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Where do we draw the line?

FROM TIME to time, every society finds itself having to debate and determine what its members can be permitted to watch in movie halls, theatres and on television or what books and magazines to read. The more authoritarian the society's governmental arrangement, the greater is the itch to control information and entertainment. Extreme forms of this itch lead to formal and pervasive censorship.

Then, there are informal censorships. Sangh Parivar activists in Varanasi would not permit the shooting of "Water". A Laloo Prasad Yadav in Patna would arrogate to himself the right to give his own certificate to a Prakash Jha film before it could be screened in cinema halls. Liberals find such attempts distasteful and offensive.

Still, there are abiding concerns of good taste and decency. As information and entertainment channels and outlets multiply, these concerns agitate civil society. How can creative freedom be best exercised? It should be possible to distinguish between permissiveness and licentiousness, between artistic freedom and crass commercial abuse of that freedom.

The question is whose standards and judgments would determine when freedom is being abused, what is decent and what is vulgar. Semi-nude models on a fashion channel may look like indecent exposure to an old-fashioned citizen while someone else may appreciate this as a laudable flight of creative imagination. MTV and other "entertainment" channels have off and on raised the hackles of even some otherwise liberal souls.

As India gets ready to experience fully the cable television explosion, the issue arises of striking a balance between the artist's freedom and the concerns about the vulgar and the unenlightened.

But can the government of the day be trusted to exercise this judgment?

If the government is inherently prejudiced and biased, who will arbitrate and pronounce fairly and firmly on decency?

Four different perspectives.

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Stories in this Section

• Where do we draw the line?
• To cut or not to cut
• The stamp of (dis)approval
• Creative or crass?
• The politics of art
• Fighting `jehadis' at home

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