Jumping a toy gun: Pooja Pandey booked for hurting 'religious sentiments' after 'shooting' at Mahatma Gandhi's effigy
Many in India have shredded to pieces the teachings of the Mahatma, ironically, by invoking the Mahatma himself, because whoever invokes Mahatma Gandhi in an argument wins the 'moral side' of it — the facts can then go out of the window.
Thus, a person in this country who takes aim at a Gandhi effigy using a toy gun can be booked under the Indian Penal Code Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), 147, 148 and 149 (related to rioting).
The point that the person in question — Pooja Shakun Pandey, a leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, to which Mahatma Gandhi's killer, Nathuram Godse, also belonged — was aiming at an effigy with a toy gun, clearly in a farcical bid to emerge as some sort of 'Hindutva icon', is a fact.
Therefore, it does not count.
Last checked, Gandhi was not a religious figure. From all the texts written on him, even those written by him (and there is a large body of work), he laid no claim to being one. If facts counted, one would have therefore wondered why Gandhi was being treated thus, before booking Pandey under Section 295A of the IPC.
Aligarh: Hindu Mahasabha’s Pooja Pandey&her husband Ashok Pandey produced before local court. They were arrested from Tappal for recreating Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. Pooja Pandey says, "No regrets. We have not committed any crime. We have used our Constitutional right." pic.twitter.com/y02DmO3iNh
— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) February 6, 2019
The point that there can be no question of 'religious sentiments getting hurt' by Pandey’s very public show — of extraordinarily poor taste and total stupidity — is thus only for the book on facts (whenever that is written) because here, we are talking about 'sentiments' — a warp that nobody can define, they can only 'feel'.
Now, go deal with feelings.
By arresting Pooja Pandey and her husband Ashok and others under the aforementioned sections, the state has only made the Pandeys emerge as serious characters of some heft, instead of utterly absurd players in a totally ludicrous plot.
The UP government has made Pandey’s re-creation of Gandhi’s shooting a serious incident. It should not have. It would have made far greater sense to leave the Pandeys floundering under the weight of their own dusty, daft ideas, instead of giving them the attention, the publicity and the public importance that they clearly crave.
Ignoring the Pandeys would have also saved our much-harried courts from having to process and hear yet another meaningless legal case.
Pending court cases in #IndiaSupreme Court 57,346High Courts 47,19,483Lower courts 2,96,93,988Total pending 3,44,70,817[As on 28.01.19.] #Judiciary #Justice #ConstitutionalMorality
— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) January 28, 2019
It will take 324 years for lower courts in #India to deal with the case pile-up. #Judiciary #Justice #ConstitutionalMorality
— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) January 28, 2019
Details of 57,346 cases pending in the Supreme Court of #India. #Judiciary #Justice #ConstitutionalMorality pic.twitter.com/RuRFOjzxkU
— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) January 28, 2019
And ignoring the Pandeys would have underlined the seriousness with which India takes its own freedom of speech and expression.
To date, we remain governed by a law that guarantees each individual the right to free speech and expression, even speech others find utterly distasteful, even expression as crass and vulgar as the Pandeys'.
Ignoring them, rather than slapping such meaningful laws onto them, would have been the real punishment a mature society — one governed by facts — would have meted out.
Instead, we have chosen to honour the Pandeys with a weighty reaction, one that could see them spending time in prison, becoming minor public figures, their rise funded by the tax-payers of this country.
The booking of the Pandeys under Section 295A is not the only mindless application of laws to incidents under public pressure. The newly-elected Congress government in Madhya Pradesh has slapped the stringent National Security Act (NSA) upon three men accused of killing a cow at Khandwa.
The Act allows the government to detain people upto a year if they are suspected to be a threat to national security or public order.
Treating the alleged slaughter of a cow as 'a threat to national security' is as intelligent as treating the aiming of a toy gun at a Gandhi effigy as an act 'hurtful to religious sentiments'.
Pandey attempted a shot at quick fame. The UP government was quick to oblige because that's what governments are best at — nursing 'hurt sentiments', preferably 'religious' ones.
But which religion, whose sentiments?
Wait for the book on facts.