Public morality and the Aryan Khan case https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/public-morality-aryan-khan-case-7604973/
Historian R Mahalakshmi writes: By labelling his case as one of ‘wayward’ sons and ‘bad’ celebrity parents, the middle class allows a deliberate distortion of its moral priorities, and puts at risk spaces and individual freedoms gained in the past.
..children have minds of their own, and can and do exercise choices that may be at variance with what is inculcated or emanates from the home or larger social spaces, may have been a factor for change in attitudes, historically. .. How many of us may have felt a chill going up the spine on reading this story as it unfolded before us on national media? That it could well have been one of ours out there, and that we may have been the ones in the dock. That public morality carries with it the baggage of caste, class, and religion, not to mention gender prejudice, is especially visible in the conversations on WhatsApp groups... And that is why we need to move this conversational goalpost away from negative labelling of the “waywardness” of the individual concerned or the “failure” of his parents, while also not valorising substance use or peddling.