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Respect the sentiments

How often do we hear the above mentioned words? Especially in situations when there are chances of someone not taking anything well, or a comment not going down well with audience; in the situations when one needs to be politically correct and socially correct and be seen as morally upright. But if we remove the facade of the mushy gushy all-OK things, we can look into sort of ugly interiors of what respecting the sentiments mean ... and what it hides. Some of these reasons for expecting someone to respect the sentiments can be - 1. Person/ groups whose sentiments need to be respected are not open minded enough to hear a counter point of view, and my not be capable of any rational thoughts in that matter 2. There is something undesirable, or something ugly, or even something cancerous that needs to be hidden. 3. The truth might be extremely uncomfortable one, and ignorance might be a better option. 4. Deviation from the accepted norms is not desired. Reason - It has never been done so

National flag

Figure this - Some (publicity hungry!?) lawyer sues Mr. Narayan Murthy for showing disrespect to our national flag! Some other (publicity hungry!?) lawyer sues Sachin Tendulkar for showing disrespect to our national flag by cutting some Tiranga cake! There have been many other controversies related to insult on national flag, and pertaining to millions of code of conduct to deal with it. But, probably these two have been he most high profile ones in recent times! But all seems too idiotic to me. Probably these two persons in question have contributed million times more to the nation than those 'petitioners'. And they are being belittled on basis of doing some act which they think is a proxy for insulting national flag, which they believe is a proxy for disrespecting the country. Hadh hai ! But, a part of blame lies with the kind of laws and code of conduct that exists for national flag. Maybe, we are too much concerned about proxy for respecting a nation, than doing something c

Holier than thou

X to Y - "You have done this and this. It is a shame. You shouldn't have done this" Y replies- "So what? What you did in that case was also not right" This and that could be anything that is most likely to be some deplorable act. X can be anyone - an individual, an organization, or a political party. Although in public domain, it is usually political parties that are more dominant in following such approach. For instance one political party says - "X party did wrong thing by sanctioning misuse of power to kill innocent people in the village". And other retaliates - "... (blah blah blah) 13 years ago when they were in power, they allowed killing of hundreds people in their state". Such examples are many. Without taking any sides, I think this is too dominant in our system. Instead of not doing wrong or accepting the wrong doing, we often justify it saying that it was of less intensity than others and similar things! Such 'holier than t

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