Hyderabad, Oct. 23 -- It is a good thing that Raihan Vadra decided to continue with the exhibition of his photographs at Bikaner House in Delhi instead of packing up when the venue management asked him to take down 75 of the 105 images. When a visitor walks into the gallery and stares at blank walls with nails with nothing hanging from that, questions are bound to be raised. The catalogue will tell the visitor why they were taken down.

To my mind, the blank walls are akin to the blank space that the Indian Express editorial pages had when Ramnath Goenka fought the Emergency imposed by Raihan's great grandmother. That crackdown on free speech was an assault, though the Congress has been apologetic about it. Now, it is rightfully fighting ...