Till Shabana Azmi coined the phrase bharat ammi ki jai at the India Today Conclave, it hadn’t inspired any headlines.
The actor said this while telling All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader, Asaduddin Owaisi, that if he had a problem with the word ‘mata’ in the phrase, he could switch to ‘ammi’ instead.
This, after Owaisi said that he wouldn’t raise the slogan even if “someone put a knife on [his] throat.”
Owaisi, whose brand of politics is a shrill counter to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s, was countering the latter’s suggestion that the new generation needs to be taught to chant slogans hailing mother India.
Arrested for Sharing Bhagwat’s and Bharat Ammi’s Pictures
On March 21, The News Minute reported that a man had been arrested in Karnataka for allegedly distributing a morphed image of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on social media.
He had also distributed pictures of a burqa-clad woman in place of Bharat Mata.Yashas, sub-inspector at Kerur police station
Khalil, from Bagalkot district who runs a footwear shop in Yadahalli village was arrested on Sunday, and sent to judicial custody until March 31 for allegedly offending religious sentiments after a complaint was lodged by an RSS worker. The man is still in judicial custody.
The News Minute reports that Khalil had neither created nor edited the image.
This is one of the offending images.
Muslim Youths Angry Over Arrest
Akmal Izhar, an IT professional, says that if instead of the image of a goddess, one places a hijabi woman, one should be equally accepting of that, and that, any arrest of an individual over this issue would be just plain wrong.
While another Muslim, a young business analyst – who doesn’t wish to be named – says that whenever he sees religious material on social networking sites he doesn’t share, or like them, for he fears what legal soup he might land in, or that his social circle might think of him as a bigot.
Humor was also used by some to respond to the situation.
Attempting to explain the stance of many Muslims to not use the phrase bharat mata ki jai, Aazeen Kirnani writes in Muslim Mirror that for many Muslims, while Bharat is the country, Bharat Mata is a Goddess, and even mentions the existence of a Bharat Mata Temple in Varanasi to establish her point.
From a Muslim point of view, Bharat is the country which deserves one’s utmost love, respect and loyalty but it cannot be hailed as a deity as Allah is the only God for Muslims.Aazeen Kirnani
Free Speech Being Crippled?
It must be noted that this arrest comes a year after the Supreme Court struck down the much-abused Section 66A of the Information Technology Act that crippled free speech on the Internet.
On March 18 this year, two other youths were arrested in Madhya Pradesh for sharing a morphed image of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat that allegedly sought to make fun of the organisation’s decision to change its dress code. The duo was charged under sections 67 of the Information Technology Act, which relates to publishing obscene material in electronic form and 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code which pertains to statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes.
Even though Section 66 A has been scrapped, from the looks of it, it seems that what you post on WhatsApp or other social networking sites can still land you in a lot of trouble. Free speech and acerbic humor will have to wait.
(With inputs from Saraya Srinivasan)
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