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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Getting offended may have just got harder for Indians

A few years ago, a man wanted to make a film about a little girl lost in a forest and a tiger keen to eat her. He sent the script to the Animal Welfare Board, probably to get clearance to cast a tiger, even though he planned to shoot the animal in Thailand. He told me that a member of the board refused to clear the script because she was offended by the tiger’s portrayal “as a villain”.

India is a haven for anyone offended by anything. I mention the tiger episode because every other thing that hurts “the sentiments of Indians” might be familiar to you. Your freedom of expression has always been subordinate to someone’s right to be offended. Maybe this is the case everywhere. How different is a cultural cop from, say, a humanities PhD who keeps saying, “It’s problematic”? But, in recent times, being offended has become a national…

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