Sanjay's plight mirrors unfreedom

Days before we celebrate Independence Day it is depressing to think the Indian Cricket Board removed Test cricketer Sanjay Manjrekar in March from its panel of commentators because he would express his views freely It is frightening because he seems willing to curb his right to free speech to get reinstated in the panel Manjrekars plight is proof that the contagion of suppressing criticism has spread from the political realm to our popular cultureManjrekars plight has its origin in his description of Indian cricketer Ravindra Jadeja as a bitsandpieces player during the 2019 World Cup Taking umbrage Jadeja tweeted Still I have played twice the number of matches you have played and I am still playing Learn to respect ppl people who have achieved I have heard enough of your verbal diarrhea sanjaymanjrekar Jadejas tweet went viral courtesy the support of nearly three million Twitter followers he hasJadeja presumably thinks a person must be superior to a public personality whom he or she critically appraises Such a yardstick would only qualify Manmohan Singh to criticise Narendra Modi because they are the only two Indians alive who have become Prime Minister twice It would disqualify most journalists from writing on any subject whether cinema or cricket or diplomacyYet Manjrekar swept aside the inanity of Jadejas remark to make amends even though bitsandpieces player is a label applied to those who are not a specialist batsman or bowler It is not an insult After Jadejas swashbuckling knock in the World Cup semifinal Manjrekar tweeted By bits n pieces of sheer brilliance hes ripped me apart on all frontsIt was not only Jadeja whom Manjrekars comments had miffed He statistically showed that MS Dhoni was mentally constrained at last years World Cup unwilling to take risks to score briskly Towering personalities with a mass following in any field have big egos mdash they expect their failures to be condoned their followers too blinded by heroworship to accept their blemishes All criticisms are viewed as either prejudiced or tendentious or illinformedManjrekar in his autobiography Imperfect says he has made a conscious effort to maintain a certain distance from players so that he remains clinical in his assessment of them But in our culture disagreement has come to be equated with disrespect unfortunately A player stopped talking to Manjrekar because of the critical piece he wrote on him What can a commentator do in such cases he asks You take a deep breath and move onBut moving on is no longer an option as is evident from Manjrekars explanatory email to the Board after he was dropped from its commentary panel He said a commentators criticism of iconic players is interpreted by their followers as flowing out of antagonism towards them although his opinions always came from a very pure place He offered to apologise in case he had offended anyone Manjrekar wrote yet another mail requesting the Board to reinstate him in the commentary panel for the forthcoming Indian Premier League sounding every bit a man brought to his kneesCynics would say Manjrekar should have drawn a lesson from the treatment meted out to Harsha Bhogle who too was dropped from the IPL commentary panel in 2016 for an absurd reason In a match that year actor Amitabh Bachchan had tweeted With all due respect it would be really worthy of an Indian commentator to speak more about our players than others all the time This was retweeted by Dhoni with a message Nothing to addThat commentator was deemed to be Bhogle against whom players had reportedly complained to the Board He was reinstated in the panel after a year long enough for anyone to consider the price of adopting a critical tone The Board controls commentators through a system devised in 2011 by which its panel alone can give commentary in the tournaments it owns In that year according to the Outlook magazine Sunil Gavaskar was contracted for an annual fee of R36 crore This amount we can say is the cost of candourIn much the same way mediaowners will censor the most profound critic rather than risk the wrath of the government which can deny them its advertisements or pressure the private sector to do the same or organise tax raids to mute them or simply boycott themTake journalist Karan Thapar from whose programme Devils Advocate Modi had famously walked out rather than speak on the 2002 riots in Gujarat Within two years of Modi becoming Prime Minister ruling party leaders took to boycotting his show Thapar became a pariah for TV channels where he had been among the big draws Yet he has kept the flag of free speech flying hosting interviews for The Wire a news portalFrom the experience of Manjrekar to Bhogle to Thapar it is clear the idea of freedom excludes the right to criticise the Indian Prime Minister the Indian cricketer the Indian hellip Our regime of unfreedom growsThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the 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