Of Silly Bans: we have competetion

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When it comes to respect of personal choice, freedom of the individual and suchlike, the Indian goverment has an abysmal record. For all our pride of being the largest democracy in the world, the country has a rather trigger-happy policy of promulgating bans on  books, films, art-work, actions etc. Often these bans are outcome of poor logical decisions (e.g the recent ban or the attempt to ban certain blog-providers) or are enacted to shamelessly pander to political and voting interests (e.g ban on Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses) or a combination of both (the ban on Da Vinci Code, the movie while not banning the book). Some bans are also results of prudishness with a desire to uphold supposed cultural heritages (a till recent blanket ban on kissing on screen).

However, it would seem as if the Malaysian goverment can give its Indian counterpart a run for money when it comes to bans. Via the Freakonomics blog, comes this BBC news-story about the government restriction on naming Malaysian children. Also, as Steven Leviit points out, this is not the only kind of silly ban the government has tried to enforce.

The most amusing part of the link, actually, is not to the article itself, but to the list of other BBC articles under “see also” in the upper right-hand corner of the webpage. It seems the Malaysian government has been quite busy handing out bans recently: no botox for Malaysian muslims, no suicides in movies, no plays mentioning “Volkswagen,” no lesbian kissing on screen, and a warning to tourists about kissing in public.

In the comments section of the post, someone has posted a list of films banned by the Malaysian goverment. It tickled me to find the rather unfrogettable Bollywood flick, Fiza on the list.

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