Today I got to read about the dissent shown to Mr. Cho Ramaswamy by the BJP cadre, in a function held to release the Tamil version of a book written by the Gujarat CM and BJP leader Mr. Narendra Modi.

Opposition to his opinions is not new to Cho.  He speaks his mind and sticks to his view despite criticism.  He is probably the most popular magazine editors in the country.   He has many thousands admiring his views and probably double that number having an opposite view.

That is probably the reason why he being booed by the BJP men at the aforesaid book release function has caught the attention of the newspapers and bloggers.   I read two of them.  One of them is here and the other is here.

While the two posts linked above are more like a news report of the incident, some of the comments of the readers to these posts are in very bad taste.  You can oppose a person’s view point or opinion.  But, it is unfortunate that some people instead of countering with their views take recourse to making derogatory and personal remarks about the individual.

Using bad language and  filthy words do not constitute having an opposing view.  It rather means that you are opposing the person.  To me that is deplorable conduct and definitely not Tamil culture even if the people who made those comments are pained by the views of Cho on the ongoing war between Lankan army and LTTE.

Coming back to Cho’s speech in the book release function, I doubt if anyone else would have spoken like Cho did (with the courage) criticizing the policies of a party in a meeting organized by that political party.

The reaction of the BJP cadres in the meeting makes one feel that they standards and tolerance levels are depleting.  In my view, they are desperate for votes in the upcoming elections and with no alliance partners in the vicinity have latched on to the Lankan Tamils’ issue.  I also think BJP has not done anything good for themselves by going against Cho, who is known to be someone having a preference for BJP vis-a-vis the Congress.

There was also opposition for Cho speaking in English in the function.  I think Cho would have chosen to speak in English because of the presence of Mr. Narendra Modi on the dais rather than to insult the language or the people in the audience.  I have watched Cho speak in Tamil in the Jan 2008 Thuglak anniversary function in which also Mr. Modi was present but not on the dais while Cho was addressing Thuglak readers.  I do not think anyone can have any doubt about Cho’s respect to Tamil language.  In my opinion, Thuglak is one magazine which consciously avoids using English words in its articles as much as possible.

Talking of opposition to Cho’s views, an interesting incident involving him comes to my mind.

In early 70s he wrote something against the then DMK government and there was a big protest rally against him.  DMK cadres were burning the particular issue of Thuglak magazine everywhere.  When the protest rally was on, Cho was going somewhere and got stuck in the protest rally.  Noting that he was getting late to wherever he was going, it seems he just got out of the car and walked amidst the protestors to reach his destination.

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