So the morally upright Indian government has once again banned FTV, albeit for 10 days. But banned nonetheless. The information and broadcasting ministry, for its part, has been extremely thoughtful in announcing the reason to the public as well.
An official statement tells us that it was noticed by the ministry that "A programme on FTV channel was telecast on September 4, 2009 at 15:37:34 hours and 19:01:48 hours showing women with nude upper body which was offending against good taste and decency." The Indian government had banned FTV a few years back on the same grounds.
Well, if FTV goes off air it wouldn’t make a fig of a difference either to our GDP or the stock index. It wouldn’t make people in our rural areas any poorer than they already are. If you leave out some diehard fashion aficionados, FTV’s absence is not going to peeve anyone.
Yet, the move is disconcerting. It is so, given the backdrop of intolerance that has seen attacks against writers and artists, among others. It is one thing when there are self-styled protectors of Indian culture going on the rampage. It is quite another when the government itself decides to don the moral police garb. It is, needless to say, quite in its rights to do so. Various clauses of the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994 give the ministry the unfettered right act thus.
The custodians of Indian morality, by the way, had gone on to assert, "The visuals were found to be obscene, denigrating women and were not suitable for children and unrestricted public exhibition."
Now, obscenity is an over-beaten string that everyone harps on. You define, redefine obscenity depending on your sensibilities and conveniences. You cannot ask for a ban on something every time something offends your sensibilities. For me, for instance, anything even remotely religious offends my sensibilities. That, of course, cannot mean that I clamour for a legislation or implementation of a law that will clamp down on the freedom of others to say as they please.
If you perceive something as obscene, just don’t see or watch it. See no evil, OK? And there are many ways of dissuading children from doing so as well. Or is it that today we have too many parents who have been brought up on preposterous parenting books and equally pontificating websites? You have any idea?
Never mind. Let’s, instead, re-read the ministry’s statement. Denigrating women, it says, does it? And what does this sacrosanct ministry have to say about how certain MPs behaved in Parliament over the Women’s Reservation Bill? They didn’t denigrate women, did they? And the news channels which telecast these didn’t either by association too, right? If you ask me, children too ought not to have been watching these lawmakers on television, no?
And, maybe, you ought not to be reading this as well. You know how the government thinks.
