LACK OF TOLERANCE VS FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Humbly speaking, I am the owner of Writer Sujatha Orkut Community with a strength of nearly 2000 members. Recently, the members come up with a complaint that the community forum is being misused to abuse a particular "community".

Aarthi Dhanraj, a member wrote "...immatured people who cant even understand sujatha sir's wits n simple jokes are missusing this community 4 scolding a particular caste in a v.aggressive n indecent way that it hurt the feeling of many like me.." Few criticized to the level that the owner is "silently enjoying the racist thoughts" expressed in such topics.

In reply, I have expressed following:

"Being NOT only as the moderator of this community but as a great SUJATHA FANATIC, I can tell only this: As a democracy, if you have right to dignify/ promote Sujatha, then others have every right to criticize/ oppose the same.

I am agreeing that filthy comments should be avoided, but again it is depending on the person's conscience who is conveying it and the person's maturity who is grasping it. If you really have points to tackle, why are you worrying about the false comments? Instead just express yours.So let them expose what they know and I request you people either to learn the TRUTH from them or teach them the TRUTH (whichever applicable).

The Constitution of India contains the right to freedom, given in articles 19, 20, 21 and 22, with the view of guaranteeing individual rights, first of which is "Freedom of speech and expression", that enable an individual to participate in public activities. I also agree that reasonable restrictions can be imposed in the interest of public order, security of State, decency or morality.

But in my view/ to my knowledge, I didn't see any such exceptions mentioned above and I have deleted few. I want this community to be open to all discussions related to Sujatha either good or bad."

After this reply, I have deleted a few topics from the forum as they seem irrelevant to Writer Sujatha's Community [due to LACK OF TOLERANCE]. In the mean time, I have started another Community for FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION and sent the following invite to all my 300+ orkut friends:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."- George Orwell. Are we able to utter words to pople what they hate to hear in this biggest democracy? If your answer is "NO", you are welcome to this community."

But (un)fortunately, only 2 of them have answer as "NO". The war between LACK OF TOLERANCE & FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION will never end in an independant democracy like India.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good to hear that you are writing a blog! But In my humble opinion I think freedom of expression is a right by birth for every human in this world (even for every living being ), So no need to highlight about our constitutional articles for

supporting that point. Most people know the fact that Lack of tolerance and freedom of expression, coexists in this world. Someone who doesn't know about sujatha, might have expressed his/her opinion offensively utilising F.O.E , At

the same time, some people who got hurt cos of that person's act, expressed their emotional comments against that person utilising F.O.E and on you as well, for not taking any prior moderative actions to remove such comments for a

long a time and leaving there as it is. You had posted that incident on your blog and had sent a mail to us, thats good cos you too have the right to utilize F.O.E. Assume that, I intentionally and purposefully post some offensive

comments about sujatha, in both sujatha's community and your newly created community! In Sujatha's community you may want to block that offensive post for the fact that you are a moderator and have created another exclusive

community for posting offensive stuffs, and have explicitly notified in prior all of us as well. On the other hand, You may want to allow that comment in the new community thinking that person has freedom of expression and that

community is meant solely for expressing their offensive thoughts in a liberal way no matter what it is! so what? What if again some sensitive fans of sujatha are again members of that freedom of expression community or they

accidentally happen to look at those offensive posts? Again they'll get hurt rite? Ofcourse human emotions oscillate between positive/negative state of mind. In my opinion, There is no point in supportively arguing for offensive

comments based on offensive comments pal! Since we cannot read the mind of that person, you cannot come to know about his intenstions behind posting that message. So now it becomes a vacillating situation about what to do with

that post but my opinion is you should have considered about its consequnces. Considering, If a person has the authority to prevent an 1 unintentional/intentional [intelligent/unintelligent] person's post which may hurt N senstive

[intelligent/unintelligent] peoples, then that person should execute his authority to prevent that act. So, other peoples argument sounds little rational to me. Still I don't understand why you had created another community for freedom of

expression! Then if that community is for expressing the feelings then my post messging personally at saravana karthikeyan will be this, Hi asshole ( Look humans cannot be logical always my sincere apologies to others except CSK for

using such an language in this open comment) you can't even find time to call me once after 2 years after finishing coll? I don't want any logical or rational reply stating the reason for not making a call or writing a personal mail. Hope

you still remember me! I saw your marriage invitations and its was happy hear that you are getting married to parvathi yamuna. May God bless both of you guys. I went through your photos in orkut and noted some famous faces like

fidel castro, che guvaera, karl max in your orkut profile. You should understand communism is good principle which cannot be applied in this materialistic world now. Because to feel the essence of communism and accept it people need

higher consciousness and a different mind set, which you cannot obiviously expect this kinda minset from these social masses which are driven by competetion and materialism.You used of two techie words"critical section"and

"deadlock" in the sujatha's commmunity post. Even I had trouble recalling the meaning of those words, relating to this how can you expect all citizens to read about the articles in the our constitution, where the real case is even some of

the members inthe legislative body don't know muchthing about costitution. Some other things I've notted one your profile is you have put a brian image in your profile photo, I truly accept that you are for more creatively intelligent

than most of the folks in this world and Iam afraid might have become little pedantic these days. You have a gited right brain, which if coordinated more well with your left brain activity, then you can bring a profound change in this

society. Pen is mighter than sword CSK. All the bset!

Popular posts from this blog

இறுதி இரவு [சிறுகதை]

கலைஞர்: நவீனத் தமிழகத்தின் சிற்பி

தமிழ் : சிறந்த 100 புத்தகங்கள்