When the Hindu fundamentalist leader Bal Thackeray died recently, the city of Mumbai practically came to a standstill. So revered was he by followers of his right-wing Shiv Sena party – a notoriously violent bunch feared throughout the state of Maharashtra – that offices, shops and restaurants closed, and cinemas cancelled performances. An over-reaction? Not to party zealots. When some spotted a woman’s comment on Facebook, saying that people like Thackeray are “born and die daily”, and don’t merit a complete city shutdown, they went to the police. They duly dragged her off to jail, along with a friend who had “liked” the comment. The charge: “promoting hatred and ill-will”.

It’s shocking to see the police kowtow to these “violent, lumpen” fanatics. When parliament included a measure outlawing online abuse in its Information Technology Act it never meant one couldn’t express irritation at the virtual closure of India’s financial capital. There can only be one response: the officers responsible for these “patently illegal” actions must be punished. The space for freedom of speech in India is “rapidly shrinking”: it’s time we did something about it.   (The Hindu, Chennai,)

All over the world free speech is under attack, whether it is from the organs of some gruesome dictatorship, or clamp-downs on internet content.  Even the Obama Administration, which promised to be more open and not stamp the minor documents produced by the bureaucracy ” Highly Confidential” , has been guilty of dragging its feet over openness.  In four years only 17% of documents, otherwise marked “classified”, have been reviewed.

But this is minor compared with the activities of “religious” thugs, such as the Shiv Sena party.  Reasonable people (read Epicureans) are getting exasperated with all this.  Whether the extremists are in India or the Deep South of America, we should not tolerate this behaviour.