Tale of Two Moral Questions : Orissa Government
And US Supreme Court Don't see Eye To Eye
By Sadanand Patwardhan
30 June, 2011
Satark.Blogspot.Com
Let us pretend we have to make a moral judgment. The judgment we have to make is about what is good for our children. We have to decide as responsible parents, would be parents, grand-parents, guardians, or simply as concerned adults. We now have to decide as if we are in the midst of two situations described below.
Scenario One .
Our community is under attack. We are threatened with imminent evictions from our lands where we have stayed for generations and which we have cultivated with love. We are to be forcibly and ruthlessly dispossessed of our lands, which have sustained us for decades or centuries. All this is planned against our wishes. It is unjust and unfair even going by the laws of the land. The government we elected to care for us, look after our interests, & protect us from the depredations of rich & powerful, has in fact turned against us. We as a community have decided to fight back through non-violent and democratic methods. We say if you want our vineyards, paddy-fields, or orchards, then you can have them; but not before you have killed us all. Our entire family is in it as one : parents, brothers, sisters, and even children. Yes, Children! Our children want to be with us when we face bullets or truncheons. Is it unnatural that children want to be with us when it is matter of life & death for all of us ? Now the question is :
Should we allow our children to be part of our peaceful protest, which our government most likely will turn into a bloody mayhem?
Scenario Two
Our community is worried & exercised over the perverse effects of violent video games on our children's mind. We worry about the magazines, comic books, and TV serials that depict mindless violence against *enemy combatants* or *alien beings* or some imaginary enemy. We worry more about the new *breed games* that brag to deliver *real life* feel to *gaming experience*. These games give our children multiple choices (in our community we otherwise believe that having choice is fundamental to life) to finish ofF the enemy. Children can use swords, guns, lasers, tanks, aeroplanes, or drones, to wound, maim, behead, riddle with bullets, vapourise, or blast into smithereens, *the enemy*. We see our children imitating these violent *heroes* that they see & hear. Instances have happened in our community when underage child has gone to school and wounded or killed other children with firearms (it is a constitutional right in our community to possess deadly firearms) that they took away from home. Psychologist tell us that by seeing violence passively, & more so by *participating in lifelike violent action* our children are getting insensitive to violence. Now the question is:
Should we prohibit our children from accessing violent & sexually explicit video games?
These two *hypothetical* situations are for real. In the first case the senior most functionary of a provincial (state) government pronounced the moral judgment of the government he represents. In the latter the highest court pronounced its legal (even law somewhere is informed by morality) judgment. Both differed in their judgments.
A] * Use of kids in Posco stir illegal: Orissa government *.“ Posco's efforts for speeding up the construction of the 12-million tonne steel plant in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa received a jolt on Monday as angry villagers damaged the camp of a contractor and did not allow earth excavators to operate, protesting the government's betrayal over assurance of engaging locals . < the foregoing concerns people who have *agreed* to give up their land for * some compensation* and assurance of further benefits like *employment* in the project. The following concerns people who are vehemently opposing forcible dispossession from their ancestral lands > Meanwhile, the opposition to the project at the borders of Govindpur village continued on Monday even as the Orissa government declared “ use of kids ” in the anti-Posco agitation as illegal . Chief Secretary B K Patnaik said, It is illegal to use children in the agitation ”.
The news report doesn't say if Patnaik gave any reasons in support of his pronouncements or cite any statutes that make children's participation in such an agitation illegal. Probably, Patnaik wanted to say use of kids is *Immoral*.
“ Jagatsinghpur MP Bibhu Prasad Tarai ( an elected representative of people to India's highest law making body ), on the other hand, justified children's participation as "normal and legal ". "No one has forced children to take part. As their parents are agitating, they come on their own," the MP said ”.
“ Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) however, dubbed the state government's move as " undemocratic " and " vulgar display of force ". Our people are democratically protesting at the Govindpur village border protesting the forceful land acquisition for POSCO, PPSS president Abhay Sahu said ” - http://tiny.tw/6s8 .
Children's participation along with their family in a democratic peaceful action is unlawful. But, Indian state finds recruiting children as Special Police Officers (SPOs) in conflict zones for fighting Maoists perfectly *legal* .
“ Chhattisgarh government claims that all children in its ranks have been removed, yet Human Rights Watch found that children who were appointed earlier continue to serve as SPOs , perform paramilitary tasks, and risk their lives. Police estimate that as of February 2008 there were around 3,500-3,800 SPOs in Dantewada and Bijapur districts;84 of these, 10 to 20 percent are female.85 The percentage of children among SPOs is not known - http://tiny.tw/6s8 page 35 of HRW report”. Supreme Court has observed that the practice itself of appointing SPOs is unlawful leave alone using children for the task .
B] * Justices Reject Ban on Violent Video Games for Children *“ The Supreme Court on Monday struck down on First Amendment grounds a California law that banned the sale of violent video games to children. The 7-to-2 decision was the latest in a series of rulings protecting free speech , joining ones on funeral protests, videos showing cruelty to animals and political speech by corporations. < Comment : Last one was one of the mightiest innovation of US Justice that held Corporations, defined in most laws as * artificial persons *, to have same rights as * biological persons *. This among other things gave protection of first amendment, Free Speech guarantee, to corporations > ”.
“ Depictions of violence , Justice Scalia added, have never been subject to government regulation . “ Grimm's Fairy Tales , for example, are grim indeed,” he wrote , recounting the gory plots of “ Snow White ,” “ Cinderella ” and “ Hansel and Gretel .” High school reading lists and Saturday morning cartoons, too, he said, are riddled with violence <Comment : Ramayana, Mahabharata, and other Indian mythology too are full violence. They have underage persons like Abhimanyu , Balkrishna , or Pralhad either resorting to *violence* themselves or *inciting violence* in defence of their family or kin > ”.
The California law which justices in their wisdom struck down “ defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being ” in a way that was “patently offensive,” appealed to minors' “deviant or morbid interests” and lacked “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value <Judge Scalia perhaps thought that precisely such training was essential to turn young generation in USA into modern warriors [See what they do : “ There is a second-and-a-half delay between the RAF operator pressing his button and the Hellfire rocket erupting from the aircraft he is controlling, circling in the sky above Afghanistan . That's a long time in modern warfare, but the plane is an unmanned "drone" and its two-strong crew are 8,000 miles away at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Right now, the Reaper is being commanded from a console with twin video screens shaped to resemble a plane's cockpit - http://tiny.tw/6s6 ]. US warriors, who remotely control *Predator* or *Reaper* drones to do exactly what the children are encouraged to do in video games to fictional character, except they do it to real persons, often innocent civilians . The future war for the aggressor will be as sterile , emotionless , or as reflexive as say blowing nose into a paper napkin or playing a video game . Justice Scalia has perhaps made that sure> ”.
How did gaming industry react to this judgment? “ Everybody wins on this decision, John Riccitiello, chief executive of Electronic Arts, one of the largest public video game companies, said in a statement. “The court has affirmed the constitutional rights of game developers , adults keep the right to decide what's appropriate in their houses, and store owners can sell games without fear of criminal prosecution. ” Did you get that?, it is a win-win situation for everyone. Riccitiello says * adults keep the right….. * But, we thought that case was about stores not allowed to sell to minors (<18) violent games “ The California law would have imposed $1,000 fines on stores that sold violent video games to anyone under 18 ”. Riccitiello is either deliberately misleading when he says, *Adults keep the right…….*, or he genuinely believes that in matters violent, age is of no consequence .
It is now time for each one of us to answer the two questions.
1. Should we allow our children to be part of our peaceful protest, which our government most likely will turn into a bloody mayhem?
2. Should we prohibit our children from accessing violent & sexually explicit video games?
Sadanand Patwardhan is a blogger who contributes regularly to Countercurrents.org
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