The other day, a friend of mine, well versed in Marathi Theatre in Goa, shocked me when he told me that he had gone to witness a tiatr at the Kala Academy and had to leave the auditorium with disgust due to a song (Kantar) criticising the former Chief Minister of Goa, with absolute crude and indecent words. He expressed his surprise and said that because of those two indecent sentences in the song a few people in the auditorium whistled and the singer came back sang it again.
Politically this friend of mine is a strong supporter ofBJP. Being a BJP enthusiast he should have been very happy to observe that theformer Congress Chief Minister being severely criticised but he wasn’t. He saidthat criticism should be done within permissible limits. It does not matter atall whether the person under criticism is our supporter or opponent.
There is no doubt that ours is a democratic country and thatwe live in a democracy. One of the fundamental rights enshrined in ourConstitution is the freedom of speech and expression. There are checks andbalances such that the right to freedom of speech and expression is notmisused. The Constitution that empowers its citizens with the Right to Freedomof speech and expression, interestingly, the same Constitution makes also aprovision for the states to impose ‘reasonable restrictions’ under certainconditions. Some of such conditions are: decency or morality, defamation orincitement to an offence, etc. Hence we should not interpret the meaning ofright to speech and expression as if it is absolute and unlimited.
Therefore thecriticism of politicians, ministers, MPs, MLAs or any other person in societyon the tiatr stage should be done without throwing away the norms of sociallife. The two or three sentences of that song in question, in my opinion,amount to character defamation. The basic question is, should the tiatrfraternity indulge in such undemocratic acts on tiatr stage?
Some popular tiatr artistes from Goa who stage tiatrsoutside the state regularly, tell me that whenever they go to Mumbai and Puneto stage their tiatrs, they have to compulsorily get approval from thegovernment authorities for the scripts of their tiatrs as well as for thelyrics of their songs.
Despite there being a right to freedom of speech andexpression, the Government of Maharashtra has imposed ‘reasonable restrictions’on that fundamental right. This must have been done because of the misuse ofthe Right to freedom of speech and expression in the past in Maharashtra.
Therefore there is anurgent need for the directors of tiatrs to scrutinise each and every song thatwill be presented in the tiatr. It is their duty to see that the right tofreedom of speech and expression is not exploited on the tiatr stage.Self-restraint will be the best method to curb the misuse of the right tofreedom of speech and expression. Otherwise, in times to come, tiatr artistesin Goa too may face the challenge of censorship in the guise of ‘reasonablerestrictions’.
Tomazinho Cardozo is the former president of theTiatr Academy of Goa
