Given the game of competitive intolerance that's often encouraged by politicians - which these columns have been warning about - something like this was waiting to happen. Sania Mirza has declined to play in the $600,000 Bangalore Open, where she would have been a big draw along with the Americans Serena and Venus Williams. She says she has no problems representing India, it's just that there are too many controversies dogging her whenever she plays in the country.
She has been vilified because she shot an advertisement on the premises of Hyderabad's Mecca Masjid, because she allegedly supported pre-marital sex, because the camera angle at which a certain photograph of her watching a match was taken made it appear as if she was pointing her feet at the tricolour. By becoming Asia's top player and world number 29 in the WTA rankings, she has done India proud. If she is to excel in her game, she can't afford to be distracted by such matters as whether the length of her skirt meets the exacting specifications of religious clerics.
People who are in the limelight because of their achievements - running the gamut from the 21-year-old Sania Mirza to the 92-year-old M F Husain - are all too often becoming targets of overheated nationalist or religious sentiment. One of the country's greatest living painters, Husain has allegedly disgraced it by painting a nude goddess, when classical Indian art is full of nudity and eroticism. Cases have been filed against Husain in Rajkot, Indore, Bhopal, Haridwar and Pandharpur in Maharashtra. Faced with the ignominy of having to travel the length and breadth of the country fighting frivolous cases against him, Husain chose to stay abroad. It's small mercy that the Supreme Court has now amalgamated the cases against him and transferred them to a Delhi court.
The apex court has wisely given a quiet burial to the case against N R Narayana Murthy. What the professional takers of offence had against Narayana Murthy was that an instrumental version of the national anthem was played at Infosys premises in Mysore in April last year, instead of a vocal version. What applies to Sania holds true for Narayana Murthy as well - if the latter had focused his energies on being a master of protocol then he wouldn't have been software king. Frivolous cases like this ought to be quashed outright instead of making their way to the Supreme Court, which should warn courts down the line that it would not entertain such frivolity; and nor should they, if the country's already scarce legal resources and time were not to be wasted further.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Editorial/
