30 Jul, 2014
Dealing with India’s right-wing cultural outrage machine – Hindustan Times
Today, small but growing and ever more vocal groups of cultural vigilantes in India are attacking everything from books and films to art and western attitudes if they deem these injurious to their faiths or if these don’t conform to their notion of purity and morality.
Books are getting pulped and authors are forced to rewrite; song lyrics change and films and art exhibition are being banned as these vigilantes use the country’s loosely worded hate-speech and blasphemy laws to muzzle cultural liberalism.
The controversy around the textbooks by New Delhi-based retired teacher Dina Nath Batra simply reinforces this steady waning of cultural liberalism in India, something that not only undermines the country’s expanding clout on the global stage but also its civilizational contribution as a foremost intellectual centre since the earliest history of mankind.
Read the rest: Dealing with India’s right-wing cultural outrage machine – Hindustan Times.
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