Cant and recant

The flipping of a calendar is only a chronological convenience. The switch to 2016, however, does seem to have had a sobering effect on many, including Aamir Khan, who, upon seeing in the cold light of a New Year the intolerance debate he had fuelled, has retracted his “leave India” comment and says he wishes to die here. His sense of “growing disquiet and despondency, apart from alarm” seems to have dissipated. He takes recourse to the standard excuse that the media had twisted his words, or taken them out of context. It is in the light of sobriety that he concludes he should never have given vent to thoughts that were private. And he is not alone in this as several writers, historians and scientists, who were also carried away by the depth of feelings after the Dadri lynching, are repentant enough to wish to take back the awards they had returned.

The need to state opinion has never been so compelling thanks to the ubiquitous social media, which gives rise to the feeling that every Internet Indian is an opinion-maker. Celebrities and politicians seem to suffer even more from this foot-in-mouth syndrome whose symptoms rise in proportion to proximity to a microphone. There are many who have not found it expedient to recant. Among last year’s worst excesses were the vitriolic comments of a chief minister aimed at the Prime Minister, denouncing him as a “coward” and a “psychopath”. Nothing said in the public domain, even in a particularly loud year, could have been so vituperative. Isn’t it time the maverick took back his words spoken in anger or haste