Category — Mumbai

More censorship. We just can’t seem to get enough of it these days, it seems!

After having come through blog blockade, RTI Act dilution, art gag, the next medium to bear the brunt of censorship is television.

Cable operators, in at least Mumbai, have arbitrarily pulled all private channels off air without any prior notice! As of now as far as I know, only DD National, DD Sahyadri, DD Bharati and Janmat are on air. All other channels have been blocked out.
The following message is being scrolled on a black background on some of the channels.

IN TERMS OF BOMBAY HIGH COURT ORDER 21st DECEMBER 2005 CERTAIN CHANNELS WHICH ARE ALLEGEDLY CARRYING ADULT CONTENT WHICH ARE NOT TO BE SHOWN INCABLENET HAS SOUGHT CLARIFICATIONS FROM THE COURT WHICH IS PENDING. TILL THEN THESE CHANNELS ARE NOT SHOWN. INCONVENIENCE GIVEN IS REGRETTED. [sic]

What?!! Adult content on cartoon channels, news channels, Discovery, National Geographic, sports channels?!!

Basically, any attempt to deny me the right to gain information from any of these channels for viewing which I am paying money, is a gross suppression of my freedoms. I don’t care who is at fault here… the cable operators, the High Court or the government. This is ridiculous… utterly, pathetically ridiculous!!

Just a few days ago, I was complaining to a friend how the IB Ministry had forced music channels to run scrolling messages that made the music channels admit that they were showing ‘objectionable’ content and they would not do so in the future. Kinda reminded me of school where teachers used to ask troublemakers in the class to write things like “I will not talk in the class” a 100 times in their notebooks!

Incidentally, I wonder why the cable operators are still carrying the government-owned DD channels on air?!

Update: You can follow this story at the BloggersCollective and India Uncut.

Update 2: It is now fairly clear that the cable blackout is a form of protest by the Mumbai MSOs (Multi-system Operators) through the local cable operators, against the police action against them, in the form of raids. The Bombay High Court order dated 21st Dec 2005 had prohibited the cable operators and service providers from showing any material unsuitable for unrestricted public viewing.

As per the order, which takes immediate effect, cable operators will have to block any film on any channel certified as ‘A’ or for a particular class or profession by the Central Board of Film Certification. In effect, only films with a ?U? (unrestricted viewing) certificate can be beamed into people’s homes.

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When I woke up this morning, to reports of the saline sea-water turning sweet at Mahim, just behind the dargah of Haji Makhdum Baba and just a few hundred metres from the Bandra influent-effluent pumping station, the first thought in my mind was that the people who were flocking to the sea-shore to partake the ‘miraculous’ water might as well dip a glass in the commode at their homes and gulp down that water!

That way they would get water thats closer in taste and quality to the Mahim sea-water without leaving their homes and without getting sand in their shoes and on their clothes!

People dump colas because of miniscule pesticide quantities and yet gulp down sea-water that looks, smells and tastes like shit… literally!!… not to mention chemicals and sewage!! It happens only in India! ;)

True to its style, Maharashtra government is trying to address issues it has no business interfering in! Vilasrao Deshmukh has apparently decided to frame a code of conduct and set restrictions on the height of the dahi handis. This was after a few hundred injuries, including broken bones, were reported in Mumbai hospitals during dahi handi celebrations.

“There is a need to have a height restriction for the dahi handis,” Deshmukh said at a media briefing after a meeting with other Cabinet members.

“There is absolutely no restriction at all right now,” he admitted, adding: “The competition is intense as festival organisers are increasing the height of dahi handis and matching it with larger cash prizes.”

The state government would convene a meeting with all the Govinda groups of the city to formulate a code of conduct before next year’s festival, Deshmukh said on Wednesday.
[Source: ToI ]

They actually had a cabinet meeting about this. Is this an issue that warrants a cabinet meeting? Is this an issue that warrants state intervention at all?!

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It was supposed to be an exhibit depicting the moral decline in today’s society. And as it turned out, it became the target of the moral police who swooped down on it, citing pretty much the same reason for their action as the topic of the exhibit!

Apparently, the police acted on a complaint by a Mumbai psychologist, Pushpa Vitula who was apparently outraged by the exhibit imaginatively titled, “Tits, clits n Elephant dicks” and had this to say,

“I agree that this may be art. But there is art that comes from heaven, and then there is art that comes from hell. It’s obscene to even utter the title of the exhibition”

Err… if this is what an educated person (I am assuming she really is a psychologist) thinks like, there is something seriously lacking in the education we receive! Education, they say, opens the mind, broadens one’s horizons and all that jazz. Surely they who say this are terribly wrong!

If this Pushpa Vitula was outraged by even the title of the exhibition, why on earth did she make the conscious choice to enter a private gallery and view the exhibit? Even then, she could’ve conveyed her distress to the artists. Apparently, the artist was apparently not averse to putting up a signboard, restricting the entry to above-18s. But according to the artist, the lady wasn’t too interested in this.

If everyone thought like this lady, most of our classical art (from the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho to Michaelangelo’s David) would have to be covered by a black cloth to prevent the corruption of ‘gullible’ minds!

In a 1954 case involving artist, Akbar Padamsee, the courts had passed a law which stated that an artist’s work cannot be deemed obscene or pornographic if it was exhibited within the walls of a gallery. The police who acted on Pushpa Vitula’s complaint should have known this. Now they face a possible contempt of court lawsuit. Moreover, even if we discount the 1954 ruling, Jehangir Art Gallery is a private property and the state (acting through the police) has no business interfering with anything that happens within the confines of a private property. A private space with free entry/access to public surely does not become a public place. By going against this principle, we will set a dangerous precedent. Tomorrow, we may get a case where a person catching a glimpse, through a window, of a couple having sex inside their own bedroom, may complain that his/her modesty has been outraged by seeing the act of copulation!!

Having said that, I think artists and the gallery should be responsible for putting up a signboard clearly informing about the mature content of the exhibit and barring entry to minors. It did not happen in this case and this calls for a slap on the wrists of the gallery and the artists in question. Going on a tangent, I would not even think it beyond the realms of possibility that the artists, in this case, may have stage-managed the controversy to extract maximum publicity for an exhibit that would’ve gone unnoticed had it not been for the complaint by Pushpa Vitula.

However, the spirit of censorship is alive and kicking in India. Rights defined within the constitution are not sacrosanct if one goes by the ‘mai-baap sarkar‘ attitude shown by the state on numerous occasions in trying to decide what’s right or wrong for the people.