With one clueless stroke, you’ve reduced yourself to a mere big business, a bully. I guess that’s defamatory of big business. It actually displays more imagination than to ever sue current or potential customers. Never sue the people. If the Tatas or Ambanis or Birlas had forgotten that, ever, there wouldn’t be any Tatas or Ambanis or Birlas. You’ve proved yourself to be just another insecure, unsure, pretentious wannabe, eager to throw around the money and the power which we (remember?) the people, had actually channeled to you a few TRPs ago.

Never sue the people, for even when they seem to shrink and withdraw, below the surface, their imagination is expanding:

In any case, the globber apologised, the princess went back to blowing her own trumpet, and the kingdom of Enditivy moved on, like a slow dinosaur with Hark! DaButt as its pea-sized brain.

With one ponderous move, you’ve just moved into the company of the bigoted (elevating us to the ranks of the blasphemous but definitely not banal, not any more).  Of those who’d rather beat up than bear up with dignity. But has Raj Thackeray ever sued anyone? My respect for him has just gone up by a couple of minutes of cellular time. One also fondly remembers certain much maligned Ayatollahs.  At least, they had never seen freedom of speech as different from freedom of speech, had they? It was all the same stinking freedom of speech to them.

Now, let’s say A sues NDTV and Barkha Dutt. What do you presume would happen? Using their huge platform as a national news channel and their vast legal resources, they would fight it. There would be stories on freedom of the press and freedom of speech. There would be righteous stomping around on how the press in India is always maligned blah, blah, blah. Needless to say, other channels of mainstream media and, of course, bloggers would join NDTV in defending its right of free speech.

In fact, all of this happened in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks where the press in India hoisted a vigorous defense of itself. Excellent, I say – defend yourselves. Excellent – use the right to free speech and stand by your right to report events as they happen.

Now, let’s turn to what they are doing to poor Chyetanya Kunte^.

( emphasis mine).

‘Bloggers would join NDTV in defending its right of free speech’. Why? Because it’d make common sense to us. Heard about it? Common sense? Not to be confused with the common understanding you reach with other big media houses on how not to point fingers at each other, even when one of you is wrong- that saves everyone’s wrongs, and revenues. The common sense we’re talking about is the spirit of the Constitution of India:

After the attacks, all news channels absolved themselves of anything sensationalist or irresponsible. But it seems like NDTV has decided to go a step further and shut down any future challenges to its reporting style and content by extracting an apology from this blogger. The language of his retraction suggests that there was a threat of legal action and like any average guy, it would have been too much for him to handle.

Throw away that common sense, that acceptance (not influenced by wealth, power, status etc.,) of everyone’s equal right to rights, and what’ll save your skins? You take away my freedom of speech and your freedom of speech would be next on the line. Your freedom of speech depends on my freedom of speech to defend it. And vice versa. When you let your unquestionable clout, in terms of resources, weigh down on my freedom of speech, measure it- it’s there that this slender thread of common sense, of mutual acceptance, that binds us all together breaks down. I, the small guy, might go first. But don’t nurse any illusions that you’re invulnerable.

So we’re going to stand up for our freedom of speech, and while we’re at it, yours too. We’ll continue to speak on what you’re doing right, and wrong. In the great rush to display your awe-inspiring, onion-domed indignation, you seem to have wrongly concluded that Kunte was the only one to have stopped clapping. Now, listen to the silence of all the others who have stopped clapping too. Read them speak their defiance. And we promise you, there will be others and others.

We urge all bloggers to send us their views on this issue. And to protest NDTV’s highhanded efforts to curb our freedom of speech.