GANG RAP: IS BAD TASTE A RIGHT?

The song ‘Aye Ganpat’‡ in the Hindi movie ‘Shootout at Lokhandwala’ (a mouthful for the foreigner, I know) is in bad taste but not bad enough to ban, if newspaper reports are to be believed. Why ban a song, a novice may ask, what’s the word, ah, artlessly. Or guilelessly.
‡ If you want to read the lyrics, click here, and you can watch the video here.
Well, first things first, let the novice note a peculiar feature of the great land of India: in its vast complications of history, geography and religion, it has managed to create a feeling in every citizen that he is special. Special as in entitled to privileges that would have to be given first preference, common sense be damned. If I can draw a hypothetical parallel, it would be like a stricture given to media hacks that while they are interviewing a blogger talking on say, designer vaginoplasty, they cannot rush for comments to a passing-by George Clooney, for it would offend said blogger.

If you wish to know some more, don’t read my post ‘The Sacred Right To Offend’. Try some other blog.

Kalra, an advocate working for women’s rights, had argued that the song was “derogatory to the dignity of women” and violated a “fundamental right i.e. right to love with dignity”.

So, now there is a ‘right to love with dignity’? What, incidentally, is love without dignity? And what has poor hypothetical Ganpat done? But that is a digression.
Let me give you some parallel examples of how rights could very well be perceived in India:
1. If you kiss your girlfriend in my sight, you are violating my morality and right to see only things that I agree with.
2. If you find that the tickets to the movie ‘Shootout…’ are sold out, your right to watch a movie on Saturday night are violated.
3. If you build a ten-storey building next to my two storey one, you violate my right to the morning sun.
And so on. I know you will call this absurd. But isn’t this a technique in logic: reductio ad absurdum!?
This country, where people are attacked for speaking out their minds (recent examples of writer Taslima Nasrin and painter MF Hussain come to mind), is a haven for all manners of people who claim derivative ‘rights’ as fundamental rights.
The moment I hear the words ‘public good’, ‘indecency’, ‘objectification of women’, and many more modern-day bromides, my BS meter starts ringing wildly.
I go crazy at the noise, and escape it by going into my blog.
So, you tell me:
I love this song. It’s gangsta rap, Bollywood-style. I have poor taste. Do I have a right to it?