December 4, 2007 ☼ Public Policy

Do the editors of The Hindu read this blog?

The Hindu calls for a repeal of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, the favourite statute of the easily offended people of every faith.

Since what is insulting or offensive is judged on a religion’s own terms, orthodox and fundamentalist groups within every religion are allowed to arrogate to themselves the right to set the parameters of public discourse. The increasing use of Section 295A in the recent period has underlined the dangers of competitive intolerance curtailing the space available for freedom of expression. The section is clearly not in consonance with democratic and constitutional values and it is time it was removed from the statute book. [The Hindu, linkthanks Rohit]

Interestingly, the editorial is titled “Competitive intolerance”. Ah! Now where did you hear this term before?

A certain Dr Adarsh Bhargav, from GMC Hostel, Jammu, wrote a letter on competitive intolerance to the editor of Kashmir Times on 23 May 2007. It’s nice to see that this blog inspired him to write the letter. So inspired, in fact, that he just plagiarised the entire post, including a quote from Gaurav Sabnis.

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