The Congress’s censorship goes on. After objecting to certain parts of Prakash Jha’s movie Rajneeti, the party is now up in arms against Madrid-based writer Javier Moro’s novel based on its president Sonia Gandhi’s life.
The Spanish book is called El Sari Rojo (The Red Sari, subtitled When Life is the Price of Power), a reference to the red sari Sonia wore on her wedding day, “one that Nehru wove while he was in jail”. First published in October 2008, the book has already been translated into Italian, French and Dutch, and an English translation by Peter Hearn is ready for publication.
In an email, Moro, 55, said that Sonia’s lawyers, including Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi, “have just written to my Italian and Spanish publishers to demand the withdrawal of the book from the stores. Nobody understands very well why, but that’s what they are up to”.
Moro thinks that the Congress leaders “did not like the recreation of her life in Italy as told in my book”. More:
Pakistan has banned Facebook and YouTube. Ahmad Rafay Alam in The News, Pakistan:
There’s a new joke doing the rounds: What’s the difference between Facebook and the Lashkar-e-Taiba? Answer: Facebook is banned in Pakistan.
The Lahore High Court’s un-technical appreciation of social networking sites, the mechanics of the Internet and its order to enforce a ban on Facebook are matched only by ludicrousness of the petition seeking the ban and the offensive prank that started this entire episode.
Here’s another joke doing the rounds: Facebook has nothing to worry about. It can always re-appear under another name (Jamaat-ul-Facebook, anyone?). More:
Google chief suspects ulterior motive in Pakistan: in Dawn
Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta and Dr. Matthew Bernstein, Emory Professor of Film Studies, discuss Mehta’s friendship with Salman Rushdie, her beautiful Elements film trilogy, issues of censorship in India and Mehta’s forthcoming adaptation of Rushdie’s novel “Midnight’s Children.” Emory University
In what campaigners claimed was a “settling of scores”, around half-a-dozen websites has been blocked and the offices of one of them sealed. A foreign journalist who had been ordered from the country after asking a question about the president’s brother was subsequently told she could stay after her case received international attention.
“Now that the president has been re-elected, there appears to be a settling of scores with critics of the government,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Just days after the election, some officials seem to be on a campaign to abuse their power.” More:
A 2008 image of an online cartoon of Savita Bhabhi.
What does Savita Bhabhi—the sari-clad Internet porn star—have to do with Google’s threat to leave China?
For Indian companies, potentially a lot.
Savita, of course, is the voluptuous cartoon character who looks like a cross between reality television star Rakhi Sawant and Veronica Lodge of the Archie Comic book series. There’s nothing subtle about Savita—although she certainly tries.
“I’m going to take a shower! You should also change out of those wet clothes,” she greeted a neighbor in a November episode, for example. As expected, the two end up together in the shower. The illustrations are explicit, the dialogue laughably simple: “Oh that feels so…” or “Oh I’m going to…”
In June, the Indian government banned her. Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the ministry of communications and technology, says the decision was driven by a complaint received from a women’s group in Maharashtra. He did not know which one. More:
Click here to read India’s tech minister’s take on Google, China
Recently, the Indian Government blocked the much loved Savita Bhabi website created by the pseudonymous Deshmukh, Dexter and Mad. The Savita Bhabi (Savita sister-in-law) site carries a daily cartoon strip about the “Sexual Adventures of the Hot Indian Bhabi” who is described as a “regular Indian woman who just can’t get enough sex”. In June, the Government of India instructed internet service providers to block the site under Section 67 of the Information Technology Act which prohibits the publication and transmission of “any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest” or whose effect could “corrupt and deprave” and certain amended provisions that were included after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks. These provisions allow for the censoring of material deemed threatening to the “the sovereignty or integrity of India, defence and security of the state”.
In an age of proliferating hardcore cyberporn, why did the government target a cartoon strip as a ‘moral and national threat’? N.Vijayaditya, the Controller of Certifying Authorities – an agency entrusted under the IT Act to block websites – stated that they had acted on “several complaints” made against the site. The demise (not really, since you can access the site through proxy servers) of India’s best loved bhabi was mourned by thousands of online admirers. Headlines reported the “Assassination of Savita Bhabi” and the “Death of India’s First Porn Star”. A Bombay-based rock band dedicated a special song to Savita Bhabi, while blogs and networking sites launched ‘Save Savita Bhabi’ campaigns. On the other hand, Savita Bhabi’s detractors allege that the site denigrated Indian women, insulted ‘Indian family values’ and threatened ‘Indian culture’. Those familiar with censorship debates in India will know that over the last two decades these allegations have recurred with predictable regularity around sexual speech and more particularly around transgressive images of women’s bodies and sexualities. So what precisely is transgressive about Savita Bhabi? More:
A young man writes a love letter to his fiancé, and adds a line or two about the government of his country. He posts the letter, but soon after dispatching he realises that if it is opened in the censor office, he is going to suffer because of the casual negative remark he made. In order to avoid such consequences, he decides to apply for a job in the censor department, so he can try to get hold of his letter. To his surprise, he does indeed get a position, and thus starts learning his new tasks. Several months later, during the course of normal post-checking, he finally comes across his letter. He opens it and reads the content. But instead of hiding it or throwing it away, he writes a note that the sender of the letter has committed a crime against the state and must be punished.
This short story by Luisa Valenzuela, the Argentine author, illustrates how the system of censorship seeps into the very souls of those it affects. The ultimate grip and success of censorship occurs when it becomes part of one’s internal system; and, like termites, it corrodes the insides, till one day it destroys the body it has occupied. Subsequently, censorship becomes the normal, natural state, such that one is no longer aware of its presence, as one’s thoughts, words, art and acts are perpetually filtered through a new sense of carefulness.
Pakistani society has faced multiple forms of censorship during its short period as a nation-state. In fact, censorship has been a constant characteristic and tool of successive Pakistani regimes. But during the second last military rule, from 1977 to 1988, this became a particularly prominent presence. The regime of that time, headed by Zia ul-Haq, was known for monopolising religion and manipulating ethics in order to justify its existence. As such, censorship, the control over information and knowledge, was considered an essential weapon in order to maintain order and keep power. More:
Does the smiling, toy-like chocolate man in the Axe deo ad offend you? I thought he’s kind of cute. The ad had all the old Axe commericial ingredients: reasonably dorky man sprays Axe deo and the girls go crazy.
In this one for its ‘Dark Temptation’, a man sprays deo and turns into a chocolate animation. He steps out into the street, and the most gorgeous women flock to get a bite out of him. Sexy? Sure. Fun? Absolutely.
But the new Axe ad (prepared by Lowe Argentina) has riled babus at the ministry of Information and Broadcasting who have deemed it ‘indecent, vulgar and repulsive’. It has asked the Indian Broadcasting Foundation to withdraw the ad, giving it an August 25 deadline.
Incidentally, Dark Temptation (a product of Hindustan Unilever) has already been launched in Europe and Argentina. India was the first Asian market where the chocolate-fragrance deo was introduced. The company plans to take it to other Asian countries by the end of the year.
The Dark Temptation ad could easily have gone over the edge. But the ad uses a cute, toy-like figure rather than some hunk who is covered in chocolate, which gives it an overall fun feel. In India, chocolate is associated with celebration rather than as an aphrodisiac.
Axe ads in the past, including one starring Ben Affleck for Axe Clicker, have had successful runs, and Axe is supposed to be the brand leader in men’s deoderants with a nearly 24 per cent market share.
You won’t get to see the axed ad on TV anymore. But you can see the original version for the Argentina market on YouTube:
After breathing fire and brimstone against smoking on screen — he wants an official government of India ban on actors lighting up in movies — India’s health minister Anubami Ramadoss spoke out on April 30 against movies that show actors drinking alcohol. Ramadoss lashed out at actors for scenes that showed them drowning their sorrows in alcohol. “Actors drinking on screen will encourage youngsters to take up the habit,” he said.
Bollywood’s badshah, Amitabh Bachchan is not amused. A democracy must treat its citizens as ‘autonomous individuals capable of rational judgement’ writes Bachchan in an open letter to Ramadoss in his blog on May 4. Quit preaching censorship and spend on public awareness campaigns on alcohol abuse, he tells the minister.
I appreciate your concern for the general health of our nation, particularly so as this is your professional remit as minister. Indeed, I admire and encourage your speaking out against addictive and dangerous substances that cause early mortality and violence by their abuse.
However, these addictive substances are structural aspects of our economy and it is in this manner where government action would be most effective: penalties for their production and sale would convince an electorate of the serious intentions of your administration. Due to the intimate relationship between a healthy and dynamic democracy and education, punitive financial measure MUST be allied to better public health campaigns that do not merely pronounce upon behaviours, but actually inform and persuade.
The hum of prayer reverberates through this settlement of 22,000, across its monasteries and the palace. Some 250km west of Bangalore, Bylakuppe holds the distinction of being the biggest Tibetan settlement outside Tibet, bigger even than Dharamsala.
But confusion is beginning to creep into this peaceful town that lies amid fields of maize, ginger and chillies, as Tibetan youth find themselves battling over how to battle.
The youth have been divided over their future course of action by a despairing threat from the Dalai Lama to resign if violence in Tibet continued or escalated. On Tuesday, the Dalai Lama called Tibetan violence “suicidal” and expressed his reservations about batches of protest marches from Dharamsala to Lhasa. “Don’t commit violence, it is not good,” he said at a news conference. “Violence is against human nature, violence is almost suicide. Even if 1,000 Tibetans sacrifice their lives, it will not help.”
But, while one small segment seeks to accede to the Dalai Lama’s plea, a larger section still calls for meeting fire with fire.
[Photo: Tibetans hold candles during a prayer march in Bylakuppe, India]
As news reverberated around the world that bloody disturbances had erupted in Tibet, a star journalist for a leading Chinese newsmagazine was asked if he had any good sources in the remote mountain region. “Why?” he asked, unaware that anything was going on.
The reporter’s reaction was not unusual. When rioting by outraged Tibetans shook Lhasa last Friday, the Communist Party’s censorship apparatus tamped down news of the rampage, leaving most of China’s 1.3 billion people in the dark. Government-controlled television news ignored the crisis for the first few days, and Chinese newspapers were restricted to skeleton dispatches from the official New China News Agency.
Lack of economic opportunity fueled the riots in Tibet, says Abrahm Lustgarten, author of the upcoming “China’s Great Train: Beijing’s Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet,” in The Washington Post:
On a winter night not long ago, I walked through the glowing doorway of Lhasa’s newest nightclub, Babila, for an interview with its owner, a Chinese entrepreneur. Disco balls spun from the ceiling. Fiber-optic strands of plastic beads drizzled down like rain to a long, sleek stainless steel bar. On the stage, dancers in stiletto heels and lingerie gyrated to thumping music.
“Tibetan culture is so deeply rooted here,” the owner told me. “I don’t think it will be diluted — it’s important for business.” Yet looking around, I saw no Tibetan employees, and Tibetans represented only a smattering of customers. The bar served mostly Chinese businessmen and army officers, whose tabs could run as high as $2,000, several times the per capita income in Tibet.
The Congress’s censorship goes on. After objecting to certain parts of Prakash Jha’s movie Rajneeti, the party is now up in arms against Madrid-based writer Javier Moro’s novel based on its president Sonia Gandhi’s life.
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