THE ART OF BEING INTOLERANT OF INTOLERANCE

I admire Ameer. A super hero.  A superb film maker. The moment he hinted that the thought of emigrating had crossed his mind, or more precisely Kiran’s mind, I began a search for the land of honey and milk that he could emigrate to.

Europe, it had to be. But after the minor incident of 13/11 killing 130 and injuring 360 in Paris, and the French saying that since 2000 they had 16 terror attacks and incidents – 63 since 1973 - all of them by persons of a certain religious descent – politically incorrect to name the ‘descent’ here though the French did not hesitate to do that – and the small matter of terrorist attacks in Brussels and UK and elsewhere in Europe by the persons of same ‘descent,’ and the hunt in Belgium  for terrorist of same ‘d . . . – Europe option is foreclosed.

Then how about the land of total freedom, the US of A? But the would-be-President Donald Trump wants a registry for Muslims [An NBC reporter repeatedly asked Trump what the difference is between a registry for Muslims and the registry for Jews under Nazi Germany, to which Trump only replied, "You tell me."]

And immigration laws of US of A are tough. But US of A does give citizenship to people of eminence. They did to Einstein a mere university-teacher. And in 1986 they gave political asylum to Shin Sang-ok, a South Korean film producer and director. Surely they will grab the super-hero and the superb film-maker Ameer, far more eminent than Sang-ok that the Indian people haven’t even heard of.

The problem is if you were to ask Donald, or even the Indophile Hillary the other Presidential aspirant, about Ameer, they would commit blasphemy:  “Ameer, who?” they will ask and thus create a storm in the India-teacup like of which has not been seen since the time Maria Sharapova asked, “Sachin, who?”

And then it came to me. Why not Saudi Arabia? That land of extraordinary Wahhabi kindness and freedom.

Then Kiran could blissfully watch from behind her Niqāb (veil) men and women being executed for blasphemy and apostasy after the religious police had extracted ‘confession’ from them through severe torture.

And Ameer will have all sorts of freedom except that of making a film like PK that mocks the majority religion. The intolerant Indians not only did not ban or censor the movie, but they made it the highest-grossing Indian film of all time raking-in INR 7 billion. The Wahhabi, unfortunately, are not that tolerant of the mocking of their brand of religion.

But so what? Ameer may be intolerant of intolerance but certain type of intolerance is acceptable to him.

What is intriguing though is that on 11 November 2015 Ameer said on NDTV’s ‘Walk the Talk’ show that things were looking positive. He has not revealed what happened in just 12 days after that to make him change his mind and perceive that intolerance which is not in evidence.