Sikhs go mad in Delhi
Jo Bole So Nihal is a Bollywood film which has been causing ructions in India for its allegedly “disrespectful” portrayal of Sikhs. The film’s title is apparently made up of words which hold special magical significance in Sikhism (it’s a battle cry), and there is a scene in which a Sikh man is chased by some scantily clad ladies. Last week the Panthic Weekly had reported rumblings of protest.
Last night a bomb rocked two cinemas in Delhi, killing one and injuring 49. An open letter to the Chair of the Indian Censor Board said,
I would like to inform you that this film will incite the Sikhs to react violently when the movie is released anywhere in India or anywhere in the world for that matter. The Sikhs may be small in numbers but they are a proud people and any interference or jugglery of their religious sentiments by any person, by word or movie, will not tolerated. We love and respect our religion and any misrepresentation of the same is sacrilegious and will be dealt with as such.
(Full text available at The Melon Farmers)
As the saying goes, the Sikhs have made a stand, will the Christians do the same?
Answer: no – not the Irish Catholic ones anyway. The Times reports the reaction of a few religious figures to a new Simpsons episode, where Catholic heaven is portrayed as an Irish theme bar featuring heavy drinking and fighting. The Protestant version is more staid: people spend eternity playing croquet and badminton. An uncharacteristically reasonable former archdeacon of Dublin is quoted:
It is wrong for anyone to set out intentionally to cause offence, especially in religious matters, but sometimes religious people take themselves far too seriously and take offence too easily. We have survived screen and strife for over 2,000 years, so we’re not going to get upset about a cartoon.
So the Sikh holy scriptures state that if someone tries to challenge their religion, they attempt to kill people? What a load of shite; people like this have no common sense. Sure they were offended, but surely there is a non-violent way of defending your beliefs? It’s contradicting yourself to worship the all-mighty all-perfect one, and then to kill…
That’s religion for you, Tania. I suspect that, were there no laws to prevent it in most of the countries where they hold sway, Catholics would love to go back to the racks and thumbscrews, finishing us off with a nice satisfying bonfire. Goodness, but they kill enough people already (although we can only speculate in the absence of hard figures) by cuasing unnecessary population growth and forbidding possibly lifesaving condoms, and causing misery and no doubt a goodly number of suicides among gay teenagers trying to come to terms with their sexuality against a hostile background made hostile by the likes of the Catholics. But still, they sing nice songs and they do have that nice big ceiling painting thing done by one of history’s best-known ‘evil’, ‘intrinsically disordered’ (both quotes from Ratzo) homosexual chappies, what? Oh, and they carry bones around a bit and rebury them. Ah, bless. I’ve got a dog wot does that.
In fact, one reason that (for example) the AIDS rate is incomparably higher in Thailand than in the Philippines is that the Philippines opted against the ‘use a condom’ strategy at the same time that Thailand opted in favour of it.
This might seem counter-intuitive to some (tho’ it doesn’t to me) but presumably the reason is that the critical step which must not be taken (if deaths are to be prevented) is the normalisation (the presentation as ‘normal’) of promiscuous or extramarital sex.
Yes, condoms, that’s it. It’s not that thailand has a flourishing sex industry with sex-tourists going from all over the western world to fuck that might possibly be the reason for their high AIDS figures is it?
That is a very important factor.
So is the degree of church influence: were the church as strong in Thailand as in the Philippines, then the sex industry would have had less chance.
In general, Thailand and the Philippines are two comparable societies, neither of which is free from the problems associated with sex tourism etc..