Opinion International Women’s Day

Wharton’s graceless action

It is entirely the choice of any institute about the person who should be invited to deliver a lecture or to be a participant at its seminar. One assumes that before an invitation is extended,necessary enquiries have been made about the standing,background and reputation of the proposed invitee. It is not suggested that an invitation once issued cannot be withdrawn. If subsequent events establish the unfitness of the invitee he may be ‘disinvited’. For example: if the invitee has subsequently been convicted or censured by a court of law in respect of a heinous offence. However to withdraw an invitation issued to a political leader of national stature owing to the opposition of some persons about his political record and conduct is graceless and unbecoming of a prestigious institute like the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Moreover,Wharton lost a unique opportunity to put tough,uncomfortable questions to Narendra Modi and indeed vigorously cross-examine him about his role in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat and his claim of model development of the state of Gujarat. It would have been a worthwhile debate for pupils in the colleges of the oldest and the largest democracies. ‘Disinviting’ Modi smacks of suppressing Modi’s voice and is a form of pre-censorship. If the reason is that the organisers wanted to avoid the heat of controversy and their inability to cope with the trouble Modi’s address would have caused,that is pusillanimity,pure and simple. It is totally against the American tradition of freedom of expression and in particular freedom for the thought we hate. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was allowed to rant against Israel and ridicule the existence of the Holocaust during one of his talks in the US. Minister Shashi Tharoor has aptly summed up the matter: “Once they invited him,they had a duty to hear his point of view. That is what makes for a stimulating debate. On a university campus,that is what the entire process should be all about”.

Nudity as protest

I have always wondered why nudity is a strong form of protest. There is a reported incident when a litigant in London gave vent to his anger at the judges and the legal proceedings before them by publicly exposing himself in court. Contempt no doubt,but the judges did not seriously look into the matter. According to Abhay Sahoo,president of Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti,agitators opposing land acquisition for the proposed Posco steel plant in Orissa have threatened to organise a nude protest which would include women and children. Surely the protest can be quite effective without inelegant exhibition of nudity.

Nudity is also imposed as a form of punishment. In Beijing,a Chinese firm forced its employees,including women,to run half-naked in biting cold for failing to meet their targets. According to human rights activists this is tantamount to cruel and degrading punishment. But this is a purely academic question in China where there is no constitutional protection against cruel or unusual punishment. In our country this form of punishment would be held violative of the cherished right to privacy and also condemned as a ‘practice derogatory of the dignity of women’.