PICTURE THIS : The legislative session is on, major decisions and bills have been tabled and debates are on for the same. While all this is happening, the minister for Cooperation Laxman Savadi is happily watching porm on his mobile phone. This was in the year 2012. Not only him, In February 2012, three BJP ministers C.C.Patil,Lakshmana Savadi and Krishna Palemar had to all step down following opposition’s ante against them after they were captured on TV camera allegedly watching porn inside the Karnataka Assembly.

Last year, Karnataka’s primary and secondary education minister Tanveer Sait was caught on a local TV camera allegedly watching obscene photographs of women on his mobile during the official celebrations of Tipu Sultan Jayanti at Raichur.And after all this,the Pro-Kannada group, Karnataka Rakshana Vedike Yuva Sene is raising objections over Leone’s performance on New Year’s Eve in Bangalore stating that her performance in the city would have a corrupting influence on the people of the city in general and the state at large. Isn’t it hilarious? And these very ministers and their ilks are suddenly the pious Kannadigas who can be influenced and corrupted by just a performance, while they are unabashed and courageous enough to watch porn in an assembly. Such double standards!

And what is frightening is that these very people are sitting on judgement on a woman who wears her past on her sleeves. She has no shame in owning her past while we indulge in blaming and shaming. We aren’t ashamed of what happened in MG Road last year. We aren’t ashamed of taking diktats on what to watch, what to like from people who are changing colours like chameleons.

“It is becoming frightening to live in this country. Every second day there is a group that is threatening to take law and order situation in hand. Sometime back, the Rajputs took centre stage, now the Yuva Sena. We can’t allow such fringe groups to dictate public life in general. They are threatening to commit mass suicide if the event is not called off. And their concern; Leone does not represent Kannada culture and that she would “perform in short clothes”. Which age are we living in?,” exclaims Sudeshna Saha, An HR from Bangalore. Taking the thread forward, Sayantan Das says, “The fact that any group can raise objections to any imagined assault on their culture is scary. And the fact that a country is giving into the wishes of a few, because they are arm twisting it their way is a failure of our democracy and legal system. We need to condemn such acts in the most aggressive fashion.”

The most appalling of it all is when a certain Syed Minaj of the Yuva Sene states that she isn’t a Kannadiga or Indian, and that all of us know her history, which can spoil the culture of the land. To that Deepika B says, “Is our culture so fragile that a single woman’s past can spoil it? Also, what history are we talking about? How are we even having a public discourse where a man is openly insulting a woman, treating her as a commodity that needs to be judged and labelled.” It is time that men deal with their perversities on their own without looking for an excuse such as ‘short clothes’ and ‘her past’.