Universal Hate

While surfing the web, I came across this piece of news. It is about a student at Gatech who sued the University for restricting her right to free speech. To quote the article,

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

Now different people may react to this news in different ways. But since my first reaction to this was, 'What the c#$% !!!! I never knew I had so much religious freedom!!!!', I have decided to explore how this allows me and others to further our religious beliefs.

1.) Since religion itself is a very ill-defined term, Nazi's can claim that their religion compels them to protest against the equal treatment of non-Aryans.

2.) Some people could claim that their religion compels them to protest against equal education and employment rights due to women. (This incidentally, would be highly detrimental to the girl in the above news item.)

3.) Muslims could claim that their religion compels them to protest against the existence of kaafirs.

4.) Hindus could claim that their religion compels them to divide people into castes and discriminate against them.

5.) Proponents of Intelligent Design could claim that their beliefs compel them to protest against science.

I can only shudder at the thought of all the fun we could have if the said girl wins her case. Since any belief system can be defined as a religion and everyone has freedom to hate SOMEONE, we can all have a field day protesting the existence of some group of people. Then finally, the human race can have an activity that keeps all of them busy and out of harm's way.

To go or not to go

Many months ago, I had written a post about reservations in India. Then, some quarters in Indian politics had demanded that reservations be implemented in private industry. That proposal, thankfully, somehow fizzled out. Now, the new attack on India being launched by the Indian government has taken the form of a 22.5% increase in reservations in institutions like the IITs and AIIMS. This will ofcourse reduce the number of seats available to people who deserve them...the solution? Increase total number of seats!!!!

So what has the title of this post got to do with all this you might ask. Well, I wanted to connect this with a couple of Parth's old posts, the n+5 theorem and Kya ab laut chalen. I for one have lost a lot of enthu about going back to India. As one who has seen the wrong end of the reservation stick, I think this is the limit. As it is, state governments go to ridiculous lengths with this reservation thing. In Maharashtra, the percentages are 50% Backward castes + 30% Women. This means that if you are a general category male, you should be as far away from Maharashtra as possible. I have already commented on how reservations are harming the country in the same way that oppression of backward castes had done. But if u have a family in India, imagine the horror of having to explain to your son why his schoolmate, who scored half the marks he did, has gotten admission to the best college in the city while he has to make do with the second best. I had reacted to this frustration by screaming, "Why aren't we SC/STs?". My dad had scolded me for saying such a thing and had explained to me that I should have studied harder. I am pretty sure it was quite hard on him to say all that. I don't wish to go through that experience. My inclination to return to India just took a 22.5% dip thanks to Arjun Singh.