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Why are we so busy these days, that includes the media, with
non-issues like a peck on the cheek of a celebrity? Yes, the
Richard Gere, Shilpa Shetty episode has been flogged to death
on print and electronic media, but it needs to be examined
from another angle. While competing to catch the eyeballs
of the ever-restless reader/audience with generous splashes
of glam-sham, not to forget people with a hobby of filing
frivolous cases in the court hogging the limelight, the main
area of concern was swept under the carpet of oblivion. It
was, after all, a performance (where Gere innocently tried
to enact a scene from his and Jennifer Lopez starrer Shall
We Dance?) at a meet to disseminate information on safe sex
to truck drivers. With an estimated 5.7 million HIV infected
people in the country, India ranks second in the world next
to South Africa in the AIDS map. Sex workers are generally
considered a high-risk group for contacting the disease. Truck
drivers on the country's National Highways are often on the
road for weeks, away from home and hearth and many of them
patronise sex workers who operate around the highways. So
educating them on the risk of unprotected sex is important.
But lo, as Shilpa Big Brother Shetty and Pretty Woman hero
Richard Gere hogged the unintentional limelight, the endless
debates on the "the kiss" continued, opinion polls
in the media seemed like an pre-election straw poll, but there
was hardly any report on truck drivers vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS.
It was as if they were incidental to the whole circus.
Besides, when have we become so paranoid about a peck on
the cheek? Even when Shabana Azmi, a known activist besides
being first-rate actress, gave a peck- a 'freedom kiss'- on
octogenarian and freedom fighter Nelson Mandela's cheek in
South Africa, there was a great hullabaloo. Apparently, the
moralists who have taken the mantle of protecting the great
Indian culture, it was insult. For crying out loud!
Ditto for sex education. In a country when even now Helplines
meant for young people to answer questions on sexual misconceptions
are flooded with questions like, 'can kissing leads to pregnancy?'
and girls complain 'nobody talks to us about sex in the family'
the attempt to introduce sex education in higher classes in
schools has taken a beating in states like Maharashtra, for
being 'obscene'. Incidentally, the state has one of the highest
cases of HIV/AIDS in the country.
Moral policing has now worryingly spread its tentacles to
all fields. The latest being the suspension of Shivaji Panikkar,
dean of Sayajirao University in Vadodara because he did not
close down an exhibition of a post graduate student at the
instruction of the university authorities. The artist, Chandra
Mohan, who happens to be the son of a poor carpenter family
down south, has been arrested. His fault? He purportedly hurt
the religious sentiments of the people by projecting deities
in an obscene manner. Even a Christian group joined the vandals
in the campus for hurting them by putting Jesus in an "obscene
posture." Meanwhile, M.F. Husain has been living in self-imposed
exile almost for a year now because society's so called guardians
have accused him of moral turpitude. At this rate we will
soon have to cover all the temple carving at Khajuraho and
Konark, ban all those love songs in our ancient scriptures
and paintings. Or perhaps these are uncomfortable areas the
rising intolerant voice wants to avoid. Much easier to target
those around.
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