Big Brother is Watching

Remember Orwell's 1984?

I felt something like it is happening in most modern socities. I always knew that our online lives are monitored by security agencies. I guess the IBs and RAWs are running scripts on the net to find out what we read, what we write and what we do on the net. I think expecting privacy in an online world is akin to wishing for the moon expecially in terror ridden society of ours.

But when things like this happen, you wonder if you freedom to express yourself is under threat.

Here the issue is two-fold:

1. Error in the data being given by a mobile operator
2. Undue (?) use of force by Maharashtra Police

The first issue is an easy one. Given the terror backdrop that our law enforcement set-up works in, it is natural for them to ask the service provider to provide inputs that they consider critical to their function. However, the callousness with which the Mobile Service Provider (MSP) handled this particular request is incredible. They need to understand the repercussions of any error they make here. In this case, Lakshman Kailash spent 43 days in the Yerwada jail at Pune for no fault of his.

The MSP has spent a considerable amount of PR money to keep this matter under wraps. I hope the courts award a judgment in the favor of Lakshman Kailash directing the MSP to compensate him. And I hope the compensation is large enough to ensure that the MSPs exercise utmost care in providing such information.

The second issue is the most concerning one. Having lived in Mumbai for 4 years, I know that the Shivsena/ MNS/ BJP/ Congress set-up simply loves Shivaji. He is a deity of sorts. However, they just cannot go after anyone who has something derogatory to say about Shivaji. This is a free country and people are entitled to have their views. Putting someone behind bars for more than fourty days for writing something about a maratha warlord is something I find hard to digest. People write so many derogatory things about Mahatma Gandhi but I doubt any of them is subjected to this treatment. Why?

The answer is simple: Vote-bank politics! Shivaji seems to be the top draw in marathi political scenario. The Shivaji mania is so visible in whatever Marathi Polticos do. However, the entire idea of Bangalore police co-operating with the Maharashtra police to catch the 'criminal' who wrote something 'abominable' about Shivaji seems laughable to me. Today it is Shivaji, tomorrow it might be Bal thakrey (Incidentally it did cause a furor of sorts sometime back) and who knows it might be considered bad to bad-mouth Arun Gawli and Chotta Rajan in times to come.

We are a democracy and we have the right to hold our opinions and convictions. They might not be what the establishment would have us believe. But it’s ok! As long as our expression is peaceful in nature.

But even as I write this, I have this lurking fear that my blog might be put on some kind of watch-list and tomorrow they might be knocking at my door to take me to a trip to Yerwada, Pune. So friends, Banloreans and Countrymen (and countrywomen as well), keep your eyes and ears open, I might need your help!

Nine Decades of Non-violence

Read this article, Nine Decades of Non-violence, in The Hindu (August 23, 2007). It is a piece about Baji Mohammed who is one of the last living freedom fighters of India. Sainath starts it off as a telling tale of our increasing religious intolerance but soon veers on to the journey of Satyagraha and our own freedom.

Some excerpts:

“We were sitting in the tent, they tore it down. We kept sitting,” the old freedom fighter told us. “They threw water on the ground and at us. They tried making the ground wet and difficult to sit on. We remained seated. Then when I went to drink some water and bent down near the tap, they smashed me on the head, fracturing my skull. I had to be rushed to hospital.”

Baji Mohammed is one of India’s last living freedom fighters — just one of four or five nationally recognised ones still alive in Orissa’s Koraput region. He is not talking about British brutality in 1942.(Though he has much to say on that, too.) He’s describing the vicious attack on him during the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, half a century later. “I was there as part of a 100-member peace team.” But the team was given no peace. The old Gandhian fighter, already in his mid-seventies, spent ten days in hospital and a month in a Varanasi ashram recovering from the injury to his head.