This is one of the rare moments I find myself at a different pole in terms of opinion than the most intelligent of people whom I look up to. It almost looks like we live on two different continents... oh wait.
I really love Stephen Fry. He is brilliant and erudite and logical and well exposed to the world. At least that's how he appears to an audience like me. He is so much of these things that I forget that he is, after everything is said and done, a white man, who conveniently lives in a first world country, where even being gay, isn't as difficult as being gay in any south east asian country. Then he says something like this:
http://www.stephenfry.com/2015/01/10/you-must-mock/
and I am immediately made aware of the differences.
Same goes for Neil Gaiman. He is perhaps one of my most favorite authors of all time. But how he is going on on his twitter feed is seriously making me aware that how much of a first world advantaged person he really is.
I do not doubt for a moment that these two men are not geniuses or for that matter very very kind and thoughtful men. They are all these things, but they are all these things in the first world.
The thing that they don't seem to consider is that it is a privilege of only a few, the fact that one can choose to believe in the existance of a God or a higher being and choose not to be religious. Most of our realities deal with the fact that we, here, are almost born into a religion and are forced to deal with it on a daily basis for the entirety of our lives, weather we want to or not. In fact, the government has made it mandatory. From the time you are born, right through the times you would need anything official done, be it examinations, taxes or for that matter anything that would have you filling a form, you are required to be a person of religion. And this is in India, where we pride ourselves in having a "secular" democratic frame work. Imagine living in a country which is not even trying to play act at being secular in its political framework?
This brings me to what I thought about the nature of religion and religious practice in the east and how it differs so much in the west. The western religion is not a intrinsic part of a mans life in the west. It is a subsidiary. Their culture has never been spun from the cloth of religion and hence religion has never managed to permeate the very fabric of people's lives there.
More often than not, religion in the east is almost less religion and more culture and lifestyle. People's ways and mannerisms are crafted by religion. How they talk, eat, sleep, where clothes, how they live is defined by religion. I think its fundamentally impossible for western people to understand how the other half live and think.
And this is what is behind the root of what these great men mentioned above have said:
#JeSuisCharlie
Hence they fail to understand how Charlie Hebdo's systematic vilification and satire of anything Islamic or some people who are not western and white,
Because we can never be charlie. We cannot think about the right to free speech is in danger and this a bigger catastrophe, than say, the recent Boko Haram massacre. Because we have never known anything other than a tenuous version of free speech. Given to us one day, and the next day you are in jail.
I think both Mr Gaiman and Mr Fry has been expressing opinions. And that is a first world problem.
I really love Stephen Fry. He is brilliant and erudite and logical and well exposed to the world. At least that's how he appears to an audience like me. He is so much of these things that I forget that he is, after everything is said and done, a white man, who conveniently lives in a first world country, where even being gay, isn't as difficult as being gay in any south east asian country. Then he says something like this:
http://www.stephenfry.com/2015/01/10/you-must-mock/
and I am immediately made aware of the differences.
Same goes for Neil Gaiman. He is perhaps one of my most favorite authors of all time. But how he is going on on his twitter feed is seriously making me aware that how much of a first world advantaged person he really is.
I do not doubt for a moment that these two men are not geniuses or for that matter very very kind and thoughtful men. They are all these things, but they are all these things in the first world.
The thing that they don't seem to consider is that it is a privilege of only a few, the fact that one can choose to believe in the existance of a God or a higher being and choose not to be religious. Most of our realities deal with the fact that we, here, are almost born into a religion and are forced to deal with it on a daily basis for the entirety of our lives, weather we want to or not. In fact, the government has made it mandatory. From the time you are born, right through the times you would need anything official done, be it examinations, taxes or for that matter anything that would have you filling a form, you are required to be a person of religion. And this is in India, where we pride ourselves in having a "secular" democratic frame work. Imagine living in a country which is not even trying to play act at being secular in its political framework?
This brings me to what I thought about the nature of religion and religious practice in the east and how it differs so much in the west. The western religion is not a intrinsic part of a mans life in the west. It is a subsidiary. Their culture has never been spun from the cloth of religion and hence religion has never managed to permeate the very fabric of people's lives there.
More often than not, religion in the east is almost less religion and more culture and lifestyle. People's ways and mannerisms are crafted by religion. How they talk, eat, sleep, where clothes, how they live is defined by religion. I think its fundamentally impossible for western people to understand how the other half live and think.
And this is what is behind the root of what these great men mentioned above have said:
#JeSuisCharlie
Hence they fail to understand how Charlie Hebdo's systematic vilification and satire of anything Islamic or some people who are not western and white,
Because we can never be charlie. We cannot think about the right to free speech is in danger and this a bigger catastrophe, than say, the recent Boko Haram massacre. Because we have never known anything other than a tenuous version of free speech. Given to us one day, and the next day you are in jail.
I think both Mr Gaiman and Mr Fry has been expressing opinions. And that is a first world problem.
