Don't Kiss in India... they might arrest you.

This is an old story but still worth commenting on. It is safe to say that Richard Gere will not be invited back to India anytime soon after he kissed actress Shilpa Shettyat an awards ceremony. It, of course, caused cries of outrage from many Indians because such public displays of affection are frowned upon. Gere has apologized for offending those who watched the awards ceremony. One Indian province actually issued an arrest warrant for both Gere and Shilpa! This incident makes India the laughing stock of the western world for sure since FOX broadcast two women kissing here in the states and no one got arrested. I take offense to this sort of behavior coming from a supposedly civilized democracy. It is ridiculous and to put it mildly, impolite to arrest guests of your country for making social gaffes. Gere, like most Americans, I’m sure had no clue about the no kissing in public taboo of India. On top of that he apologized, yet they went ahead and issued a warrant anyway, though a higher court canceled it later. Punishing someone from a foreign land who clearly is unaware of certain cultural niceties is horribly unfair. Heck, I think punishing someone who is unaware of a law in general should be unconstitutional. Such laws place the entire burden on the individual to know everything about the law, or in this case society, no mater how obscure or face punishment. Society has a duty to be understanding to the circumstances of the individual. We do not execute our mentally challenged individuals for murder in this country because they are unaware of the wrongness of their actions. I have problems with the court ruling that decided this since I feel the level of incapacity of the individual in that case wasn’t enough to justify commuting his sentence but I still feel the general principle of forgiving those who know no better holds true. The Indian courts and public have certainly been less than understanding to the circumstances of Ms. Shetty. While Mr. Gere has been somewhat forgiven, at least enough to not face further legal action, Ms. Shetty still has a court battle ahead of her. Amazingly, the geniuses behind issuing the arrest warrants think that just because she got kissed by Mr. Gere the offense to there overly sensitive sensibilities is her fault. I’ve seen the video footage, she was as surprised as everyone else. These officials should be ashamed of themselves blaming this on the poor woman when it was Richard Gere who did the grabbing and kissing. All I see from this fiasco are a bunch of vindictive and by American standards prudish individuals who are trying to punish whoever they can to save face because they can’t punish who they really want, Richard Gere. If anyone knows anything about the evolution of Indian culture I would sincerely like to know how kissing in public came to be considered public indecency. Please post up in comments if you have them.