HC comes to rescue of writer booked for criticising social life during Mahabharata era
The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court recently came to the rescue of a writer who was booked by the city police for criticising the social life as described in the epic – Mahabharata. The writer had criticised the era wherein restrictions were imposed upon women in the society while the males were enjoying freedom. The HC held that the writer in no manner misused his right to free speech and expression.
Troubles poured in for Rajaram Patwardhan last year after he penned down an article for a Marathi daily. The article referred to certain incidents in Mahabharata, wherein he criticised the restrictions, which were imposed only on women to control their behaviour while no such conditions were imposed on men. Soon after the article was published, a lady lodged an FIR against Patwardhan under charges of outraging the modesty of women, obscenity, inciting enmity against two communities.
“A perusal of the article reveals that a source material was referred to by the writer and the article in question was not his own creation. If it is not the own creation of the writer if it is a reference to a source material then the proceedings are launched against attracting criminal provisions would be nothing but an abuse of process of law. We
Troubles poured in for Rajaram Patwardhan last year after he penned down an article for a Marathi daily. The article referred to certain incidents in Mahabharata, wherein he criticised the restrictions, which were imposed only on women to control their behaviour while no such conditions were imposed on men. Soon after the article was published, a lady lodged an FIR against Patwardhan under charges of outraging the modesty of women, obscenity, inciting enmity against two communities.
are unable to accept the submission that the writer misused his freedom of expression,” said a division bench of Justice Prasanna Varale and Justice Vibha Kankanwadi. The judges noted that the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata are studied by various scholars and there is a vast research work relating to these epics. They further took a note of the fact that certain research work includes criticism on the customs prevalent then.
In his article, Patwardhan stated that for a considerable long period the concept of the matrimonial relationship like husband and wife was not known and also other family relations were not prevalent during the era of Mahabharata. He further claimed that certain rules of behaviour were thus framed only for women to condition their behaviour in the society while the men were enjoying the freedom and were free to act as per their whims.
Having noted the contents of the article, Justice Varale said, “If the comment of the writer is considered, we are of the opinion that this comment is a fair criticism. If the writer criticizes the situation prevalent at that point in time (restricted behaviour of women and not for men) by saying it was not a fair approach, then we find that this comment can be treated as a progressive thought because the writer wanted a fair and equal treatment to both the sections of the society, namely, the women and the men.”