FAITH AND FREEDOM

The recent spate of violence across the globe in the name of blasphemy by a short film on You Tube allegedly castigating prophet Mohammad brings to fore both- the abuse of freedom in the name of creative art as well as the growing intolerance to any real or imaginary  deviation from one’s faith. It is a replay of past instances of similar outrage as in Salman rushdie’s  Satanic verses or Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja or MF Hussain’s portrayal of Hindu godess on canvas.  Only, this time the violence is more intense ,widespread and well-orchestrated by its leading protagonists. 

The primary cause for such mass outrage is the fundamental conflict between faith and freedom. Faith is an antithesis to freedom. Faith preclude an option to reject, and there by is inconsistent with the idea of freedom. Interestingly, both are human conceptual choices and  essentially remains as means to define or guide our lives.  Practioners  of religions,  cults, ideologies(like communism, socialism)and dictatorship need faith as the  medium to sustain, while those of science(rationality), creative art and literature ,capitalism and democracy need freedom as a pre requisite for any meaningful involvement. The degree of conflict, contrast and incompatibility between the two underscores the kind of the intolerant times  we live in today.

The aggrieved stature of the so called 'offended" side is often quite amusing, as it is borne out of feelings, emotions, imaginations, sentiments-in short, from that faculty of our mind on which we have least control. To that extent, most often they are bogus in nature and can be manipulated , depending on the ‘gullibility quotient’ of the persons who claims to have been offended. Nevertheless, the right to feel offended is as sacred as the right to freedom, as long as the sense of being offended are expressed in non-violent and non-coercive way. The moment they find their expression through threats and violence, the aggrieved looses his grounds for redress. And when the anger or ire is directed against a country from where the alleged blasphemy emanated, it assumes a criminal proportion and deserves to be accordingly dealt with.

The role of the state as an arbiter dispensing reliefs to the offended side is both motivated                        and  partisan . More so, if the claim is “hurt sentiments” based on their misplaced interpretation of their faiths or religious tenets. The hidden agendas behind espousing the hurt feelings and enflaming it further by coercive posturing  by leaders of the faiths are all too obvious, but  they win the day's argument due to the impotency of a divided, polluted polity. Conceptually, freedom is non-negotiable for rational existence, and most certainly that which pertains to human expression, being the most fundamental attribute of a rational society. Between pure prose and pure abuse lies few letters or words or expressions arranged in some order-Beauty or the evil lies in the eyes of the beholder. Salman Rushdie post Satanic verses earned a life-long fatwa from the fanatics of the faith even as he reached stellar heights in literary circles. Taslima  was chased out of her country and ostracised by followers of the faith for her audacious  ‘lajja’ even though she had a huge fan following .But in  the real world freedom has a self-limiting value . As they say, one man’s freedom ends where another man’s nose begins. The onus of identifying and honouring this thin boundary lies on the  practioners of freedom precisely to prevent it from being abused. The You-Tube short film  produced by some non-descriptive artists  based in USA is reflective more of the depraved aesthetics of its producers than  a creative product of expression. But in effect, the very sanctity of ‘freedom’  entrusted in those who produced this piece of garbage got abused. Freedom loses its essence when stretched beyond a point of relevance, just as blind faith erodes our very thinking faculty and sense of reality. In order to maintain the necessary social equilibrium ,it is imperative to safeguard the delicate balance that we have discovered in this continuous conflict between faith and freedom.

KKR