Gulmarg fashion show to Ranveer Allahabadia: What’s actually offensive

A fashion show on March 7 during Ramzan caused an outrage among Kashmiri Muslims. Our sensitivities have been hurt, they said, because Muslim-majority Kashmir cannot tolerate obscenities in the name of tourism promotion – “that too during this holy month” the chief minister of the state, Omar Abdullah, filled in.

I think it is us, the ones who truly cherish our Constitution, who have been tolerating the ideological impositions and moral coercions of petulant groups in the name of religious sensitivities for much too long.

It is as if our Constitution and its emphatic stress on individual rights is merely a laminated picture frame for the wall to camouflage our parochial selfishness and, at opportune times, used to embellish the claim that India is the mother of democracy. It is tiring and frustrating.

There ought to be a bar on personal offence that befits a human adult. Sure, that’s just me spouting my personal opinion – which, by the way, ought to be protected in a democracy bound by a Constitution that accords individual rights. That is the point.

In a democracy, a group cannot supersede an individual. No one forced the Muslims observing Ramzan to watch the fashion show or participate in it. No one forced the viewers of Ranveer Allahabadia...

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