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Instead of Banning India’s Daughter, Rajnathji Should Call Barbra Streisand

Ban on Nirbhaya Documentary - How lawmakers in India fail to grasp the wisdom of school children.

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Opinion
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It is a lesson Tom Sawyer learnt while painting the fence. To make something desirable, all you need to do is make it hard to get. There is nothing more tempting than the forbidden. Or the Banned.

Grown up policy and lawmakers in India however fail to grasp the wisdom of school children.

Look at the Indian government’s typical ham-handed response to the Nirbhaya documentary. Documentary banned and blacklisted, the filmmaker flees, talk of invoking a Section 66 clampdown, statements from assorted ministries trying to prevent its broadcast across the world. Far from keeping away citizens, people are rushing in droves to the Internet: bootleg links are being shared, as are Torrents. From homes to offices to hand-held devices people are curiously and furiously logging in.

American singer, Barbra Streisand – best known for her soaring arias – faced a similar situation around 10 years back when she tried (unsuccessfully) to ban the publication of aerial pictures of her Malibu mansion overlooking the California coastline. All her threats (including a legal notice) ricocheted and created a new social phenomenon: Streisand effect. Wikipedia describes it as an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information which leads to the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.

The Quint is not getting into the merits or demerits of the Nirbhaya documentary. Many say that the documentary provides a platform for the rapists, that it glorifies them, that it is demeaning to the memory of the martyred. They are probably right and each view deserves close examination. But is banning the solution? Are we as a society not mature enough to discuss and debate conflicting viewpoints? How would things have been different if one could watch India’s Daughter, like one does any other film?

Behind the ban is an entrenched tradition of the state knowing best. Intoxicants, culture, sexuality, lifestyle choices – the state knows best. We Indians are not mature enough to run our lives. We need to be gently guided or rudely coerced. After all, what is more shocking and dangerous? Watching a film or refusing to face reality that however inhuman, the rapist is a product of our society? Or that our society continues to have people who may buy into the rapist’s twisted and warped defense?

Times are changing. One of the reasons bans don’t work may be simply because it is so hard to enforce them. Wouldn’t a moderated forum which allowed citizens to vent the anger (and frustration) they rightly feel work better? As Bob Dylan said: “Come mothers and fathers, Throughout the land, And don’t criticize, What you can’t understand,...For the times they are a-changin.”

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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