The "moral" brigade

In my last post, I wrote about how my perception about India and the events that happen there changed off late. My sole source of the news from India are those web-sites which are maintained by the leading news and publication channels, and my favorite being CNN-IBN's www.ibnlive.com.

Some of the news that caught my attention in the last couple of weeks were those about the "moral-brigade" in India, the people or groups that take it upon themselves to safe-guard the so-called moral values that the Indian culture has always stood for. I am sure all of you would have seen these incidents being discussed and debated by the media during the prime time.

The first one was the famous (or infamous, you can decide for yourself) Shilpa Shetty-Richard Gere kissing episode, that led to arrest warrants being issued against them and a lot of hullabaloo that followed. How can one blame Richard Gere, I can only envy him for what he did. Probably, it was just the envy that triggered strong reactions, which manifested itself in some other ways.

Then there was this incident where a group of people who had apparently shouldered the responsibility of the cleaning up Bangalore off its pub-culture went on a rampage in one of the city's pubs. I am not quite sure what they were trying to achieve. At least, the pubs gives the people of Bangalore an opportunity to get away from the bigger problems that dog the city, like bad roads, lack of power and water, corruption, traffic, and countless others.

There were other opportunities for the morality brigade to bask in the limelight of media attention. The long standing debate on whether to have sex-education in India or not came back into focus with a couple of incidents in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. And again, all the recommendations from prominent educationalists and other organizations that fight against AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases fell on deaf ears. The country that takes pride in Kamasutra, denies sex education for its young generation.

We had some laugh at the expense of these stories. We also had some more coffee corner talks about this. The most interesting conversation happened when one of my Chinese colleague asked me about the Shetty-Gere episode. The news had made it to CNN in US. And my friend was struggling to understand what went wrong - "so, he kissed her on her cheek three times, and someone filed a law suite against him, is that all that happened? So, is it illegal to kiss in India?" he asked. I was speechless.

Well, what is ailing India. What is wrong with our democracy.