Let us be thankful to Padmavati. As a Bollywood film finds its release date deferred, and faces death threats, decapitation and dismemberment, one thing is clear.
Seventy years after Independence, the time has come for a Ministry of Offence or MOO. We could do it on the lines of the AYUSH ministry. That was established to ensure the development and propagation of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy. Following that same model, MOO will develop and propagate the offence industry — a flourishing cottage industry that shows great promise of exponential growth.
For too long we have pretended that taking offence is a fringe activity. We had thought that it is all about two-bit players who want their 15 minutes of fame. Until they issued bloodthirsty threats in front of television cameras, few had heard about the Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Yuva Mahasabha. Or the Moulana Azad Lok Kalyan Sansthan which were upset by four authors reading from The Satanic Verses at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Few knew about the Sri Ram Sene until they got so offended by women going to pubs, they hauled a few out by their hair.
Rent a riot
The Sene became national, even international news. Their founder Pramod Muthalik had 27 cases pending against him before the State government dared to act. An investigative report by Tehelka revealed Muthalik had a flourishing “rent a riot” business where you could avail of his incendiary services for a fee. As an entrepreneur who built such an impressive grassroots organisation from scratch, Muthalik should immediately be made a business advisor to MOO. Facebook and WhatsApp can be technical partners since the offence industry needs social media as an organising tool.
It was always clear from the very beginning that taking offence is a fundamental right in India, one that is exercised with great gusto. While in the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution was about freedom of speech and expression, in India the First Amendment was about curbing it “in the interests of security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency and morality or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.” Since then we’ve had an Offence Olympics of sorts or, as writer Salil Tripathi dubbed it, “competitive intolerance”.
We have many trophies in the sport — Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses , M.F. Husain’s Saraswati, Deepa Mehta’s Fire , Taslima Nasrin’s memoirs, Perumal Murugan’s Mathorubhagan , A.K. Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayanas , Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey , Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam , the Da Vinci Code, Valentine’s Day, African students... to name just a handful. These are A-list names, thank you very much.
A ministry, an agenda
Now the offence industry needs the government to actively promote it instead of passively saying: “We must respect law and order, of course, but people have a right to be offended.” The government must champion this right boldly without citing limp law and order excuses. It could regularise the process which seems a little haphazard currently. For example, the National Commission of Women seems more offended by a weak bilingual pun about the newly-minted Miss World, Manushi Chhillar, than threats to cut off Deepika (Padmavati) Padukone’s nose.
Once we set up a ministry of MOO, we can create portfolios within it to identify and target promising growth areas — beef consumption, cow transportation, inter-religious marriages, loudspeakers in temples and mosques, the national anthem, Pakistani actors. All of these have yielded rich electoral dividends. Offence-taking is obviously more commercially lucrative than many of our struggling traditional crafts. This is by no means a sick industry. Look at the numbers. The bounty on Deepika Padukone and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s head has been raised from ₹5 crore to ₹10 crore.
India recently jumped up 30 notches in the World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index. That makes this the perfect moment to set up MOO since we are a world leader in ease of taking offence. It could become the crown jewel of the Make in India campaign. We could even have a Offence Day just like World Yoga Day where we try to set a world record in taking offence.
But what is most heartening is that in a country that’s often communally polarised in whataboutery, this is one issue that brings everyone together.
The Rajasthan chapter of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind has joined their Rajput brothers-in-arms to call for a ban on Padmavati .
The JEIH has said their demand was based on the same logic as the demand for a ban on Rushdie or Nasrin — “hurting of sentiments.”
Just imagine the potential. An all-faith conference on the Art of Taking Offence led perhaps by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar after he’s done mediating on Ayodhya. Taking offence could be where we finally find unity in diversity.
The author’s first novel is Don’t Let Him Know . He should be working on his second instead of watching television soap operas.
