Being a true liberal means that we allow dissenting voices, even if we don't agree with them
For most of the verbal fusillade of an excuse for an interview with Bhupendra Chaubey, Sunny Leone behaved with a dignity that’s usually absent in most of the denizens of Bollywood. She handled the extremely offensive line of questioning with grace and absolutely no one tried to defend the interview because it was indefensible. The interview brought her lots of bouquets from Bollywood who praised her for holding her own and showed their support including the likes of Aamir Khan, Rishi Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Alia Bhatt.
However, lyricist Prasoon Joshi had a slightly different take. He dared to say what was (and still is) on many people’s minds. Speaking at the 10-year celebrations of Rang De Basanti, lyricist Prasoon Joshi had said:
“I don’t respect Sunny Leone’s profession. I wouldn’t want our youth to get inspired by her profession. But because of that to make a person feel as an accused and disrespect her is not something that one should do. But this should not be taken to mean that if someone is a drug dealer by profession that should be seen as his personal work. I will not respect that profession. And I will say that you shouldn’t be doing this. But that doesn’t mean that when that comes before me will I disrespect him or her. I wouldn’t. My culture doesn’t allow me. But I will not praise her profession. If there is a profession which doesn’t play a constructive role in building a great society, we need to criticise it as well. It’s a free society. People have choices to make, and if choices are not great those should be criticised. Somewhere one should draw a fine line.”
When Joshi’s comments were conveyed to Miss Leone, she said: “I don’t know who Prasoon Joshi is. I will google him and then I will comment.” This can also be read as 'Who the efff is he? Never heard of him. Don’t care for his views.'
A lot of people have called out Joshi’s comments claiming they are sexist and in bad taste. With them, I don’t agree.
I honestly feel that if we are to have a liberal mind-set, we should accommodate other people’s views as long as they do not result in harming other people. Do I agree with Prasoon Joshi’s views? No. He feels that porn has nothing to add to society. Who decides what adds to society and what doesn’t? There's no objective way to decide this. However, I don’t understand people vilifying him for his views on pornography. He is entitled to them just as we are entitled to say there is nothing with watching porn. It's almost as if everyone has to celebrate pornography.
Just like people are wrong to judge Sunny Leone simply by her porn career even though most of her movies look to exploit that career, we are wrong to castigate him for his views. Being a true liberal means to accommodate all the different views that people might have, even if they are conservative, and we don’t agree with them.
Sadly, that’s hardly the cause these days, and most liberal seem to turn particularly illiberal, when another person’s thoughts don’t match their own. Freedom of expression works both ways, and while we are free to express our views vis a vis pornography, people are allowed to say they don’t like it.
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 "Prasoon Joshi and Sunny Leone")
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