WhatsApp Kashmir ! Keep it up Deepika!
By Vijaya Pushkarna
The Kashmir Valley may soon come to life with the WhatsApp, Face book and Twitter accounts of people pinging away, thanks to the Friday
verdict of the Supreme Court of India.And we may hear people's stories, directly from them.
In a judgement on the lockdown in
Kashmir after Art 370 was scrapped on Aug 5,2019, the apex court came down on the government
for suspending internet services and imposing unpublished restrictions under Section 144 Cr
P C.
Internet services, the three member bench of Justices N V Ramana, Surya Kant and B R Gavai, maintained, was part of freedom of expression.
And powers under Section 144 “cannot be used as a tool to prevent the
legitimate expression of opinion or grievance or exercise of any democratic
right” . It qualified this with the rider that unless
there is an emergency.
The verdict
brought the Kashmir Valley a wee bit close to India—like nothing ever
has. Most of the leaders based out of the strife-torn area are under arrest and so could not react. But senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi
Azad seemed visibly happy when he said that the apex court had “felt the pulse of the people of J&K”. Azad
interpreted the judgement “politically”, thus : It meant dissent does not
amount to destabilization. And
suspending internet and locking up leaders only means nobody should speak
against the government.
Equally, it cheered thousands of
protestors who were primarily expressing their dissent over many acts and
lapses of the Modi government –one of them being the Citizenship Amendment Act
, along with the proposed National Register of Citizens.
But even as the
Supreme Court spoke up yet again for people’s right to express their opinion or
grievance, Smriti Irani, the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, lashed out at Deepika
Padukone for expressing hers. The actor’s quiet presence with protesting students in the JNU campus three
days ago, continued to make waves as did her home production and starrer
“Chapaak” which received rave reviews on the day of its release.
"I
want to know what Deepika Padukone's political affiliation is. Anybody who has
read the news would know why she would stand with the protesters," Irani said, before telling the audience at an event that in 2011 the actor had made known her support to the Congress. Irani went on to comment that "It was
not unexpected to us that she was going to stand with people who want the
destruction of India. She sided with people who hit girls on their private
parts with lathis. I can't deny her that right. She made her political
affiliation known in 2011 that she supports the Congress Party. If people are
surprised by this, it is because they didn't know. There were a lot of admirers
of hers who have just discovered her position”
A former actor, albeit in the small-screen space, Irani became the first cabinet rank member of the Modi government to take on Deepika who is being lauded by the film fraternity –amongst a host of others—for taking a stand when students and youth across the country have hit the streets. Prakash Javadekar, the Union Minister for Environment, underplayed it saying she was free to go wherever she wants and support whoever she wants, given India is a democracy.
It is surprising that Irani
has raised the issue of Deepika’s political affiliation. Professors of
politics say that anyone who goes to cast a vote is a political person. And how
the minister knew that the girls with whom Deepika stood had hit others in
their private parts with lathis is anyone’s guess!
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