The Govt of Maharashtra, the state in India i live in, has decided to ban bar dancing. The decision has been taken in light to "moral corruption of youth", general good of the society and protecting womanhood. RR Patil, the hon'ble Deputy CM has decide to launch a crusade against such immoral customs and now would like to turn Mumbai into Shanghai.
We live in times when the state decides for us what we can watch, engage in, work in, think about. All in the name of "greater good". Where will this paternalizing attitude of the state lead too. Today most people talk about how states like Singapore, work better because of their "benign dictatorships". People love dictators not because they are better but because they carry power. Everybody wants to be a dictator, few want to live under one. We are no different from the state we live in. We dont protest when one of the state's employee rapes a 17 year old girl. We dont raise a finger when the livelihood of thousands of women is taken away to avoid moral corruption of the youth. Because we secretly do the same with others, with our family, with subordinates and with people who dont think, behave or act like us.
In short we dont like people who are different, think different and act different. We want everyone to the same,to be a mould of the one faceless, nameless,thoughtless commune called the "greater good".
Hail Utilititarianopia!
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5 comments:
Hi
Are you stretching the logic a little bit? Placing restrictions at boundaries doesn't automatically impose what people do inside the space.
I suspect that as a man aliashesh's 'space' is quite large. Would he question your logic if he lived in the ironmaiden that women are often forced to inhabit? Would he even be allowed to question your logic?
I am not stretchin the logic. The question is not whether people have enough space in the boundaries but who sets the boundries and for whom and how. To me these questions are more important.
Wives of 9 men arrested for attending an illegal dance bar in Mumbai have asked the Police not to release these men, as they deserve to do time behind bars, for neglecting their family.
Take Thia's point. I was referring to the simplistic equating of restrictions with repression. Thia is referring to repression, which is opposed from time to time by isolated women at great cost to personal well-being. I am not denying that repression exists. Dictators by definition never allow protests, yet people protest and bring down the dictators.
Manmeet, are you going to deny validity to a unanimous resolution of the legislature? It has been challenged in the courts. What other process do you have in mind?
Hi APB
Dance bars were not visited by only married men only.Its a typical case of throwing the baby with the bath water.Banning is never a solution. Its always good politics though.We have examples like in Haryana where there was a Govt elected on the basis of promise to women that drinking would be banned. And when men started procuring alcohol illegally and that too at a greater cost then women requested the very ban to be lifted as men had started wasting more money on alochol.
Our politics survives on that kind of appeasement. The legislature passed in the parliament had no popular mass base in the state. Nobody was agitating against the bar dancers except the politicians,who themselves visited quite a few.
The initial proposal was to allow dancing in hotels and for "tourism" purposes. But amid protest Govt backtracked and even banned that.
We will have many such issues in future. Because we believe in state deciding for us what is "right" and what is "wrong" for us in our personal choices also. One perfect example is banning oof smoking in movies. As if banning of smoking in movies would lead to less people smoking in real life.In that way we should also ban violence and uncouth language. Then our movies will be watched only by the censor board.
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