The question mark in the headline in T N Ninan's column "A right to offend?" (Weekend Ruminations, January 10) is significant. There can be no two opinions about the unqualified condemnation of the brutal attack on the editorial office of the satirical French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, killing several people, including cartoonists. The attack has been seen as an act of retaliation by Muslim extremists for Charlie Hebdo's anti-Islam cartoons and defaming the Prophet. But that can in no way be the justification for the killing of the cartoonists. However, the fact remains that religion is a very sensitive matter.
The west needs to have a re-look into its traditional way of taking freedom of expression in the matter of religion as absolute and a right to attack beliefs and demolish god in whatever manner. Times have changed and we are living in an age of violent religious intolerance. The foresighted founding fathers of our Constitution found it necessary to put limits to freedom of expression in case of religious dissent. Violent religious intolerance is a reality in the current age. The time has come for our enthusiastic defendants to acknowledge that the right to freedom of expression is neither absolute nor a right to offend.
M C Joshi Lucknow
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