Right to offend

Even if he accomplished nothing else,Shah Rukh Khan managed to persuade Karan Johar. Khans refusal to withdraw his statements on how Pakistani cricketers were welcome in the Indian Premier League even if he swiftly whittled away at his initial,uncompromising attitude in a series of conciliatory tweets and public messages has caused Johar to re-evaluate the wisdom of his earlier capitulation to Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena over the use of the word Bombay in the Mumbai-centric movie Wake Up Sid.

Johar told The Indian Express that he is a different person now than he was a few months ago when Wake Up Sid came out. On that occasion,the fear that the movies opening weekend would suffer had led him to rush over to Raj Thackeray and personally apologise on behalf of creative people who make mistakes of this sort. But he now recognises that his giving in to Raj then was not unconnected to Rajs uncle Balasaheb deciding to go after My Name is Khan now.

But it isnt just that one occasion. Johars apology was unsurprising,the automatic reaction of an apolitical public figure in India who suddenly gets targeted by a thug who wants a bit of populist mileage off a careless statement or two. And each such backing down the product of a culture which appeases the noisiest,of a lack of confidence in the protective capabilities of the state empowers those who would demand an apology next time and incentivises the development of a politics in which taking offence is the quickest way to build a reputation for son-of-the-soil pluckiness. For,after all,in a country as layered and diverse as India,you do not have to really look far for statements that could,if read a particular way,offend someone. A cycle of statement-offense-apology-empowerment is as constricting to speech as would be any more obviously draconian,restrictive regime.