Even Freedom needs to have its limits

September 11, 2012 | Filed under: Your Opinion | Posted by: Ekta Pal

The latest agitation doing the rounds is Aseem Trivedi’s arrests. Though in the latest news, Mumbai state home department gave up the custody of the cartoonist who had surrendered almost 24 hours ago. It has been nagging many countrymen that perhaps Aseem had overdone the cartoons.

For many years we have seen and read You Said it by R K Laxman. For over half a century the cartoon strips have represented the daily issues from the Common Man view. Though never resorting to disrespecting or offending any country or individual, each cartoon speaks volumes; something even debates cannot achieve.

And when we look at Mr Aseem Trivedi’s cartoons, one can laugh and get agitated, but the outright disrespect shown to Mother India, the National Emblem and the Constitution of India are quite pathetic. As an artist, imagination and creativity could have been used better to represent the same issues in a more dignified and forceful manner.

Before we start off a debate here, let us take the following example. When a rape case is reported in the media, a journalist uses terms like rape, taken advantage of sexually etcetra. Why pray is the dreaded F word not used? Simply, because each profession demands basic lines to be drawn and some responsibility towards how the picture is painted.

In particular, the cartoon that depicted gang rape of Mother India has been drawing most scorns from some quiet circles.

If at all questions are to be raised, the question should be on the course taken to arrest the cartoonist. Why was his family consistently troubled that forced the man to surrender? Yes, perhaps there you can say that politics played an upper hand and injustice was done. But as far as his cartoons are concerned, Trivedi did not do a great job.

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