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Dear Reader

As several people died on Friday in the worst riots in Tibet in over two decades, predictably China blamed the Dalai Lama’s ‘clique’ for the Lhasa violence.

India — home of the Dalai Lama, his Government in Exile and displaced Tibetans — had made its position clear. Worried that the excited Tibetans would dampen our newfound warmth with China, India banned the proposed six-month march of activists from Dharamshala to Tibet.

The Tibetans had planned to reach Tibet in August and create a stir during the Beijing Olympics. But the moment they started their ‘return march to their homeland’police arrested 100 Tibetans for defying the ban.

See how useful bans are? They help us take a stand. More importantly, they help us pretend we’re in control while being defeated by life’s complexities.

Bans protect us from ‘harmful’ stuff — sentiments, values, attitudes, choices, acts. Look at how liberal we are with bans — films, books, TV channels, dance bars, we ban them all. We even try to ban humour. (Remember the attempt to ban Sardar jokes?) And now we are thinking of banning Blackberry mobiles. It’s a matter of national security, we say.

Our last flagrant effort at banning for national security was in 2006, when the government decided to block ‘dangerous’ websites. The babus blocked entire domains hosting them, blocking thousands of blogs. Didn’t help.

The popularity of the blogs soared. And back in 2003, the government decided to ban an obscure Yahoo discussion group, apparently linked to Northeastern militants.
Swiftly, babus banned all Yahoo groups. Till cyber hell broke loose and they beat a hasty retreat.

Not that we ban the really harmful. Defying international bodies and the UN, we have refused to ban landmines. We have 5 million landmines, the sixth largest stockpile in the world. Instead, we ban Fashion TV, Da Vinci Code, Paris Hilton’s songs, Anand Patwardhan’s films, James Laine’s Shivaji, smoking on screen, art exhibitions, controversial literature, daring documentaries.

For about 150 years, we have banned gay sex. It hasn’t made all Indians heterosexual. Rather, it has helped in spreading HIV/AIDS, trapping people in miserable marriages, criminalising bedroom behaviour, and in the public harassment of private citizens for their sexual preference.

However, sometimes absurd bans are useful. Last week the Mayor of a village in Bordeaux banned death. There was no space in the cemetery, he declared, and the state authorities were not allowing him to increase burial space, so “it is forbidden to die in this village!”

Back in 2001, the mayor of Le Lavandou, Cote d’Azur, had banned death too. It helped focus attention on the need for more burial grounds.

But we Asians can’t be absurd, of course. We take our banning very seriously. Like the Chinese ban on reincarnation a few months ago. Now, Tibetan Buddhist monks need official Chinese permission to reincarnate. “The so-called reincarnatedBuddha living without government approval is illegal and invalid,” said the Chinese.

It’s a clever ploy to prevent the Dalai Lama from reincarnating, of course. At 72, contemplating a successor would not be unreasonable for His Holiness. Quick to take up the challenge, the reincarnated Buddha offered a solution: a referendum on whether he should be reborn at all. If his 14 million followers decide to continue the 600-year-old tradition with his rebirth, then he would be reborn while still alive.

The Chinese cried foul: “The Dalai Lama’s statement is in blatant violation of religious practice and historical procedure.” No hurry, said His Holiness, the doctors say he has perfect health and a few decades more in this life.

Of course, we can always counter-ban. Till the Chinese reverse their ban on reincarnation, we could ban death in Dharamshala.

Email: sen@littlemag.com