Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Discipline the moral police' that was published in Newsband

Discipline the moral police

Policing in India is not enough. We find that most of our law enforcement agencies are too busy protecting political leaders. They have no time for common man. This kind of situation has given birth to self-appointed moral police.

These people consider it their duty to protect social values and prevent cultural subversion. They perform their voluntary duties for which they don’t receive any monetary reward. The moment they get the suspicion that the social values are getting trampled or cultural subversion is taking place somewhere they get into action. They will protest against the nude scenes displayed on the screen or nude portrait painted by an artist or controversial or provocative remark made about certain leader or community etc. The police appointed by the society have no time to tackle such cases and here is where moral police play their role.

At Vashi itself, just recently, the party workers of BJP and Shiv Sena were infuriated by a book published and distributed free of cost at Father Agnel Multipurpose School. The book spoke against Hinduism and Hindu leaders. These political activists got into action immediately and they gheraoed the school authorities and made them apologize for their ugly act. Thus the moral police did the job which uniformed policemen failed to do.

Every political party has moral policemen and there is a kind of competition among these different groups of moral policemen.

Sometimes, these moral policemen exceed the limit. They protest against minor matters and make it a political issue. In other words, they make mountain out of molehills. These moral policemen should realize as to where they should show some tolerance and where they should not hesitate to stage an agitation. They should also understand that our country is a democratic one and our people are entitled to enjoy many kinds of freedom which people in an autocratic country are not allowed to enjoy. The democratic rights of every citizen of our country should be respected.

Our moral policemen should be made to observe the principle ‘Live and Let Live’. This principle has always been the hallmark of Indian civilization. Violating this principle means insulting our Indian culture. Our moral policemen should also take care not to violate the Gandhian principles. As far as possible they should try to settle all the issues non-violently. Also, they should go by the ‘Book on Indian Constitution’ while tackling any issue.  

Once we have clean moral policemen, there will be peace as well as law and order in our society.