I appreciate your concern for value of our culture. I join in with you in the protest as it is deeply condemnable. But there are people who call our heroes like Chatrapati Shivaji Barbarians in our group itself !!! It looks there are few people in the world who bother about the sentiments of the people.
We are also conscious of our concern in protecting the cultural values of our country. My concern was about " killers", who are barbarians ! By the way, I have made my protest with youtube as well as the originator ! Is there any other body / forum where we should take up this blasphemy ?
This is totally wrong! Those people must be sued! I, as a dancer, am personally hurt. Thank you for posting this video. It has to be circulated and people, especially Indians, should protest against this. I am definitely with you. Those Pixar people must be arrested.
Chatrapathi Shivaji is a respected National Hero about whom Subramanya Bharathi and Rabindranath Tagore have sung poems. Swami Vivekananda has praised him as a Divine Incarnation. Can I notregister my protestwhen such a great man is called Barbarian ? If you do not like the man, call him that you disagree with his methods or his approach. But calling such people names in unparlimentary language is regretable. I leave it with the moderator to close this issue. But I hope it respects about our sentiments are taken care.
This one has been doing the rounds for a while; it was on Facebook a few days back...
Personally, I take the opposite view of most people in the group. My thoughts are already known to some, but let me elaborate a bit here. I'm not trying to be contrarian here - I really believe what I'm about to say.
I do not believe that this video is as offensive as people make it out to be, though that's purely a personal preference. More importantly, I don't believe that trying to get it banned, or protesting the video, are in any way constructive. And most importantly, I believe in free speech - yes, even speech that's hurtful, even to me and mine. Words from people we don't know or care about personally cannot hurt us. What do we care what other people think?
First, Youtube's Terms of Service allow them to ban only videos that are either (a) illegal, or (b) hate-speech. By hate speech, they mean a call to violence against a particular person, group, community, nationality, whatever. Merely mocking a culture cannot and does not get something banned. It's a waste of your time to try protesting there. Moreover, the linked video was not uploaded by the people who made it (ironically, it's probably subject to a copyright claim from the original producers). You're not even protesting to the right person!
Second, is this really what we're going to be expending our efforts on? A four minute animated short made by a small company somewhere in Russia? As a group, I feel that our limited bandwidth is better spent on the issues that matter. Temples being demolished to build highways matters. The continued ignorance of our own people matters. Our continuance as a civilization matters. A bunch of jokers from Russia does not matter. By protesting, you're merely giving them attention and publicity.
Third, assume that it does get banned because a large number of people protested. What then? What we've achieved then is a small erosion in our collective rights to free speech and freedom of expression. If this speech is banned, what gets banned next time? The next crazy cult to get caught *in flagrante delicto* uses this as a precedent to stifle public discussion of their activities, because they're personally hurt by our talk? Every time we take away rights from others, we take them away from ourselves too.
The other thing we'd be "achieving" is to make ourselves look like "hardliners" (note, I'm not saying that we'd *be* hardliners; just that we'd look like that), as "Hindutva", "Saffron Brigade", or whatever. Now, some may wear this with pride, but that reduces our effectiveness in bargaining with other people and groups in matters that are truly important.
Finally, there's a law called "Hanlon's razor" which states, *Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. *In all probability, the creators of this never meant us any hurt - in all probability they intended quite the reverse. Do we penalize people for honest mistakes? Especially when the product is a work of art? Why should we get outraged when an outrage was probably not even meant?
I reserve my outrage for really outrageous things - like a highway being built through a temple that should be notified as a world heritage site. Like the destruction of thousands of years of heritage by ignorant renovators and contractors. Like the swindling of thousands of crores of our money by corrupt officials. I don't think we have any need to expend our outrage on a quixotic quest against a tiny little company, whom, for all we know, may have never meant us hurt, but probably believe that they were paying a compliment to our culture.
As for the video itself, I think it's quite well made, whatever its storyline. I appreciate the art involved, whatever the storyline involved. All in all, it's just a video. Not the end of the world!
Finally a voice of reason in this thread. I agree with Shashwath. Further, for those who strongly believe in God, it can also been seen that God exists in ALL living creatures and in this case, the fly manifests itself in some kind of stronger entity and plays a prank with Nataraja. In the end,the spider takes care of it. Notice here that Nataraja usually has 4 arms, then the snake going across looks like 2 more and the legs add it all up to 8. Now, how many legs does a spider have __ ? The conclusion as to the fate of the fly is yours.
Have nt we heard of so many stories of Vishnu-Shiva rivalry which are humorous. The video in itself will only get MORE coverage if we don't ignore it. More importantly, what Mr. Shashwath says is even more relevant - about reserving outrage and energy towards really important actions like saving temples from bulldozers, etc.
Further, may I add that we are all taught to never touch a book with out feet (right?), But I am living in the US now and see that many people carelessly touch books with their feet, move them with feet etc. It used to bother me a lot, but then I realized that the value of the knowledge in the book did not change ONE BIT for those who seek that knowledge.
Hence, let free speech live and don't get too worked up. Now, if that person forcibly screens the video in your classroom when uninvited, that would be worth getting offended. It is on the internet and also merely agitating that how would someone feel if that is done to Jesus etc does not make sense. Because the people who make these videos do not care for any religion usually. They don't believe in that concept. that is all.
So let us focus on more pertinent issues and save the language, culture and history through positive means!
- Narasimhan
> Like the destruction of thousands of years of heritage by ignorant > renovators and contractors. Like the swindling of thousands of crores of > our money by corrupt officials. I don't think we have any need to expend > our outrage on a quixotic quest against a tiny little company, whom, for > all we know, may have never meant us hurt, but probably believe...truncated.
I should add that I do not think the video is any great "art". The animations and the smile on the Nataraja face on occasion is good, but using a fly totally lowered the quality of the work, from my perspective...
Dear Friends: You can view this it in two ways. 1. Something to be ignored. You cannot stop these people doing this. 2. This is one act. If you don't protest - More such will follow. You may not be able to stop it, butcan still protest and show that you don't like it. Both have valid reasons. I go with option 2 and its my personal choice.