TODAY -
Misplaced morality in Manipur
Hindustan Times | Arpita Das | September 16, 2011
Reports about a hue and cry over an ‘interview’ given by Manipuri social activist Irom Sharmila to the media about her ‘affair’ with Goa-born British citizen, writer and human rights activist, Desmond Coutinho, have left me confounded. Evidently, her supporters are ‘dismayed’ and smell a sinister state conspiracy’ in the report. While a number of well-meaning people are responding with the clichéd ‘we should not comment on her personal life’, to me this also sounds like a submission to middle-class morality classes, which we seem to enlist ourselves in from time to time and which help us to garb salacious gossip as moral righteousness.
Why should anyone feel the need to defend her by talking about how difficult it is for anyone else to have met her during her near-hospital arrest when even her family members find it difficult to have access to her? Or by quickly informing us that the two have got ‘engaged’ and, hence, she has regained her moral status in the eyes of ‘civil’ society? What’s the need at all to defend her by publicly defending her as being ‘morally upright’? Who took away her ‘right to fall in love’ anyway?
One of the papers reporting the matter even slipped in a line about Sharmila having been gifted an Apple Macbook computer by her lover. But not even a single paper has yet said, ‘So what?’ Unlike the US, India excels at keeping all male politicians’ and celebrities’ personal matters, affairs, romps and perversities entirely concealed. So why on earth can’t we allow Sharmila her amour before labelling her Manipur’s ‘amoral’ woman?
Follow the link to read the entire news here
* This Post is uploaded on September 17, 2011
* Comments posted by users in this discussion thread and other parts of this site are opinions of the individuals posting them (whose user ID is displayed alongside) and not the views of e-pao.net. We strongly recommend that users exercise responsibility, sensitivity and caution over language while writing your opinions which will be seen and read by other users. Please read a complete Guideline on using comments on this website.
LATEST IN E-PAO.NET
Jump Start
DBS Imphal SubSite |
Readers Mail |
Editorials |
Education Announcements |
Essay |
Exclusive Event |
Flash - Audio Visual |
Incidents |
LFS Imphal SubSite |
News Timeline |
Poetry |
Opinion |
Sports |
Rock Concert |
RSS |
Top Stories |
Wathi Jugai