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Amit Varma is a writer based in Mumbai. He worked in journalism for over a decade, and won the Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2007. His bestselling novel, My Friend Sancho, was published in 2009. He is best known for his blog, India Uncut. His current project is a non-fiction book about the lack of personal and economic freedoms in post-Independence India.
So Anupam Kher gets booed at a literary event and calls the audience a “paid audience.” He follows it up by saying that “people have an agenda and cannot handle a chaiwala becoming a PM.”
This is the precise problem with our discourse. Anytime people disagree with you or oppose you, you attack them instead of their argument or their viewpoint. So they are a “paid audience” or they “have an agenda” or they are “ISI/CIA agents” or they are “sickulars” or “bhakts” or “libtards” or aaptards”. And they say, “your father too,” and we all get caught in an endless cycle of abuse and snark, egged on by the echo chambers we build around us. Messy.
As for Kher, he lost his credibility the day he accepted the chairmanship of the censor board all these years ago. If you’re against free expression, you’re against art. Shame on him.
Posted by Amit Varma in
Freedom |
India |
News |
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Sample clues
9 across: Van Morrison classic from Moondance (7)
6 down: Order beginning with ‘A’ (12)
Question by Amit Varma
This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?