The Idea of Chowk

At Chowk all are welcome to read, write and think

We encourage all to participate in discussions. All we ask you to be is civil. If your post includes words or masked references that are offensive, crude, repugnant, or obscene, your post will be duly deleted.

We thank you for your participation.

The InterAct! space is provided to post replies to a published article. Interaction on Chowk is a privilege and a responsibility. Article replies are a permanent part of Chowk. The overall appeal of Chowk’s content depends in large measure on the appeal and versatility of the discussions in the Interaction space. Please keep your interaction relevant to the article and its primary theme. Chowk encourages and appreciates critique and its defining value is freedom of expression.

In order to protect this freedom for all Chowkwalas, it is necessary to adhere to the rules of good conduct as spelled out below.

Please refrain from abusive language and swear words
Please refrain from personal attacks on writers and respondents
Please refrain from frivolous statements that are inflammatory towards any race, nationality, ethnicity or religion
Please refrain from abusing the interaction spaces with plugs and unsolicited publicity for other websites and on-line and off-line services

We understand that these rules can be difficult to follow when you have a strong opinion about an issue, or when another Interactor’s viewpoints frustrate you. Please remember that the other Interactor is a person with a valid opinion, which you can probably change with reason and patience but abuse will not help your cause. Interactors are rated at Chowk, so please remember that the depth of your argument will earn the respect of other Chowkwalas, rather than aggression.

Chowk reserves the right to remove responses that do not conform to the basic guidelines.

Perhaps because of its wish to be modeled after a freewheeling human nature, it’s by no accident that cyber Chowk has become a microcosm of the larger, personal world outside we all live in and interact with one another, the real world of everything that’s good and noble, coarse and crass.

But apparently bemused and dismayed by the unanticipated human behavior, Chowk tried to restrain human nature, just as any other medium does: print, radio, TV, the internet. Does Chowk fit in with any of the myriad companies that inhabit the media? It most certainly doesn’t. It’s a rebel. That’s what makes Chowk unique, that’s where lies its appeal, and that’s where lies its problem.

What does Chowk want to be? Judging from its guidelines quoted above, it would like to be a cyber community of well-behaved, civilized, intelligent, well-read folks who are free to discuss just about any topic, taboo or not, so long as civility is maintained.

Well, the “real” world we all live in is not like that, and the Chowk’s freewheeling experiment has clearly shown that. The real world is not full of well-behaved, civilized, intelligent, well-read folks. The natural, real world is a wide spectrum of every hue and color. Whether one likes it or not, in the real world good and bad, noble and ignoble, all exist side by side.

Why, then, all this banning of people from Chowk? Why this parental control? Are the Chowk interactors like pre-pubescent children for whom not all HBO shows are suitable and a control by the parent must be maintained? Why kicking people out of the room? Why cannot Chowk let interactors be what they are, from inside, what nature has bestowed on them?

While there is nothing wrong in removing an “uncivil” and “objectionable” post at Chowk, there is everything wrong in “banning” people from it. A civil society sets up rules of conduct and behavior, and short of a murder--a “physical” taking of life--it does not kill people just because they happen to displease some other people from their diatribe. Yes, silencing of those who utter words some do not want to hear does happen in a society controlled by those who have the power to pull the trigger. Does Chowk want to be that society?

When one starts policing a society or a community for “right” and “wrong,” it’s only natural that one develops taste and distaste for not only ideas but for personalities as well and becomes most unjust in dealing with them. The banning criteria exercised by Chowk for certain individuals have clearly demonstrated that, at Chowk, what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Is that fair? Does that make Chowk objective and respectful? Does banning people from Chowk make Chowk a better place? Has it? Nowhere in the guidelines quoted above does it say that an individual will be banned if he/she does not behave. Stick to the guidelines and kill the message, not the messenger.

I choose to visit Chowk because it is chaotic in every shade of its color, not because it’s predictable and monotonous. There are hundreds of sites out there on this highway of information one could be visiting and interacting with others. Why should one come to Chowk for that? There’s a simple answer: because unlike others Chowk allows you to be what you are from inside.

When Chowk starts banning its interactors from airing their views or frustrations, no matter how crudely expressed, it stops being a representative of the larger, colorful, diverse world outside and becomes a community of the sterile and the barren.

Chowk is a round but its controllers are trying to fit it in a neatly defined square. Let it be a round.