooperatives, movement, residence, and right to practice any profession or occupation (some of these rights are subject to security of the State, friendly relations with foreign countries, public order, decency or morality), right to life and liberty, Right to education, protection in respect to conviction in offences and protection against arrest and detention in certain cases.
3. Right against exploitation: Which prohibits all forms of forced labour, child labour and traffic of human beings;
4. Right to freedom of religion: Which includes freedom of conscience and free profession, practice, and propagation of religion, freedom to manage religious affairs, freedom from certain taxes and freedom from religious instructions in certain educational institutes.
5. Cultural and Educational rights: Preserve the right of any section of citizens to conserve their culture, language or script, and right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
6. Right to constitutional remedies: Which is present for enforcement of Fundamental Rights.
7. Right to elementary education: Which implies that any child between the age of 6 to 14 should and can be educated.
8. Right to Information
Of course most of them are violated with impunity on a daily basis. Like the very first one. Are you shitting me? How can Mukesh the daily maid who washes the yard and cleans the utensils be my equal? Or the plumber? Though the attitude he displays when our kitchen sink is clogged makes me wonder how high up he considers himself to be vis a vis us in the pecking order.
Khair, chodo, humko kya lena dena?
The rest of the rights are equally laughable. I mean the rights are there, which means our Powers that Be have their hearts in the right place. Sadly they do not have the zeal to implement them.
Khair, chodo, humko kya lena dena?
Except Right to Freedom of Religion, which lately seems to follow the principle of jiski laathi uski bhains.
Khair, chodo, humko kya lena dena?
I would humbly request the Powers that Be to add another fundamental right to the list. It does not have to be implemented rigorously, mind you. It is just that when we violate it, it gives us a legal point to outrage upon.
A sub heading may be added under Right No. 2, i.e. the Right to freedom. Right under the sub heading which says Right to Freedom of Expression. The right I want to be included is the Right to Offend.
How else do we get people to know which right they want to violate, first by wanting to ban PK for poking fun at Gods and then MSG which has a godman making a joke of himself.
Of course spoil sports will start outraging under Right no. 4, that is Right to Freedom of Religion. But then Raam Jaane, God Almighty won’t mind it. He did not mind Jim Carey playing him. Wonder of wonders, he did not even mind Akshay playing him.
Agnostics won’t mind.
Atheists do not care about all this.
Maybe the rest don’t matter.
And if the Powers that Be don’t do it, I have just one thing to say …
Khair, chodo, humko kya lena dena?
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